Hurricanes’ Teuvo Teravainen, who snapped team’s power-play skid, keeps ticking along

Only 10 days ago, the wispy fuzz on Teuvo Teravainen’s upper lip was so unimpressive, even he was embarrassed. Asked after an off-day practice between the first and second rounds if that was a playoff mustache, the Carolina Hurricanes forward could only admit defeat.

“It is something like that, yes,” Teravainen said, without emotion. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

How things have changed. He may not be Lanny McDonald, but there’s definite growth and progress in the mustache department, with no need to remain facially self-effacing, even if that’s Teravainen’s laconic style anyway.

It’s merely coincidence that as he becomes more hirsute he’s also been the Hurricanes’ most consistent offensive player in the second round, with assists in the first two games, the Hurricanes’ lone goal in Game 4 and their first power-play goal in five games in Thursday’s 3-1 win over the New York Rangers.

He should have at least one more — his failure to elevate the puck over Igor Shesterkin’s right pad was one of the great missed opportunities in Tuesday’s loss — but there’s also something to be said for having 11 points in 12 games on a team that’s seen many of its best players be erratic if not absent, at least until Andrei Svechnikov and Vincent Trocheck broke through Thursday.

Teravainen’s power-play goal came off a feed from Seth Jarvis, finding Teravainen alone to Shesterkin’s right with time and space to pick a corner, the go-ahead goal and game-winner, as it turned out.

“It was just a great play by Jarvy to find that seam to me,” Teravainen said. “I just tried to catch it and shoot it right away and get it up a little bit. So it was a good play by Jarvy.”

It was, yes, a nice cross-ice pass by Jarvis, but that sells Teravainen’s finish a little short. In a series where the Hurricanes have had so much trouble finishing even easier chances against Shesterkin — Sebastian Aho hit both the crossbar and the post Thursday, the latter in as much open ice as he may ever see in a playoff game in his career — the finish was as clinical as it was timely.

And in this case, it was really a matter of Jarvis repaying the kind of favor Teravainen regularly hands out to his teammates: Those pinpoint passes even they don’t expect.

“It’s kind of tough (to explain) unless you’re out there with him, but he makes plays,” Jarvis said. “He’s not the fastest guy but he plays the game so fast it definitely makes up for it. It’s really cool to watch, and to play with, it’s even better.

Someone would eventually have to break an 0-for-21 power-play skid. Might as well be Teravainen, who is as reliably productive as any of his teammates without, necessarily, their star power. While everyone was worried about Aho and Svechnikov and Trocheck and Martin Necas — who continues to struggle — Teravainen kept plugging away. While a couple bad turnovers brought some criticism upon him, he has hardly been the main issue with the Carolina offense.

Whether in his happy place playing with Aho or on another line — usually a better option for the Hurricanes, despite their chemistry, because they both can make the players around them better — Teravainen has been as continually effective in these playoffs as anyone on the roster save perhaps Jarvis. With a point in all seven of the Hurricanes’ home wins, he’s more than halfway to Cory Stillman’s 13-game home point streak during the run to the Stanley Cup in 2006.

“You know the talent’s there, a sneaky skill player,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “You see that on his goal. That’s a great catch and shoot that not a lot of guys can do, at that pace and put it in the right spot. Nothing bothers him.”

Almost nothing, anyway, other than his playoff mustache. And even that, less than before.

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