Why Antti Raanta and the Hurricanes may have the Rangers to thank for playoff success

Sebastian Aho was still speaking to the media late Friday night when Brendan Smith slipped into the room.

The defenseman plopped down on a table, his face flushed, the definition of being exhausted in victory. When Aho finished up and was leaving, the two shared a quick fist bump.

Fitting, of course. It was Aho and Smith who teamed up on the winning goal in the Carolina Hurricanes’ 2-0 win over the New York Rangers in Game 2 of their Stanley Cup playoff series.

It came shorthanded late in the second period. Aho took a pass from Teuvo Teravainen, skated down the right wing and threaded a pass through the legs of defenseman Adam Fox to an open Smith, who was skating as fast as his 33-year-old legs would take him.

“He put it right on the money,” Smith said.

Aho added an empty-net goal in the final seconds or regulation to cap off a victory that has the Canes taking a 2-0 series lead to New York for Games 3 and 4. The Canes soon swarmed, again, around goalie Antti Raanta, who had the 21-save shutout and added to the feel-good story the guy the Canes called “Father Finn” is putting together in the playoffs.

There was a time when the Hurricanes seemingly could not beat the Rangers, not very often. Not with goalie Henrik Lundqvist in net for the Rangers and certainly not at Madison Square Garden, where any number of things usually went wrong for the Canes and right for the Rangers.

In an interesting twist, some of the players the Rangers let get away or sent away in recent years are helping beat the Rangers and put them in the 2-0 series hole — Smith, Brady Skjei, Jesper Fast and Tony DeAngelo among them.

A year ago Smith was with the Rangers. Deemed expendable, he signed a one-year, $800,000 free-agent contract with Carolina, a team that wanted him, a team he believed could contend for the Cup.

And there’s Raanta. Smith said that in Raanta’s two years with the Rangers, it was as if some of the innate competitiveness and mental toughness of “King Henrik” had an influence on Raanta.

“He doesn’t want to get scored on at any time,” Smith said of Raanta. “Whether it’s one of those little shootout games or whatever, he doesn’t want to get scored on and I think it carries over.

“I think of Henrik Lundqvist. He never wanted to be scored on, even in practice. Maybe that wore off on (Raanta). And he’s stepped up to it.”

Raanta doesn’t deny it. He was with the Rangers in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, Lundqvist’s backup at a time when Lundqvist won 66 games in those two years.

“When I was in New York, what Hank was doing there, that was probably eye-opening for me,” Raanta said Friday. “Every year he was one of the best goalies and I was like ‘This is the reason he is the best goalie.’ He was always working, always trying to get better.”

That was then. Lundqvist, the Vezina Trophy winner in 2012, is retired. Igor Shesterkin now is the Rangers’ new goaltending star and perhaps an emerging superstar, a Vezina finalist this season at age 26.

“He fights until the end, he moves unbelievable, he makes the saves when he has to and sometimes he makes those huge highlight-reel saves.” Raanta said.

Shesterkin has allowed three goals in two games against the Canes in the series. But Raanta has allowed two. It has been that close and it might continue to be.

“It’s always great to go against the best goalie in the league,” Raanta said. “It’s a fun battle but more than anything it’s focusing on your own thing.”

With the 1-0 lead in the third, the Canes doggedly got sticks on pucks and blocked shots and cleared the zone, keeping the Rangers muzzled, keeping them from tying the score.

“Our battle level was high,” Smith said.

That includes the goaltender from Finland, who learned some of that from an old Ranger.