From two up to over and out: Why Hurricanes’ Game 6 collapse is worst loss in franchise history

The puck just sat there. Right at the post. Chris Kreider saw it. Frederik Andersen did not.

That’s the game. That’s the series. That’s the season.

The Carolina Hurricanes’ season ended Thursday night, a Game 7 within reach and torn out of their hands, and at the end of a chain of events initiated for the most mundane of reasons: Because their goalie gave up a back-breaking goal. And it broke their backs.

That was the first and softest of Krieder’s three goals for the New York Rangers in the third period as the Hurricanes turned a two-goal lead into a 5-3 loss, exiting the postseason with a six-game second-round loss to the Rangers, and it all unraveled from there into the worst loss in franchise history, at least since relocation.

The losses at the end of 2008 and 2011 seasons that kept the Hurricanes out of the playoffs were disastrous in their own way, but still merely one of 82. Never in the postseason had there been a catastrophic loss like this, blowing a two-goal lead in an elimination game, at home no less.

“We were going good, and then obviously the goal was a tough one,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “It can’t happen. We know that. You can’t give a team like that a goal and I thought we gave them a couple.”

This is the kind of thing the Hurricanes have done to others over the years, not fallen victim to themselves.

The Game 7 loss to these same Rangers in 2022 was a blowout, never in question. The howler Alex Nedeljokic allowed in Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning — to one-time Hurricanes rookie camp invitee Barclay Goodrow, who scored the empty-netter for the Rangers on Thursday — was at least at the beginning of the series, not that the Hurricanes were favored in that one anyway.

This one stands alone, without peer.

“We were 20 minutes from roaming into a Game 7 and anything can happen in Game 7,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “Frustrating, upsetting, any of the things you can think of for that ending.”

You can’t ask for more: Up 3-1 entering the third, with a breakaway and two pinged posts after that, every chance to put the game away and send the series back to Madison Square Garden with a chance to pull off a historic comeback. One goal there and the Rangers would have been thinking about Saturday instead.

When Jordan Martinook clawed the puck off the goal line behind Andersen in the second to keep it 3-1, pulling the puck one way with the blade of his stick while his momentum took him in the opposite direction, it certainly looked like the Hurricanes had not only a raucous home crowd but old-fashioned momentum on their side.

It wasn’t like they went into a shell in the third, either. They dominated the first five minutes, and the game was there for the taking, and then the Rangers took it instead.

“It definitely hurt, obviously,” Andersen said. “You don’t want to give them life. I thought I had it covered and I wasn’t able to get my glove down on it. Obviously, a mistake. Tough timing for that. We weren’t able to bounce back this time.”

Once Kreider scored his first, everything fell apart. Staal went to the penalty box for a cross-check on Mika Zibanejad behind the net — “I didn’t love it,” Staal said. “He was doing it all series long and he did it about four times that game” — and the Rangers scored on the power play for the first time in nine tries to tie it 3-3. And then, with four minutes to play, Ryan Lindgren skated out from behind the net and slid a pass through the crease for Kreider’s third, the collapse complete.

“We felt great where we were going into the third,” Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook said. “Knowing that we let it slip like that, it’s going to eat you up. It’s going to eat us up for a long time.”

The finality of the end of the season is always difficult, a reality of the business and the game. But to lose like this, when a Game 7 was within reach, will sting for far longer. And with so many unrestricted free agents, and Brind’Amour still not signed for next season, change was coming whenever this season ended, so this isn’t just the end of a season.

It’s the end of this group, the one that was on the ice Thursday night. Change is coming. The Hurricanes will almost certainly still be contenders, but not these contenders. That’s over. And the past three years, as legitimate contenders, passing with only one trip as far as the conference finals (and without a win there).

“It’s a tough way to end a really good year,” Brind’Amour said. “These guys played their butts off all year, but this is what you’re going to remember, right? That’s the hard part. It’s a business, and we’d love to roll this back with these guys, but who knows how it’s going to shake out.”

This was a series of fine margins, one play either way, between two of the best teams in the NHL — despite occurring in the second round, really a de facto conference final. The two posts early in the third, and then Zibanejad tried to stuff the puck past Andersen at the other end. If Andersen gets his glove on it before Kreider pokes it over the line, the Hurricanes might be making plans to make history.

He didn’t. They won’t. They’re done. And so is this era, for this group, in the most painful way imaginable.

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