Recap: Aho's Hat Trick, Necas' Late Game Magic Get Canes By Flyers

PHILADELPHIA, PA. -Martin Necas scored with under a second to go in the third period to force overtime, and Sebastian Aho earned his third hat trick of the season to give the Carolina Hurricanes a wild 5-4 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.

The Story

Just nine days after these two teams went head-to-head at PNC Arena, the two were back at it this afternoon in Philadelphia for the second and final time this season.
Last week in Raleigh it was
a 19-save shutout from Pyotr Kochetkov that ultimately earned headlines
, but Felix Sandstrom's 28-save performance kept the Flyers in the contest throughout. This afternoon it was Sandstrom going up against Frederik Andersen, with both registering impressive stops in the opening minutes to prevent their teams from going down early.
However, the big news off the get-go was that Rod Brind'Amour and staff elected to shuffle their deck of forwards almost entirely for today's affair. With three of their four combinations being completely new, it was the first time since October 22 that the trio of Jordan Martinook, Jordan Staal, and Jesper Fast were not together.
The new-look offense would pay dividends in the first period for the Canes, striking for a pair of goals just 1:59 apart to open the game's scoring.
First, Martin Necas was able to find an unmarked Sebastian Aho for his team-leading 28th tally of the season.

Then, Brady Skjei remained hot, finding twine for a third consecutive game.
Momentum was all in favor of Carolina as the game advanced to the second, but the Flyers brought themselves back into the fight during the middle frame. Taking two of the period's three goals, rookie Tyson Foerster halved the Canes' lead to start the trio of tallies.
For close to 10 minutes the game was contested as a one-goal tilt, but before Philadelphia could tie it, Aho's second of the afternoon re-established the visitors' two-goal lead.

However, to round out the second frame, Philadelphia crawled back within one once again. During an abbreviated five-on-three, Noah Cates jammed home a second effort, making it a 3-2 contest at the end of 40.
As it turned out, the quick pair of penalties to Carolina sparked a near-game-winning comeback effort for the Flyers.
Just 3:33 into the third Joel Farabee, like Cates, put home a second chance in front of Andersen to tie the contest. Then, 2:17 later, an attempted playing of the puck by Andersen was knocked down by an attacking Flyer and sent in front for the go-ahead slam dunk.
The outlook was grim for Carolina, who entered the day 30-1-4 when leading after two periods.
However, with the extra attacker on, a penalty to Philadelphia then gave Carolina an offensive zone draw with seven seconds on the clock.
Rod Brind'Amour drew up a play, and it worked.
With 0.3 seconds remaining in regulation, Martin Necas stuffed one home at the side of the net to improbably force overtime.
For the 20th time in 68 games this season, the Canes needed three-on-three, tieing Anaheim and Calgary for the league lead once again.
But during the extra session, only 28 seconds was needed.
Sebastian Aho took Tony DeAngelo one-on-one, and the game were over.

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They Said It

Rod Brind'Amouron his team's performance...
"It wasn't the prettiest of games for us. I thought we had a really good start, and then it was the offensive zone penalty that leads to a five-on-three. Then they got in the game and we had a terrible start to our third. Give Philadelphia credit, they played hard all the way, we finally just were able to break through there and win it."
Sebastian Ahoalso acknowledging that the team did not play their best today, but they found a way to earn the win...
"We found a way to win this game, which was huge. We can't play like this every night. We don't give ourselves the best chance to win these games. But obviously it's a little bit of a confidence builder to get the late goal there and to be able to come out as the winner."
Martin Necason his game-tying goal...
"I was just standing there on the back door and somehow the puck showed up. I just banged it in. I got kind of lucky but I think we deserved it after the last few minutes where we had a few chances... I had no idea [whether it went in before the clock hit zero], I was just going right to the bench and looking for the monitor. I saw it was a good goal and I was happy about that."

Bonus Notes

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What's Next?

The Canes will travel back to Raleigh post-game and have off on Sunday. They'll then practice Monday before flying to New York City for a Tuesday meeting against the Rangers.
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