<p>RALEIGH – Usually Carolina head coach Rod Brind’Amour gets a different player to read the starting lineup to the group before every game, mixes it up during the year so that different guys get a chance to take part in the ritual.</p>



<p>But late in the regular season, rookie Seth Jarvis scored a game-winning goal after he’d read the lineup and the decision was made that he would keep reading the lineup because, well, why wouldn’t you do the same?</p>



<p>Jarvis better keep his reading glasses handy after he scored the first goal of the 2022 playoffs for the Carolina Hurricanes and the first playoff goal of his career and then added an empty-net assist in a 5-1 win over Boston Monday. The score belied how close this game was for most of the evening and frankly the Bruins were likely the better team until Jarvis redirected a Jaccob Slavin point shot past Boston netminder Linus Ullmark late in the second period.</p><div class="injected-ad injected-video" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="0" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="162"></div>



<p>Jarvis, who has now read the lineup in six straight games, is an interesting story on many levels for the Hurricanes.</p>



<p>The first is how he actually got here, and this is where the Hurricanes and their loyal fans owe a debt of gratitude to the Toronto Maple Leafs and to Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, because it was Dundon who had to agree to the transaction that saw the Hurricanes acquire veteran Patrick Marleau in the summer of 2019. The Leafs were in salary cap hell and needed to sign other critical pieces of their roster, mainly Mitch Marner. The price was, essentially, a conditional first-round draft pick plus the willingness of Carolina ownership to pay the real-dollar cost of buying out the final year of Marleau’s $6.25-million contract.</p>



<p>A year later, in the 2020 playoffs, the Leafs were upended in the play-in round by Columbus and ended up with the 13<sup>th</sup> overall pick. That pick belonged to the Hurricanes, with which they selected Jarvis.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="1" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="165"></div>



<p>“When we did the Marleau thing, the value of that pick, we thought Toronto would be any place from 23 or 24 to 31 at that time,” Carolina GM Don Waddell said. “And that’s how we valued it, yeah, this makes sense. Now fortunately for us and unfortunately for Toronto they went in and lost in the play-in round, so that put them in a lottery pick and we ended up with the 13<sup>th</sup> pick. That’s where we got lucky at Toronto’s expense. I couldn’t control where that pick went.”</p>



<p>Then there is the handling of the young man.</p>



<p>Jarvis, who just turned 20, made the club out of camp but didn’t play right away. Then he played and was productive. But he did hit a bit of a wall around the All-Star break. Starting Jan. 22, Jarvis went 18 straight games without a goal.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="2" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="145"></div>



<p>In mid-March, Jarvis was dealing with a minor hip injury and took a couple of games off, and then he was listed as a&nbsp;healthy scratch.</p>



<p>But when he got back in the lineup, Jarvis seemed to have regained his confidence. He had six multi-point games in less than a month and then closed out the season with points in seven straight games, earning his title as ‘Mr. Lineup’ (actually no one else calls him that, just us).</p>



<p>It’s not just the scoring – Jarvis’s 40 points were good for 9<sup>th</sup> among all first-year skaters – but how he collects them. The 20-year-old Winnipeg native isn’t big of stature – 5-foot-10, 175 pounds – but his angles on chasing down pucks and his ability to separate defenders from the puck and to create chances off the forecheck are the stuff of more seasoned players. His goal, the first of the game, was a nice deflection from the slot with lots of bodies in the vicinity.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="3" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="164"></div>



<p>And his enthusiasm is infectious.</p>



<p>Jarvis wasn’t the only Hurricane making his first-ever playoff start, although Antti Raanta, 12 years Jarvis’s senior, had at least appeared in a handful of playoff games for the New York Rangers and Arizona Coyotes in mop-up roles over the years.</p>



<p>But Monday marked the first time the veteran netminder earned a start in a playoff game, and with starter and Vezina Trophy candidate Frederik Andersen still injured, Raanta rose to the challenge and saved a game that might have easily gotten away from the home team.</p>



<p>The Hurricanes took a long time to get going against the Bruins, who dictated play for much of the first two periods. Raanta, though, did not buckle.</p>



<p>In fact – as is often the case – the Bruins were buzzing, looking to break open a 0-0 game late in the second period with a series of impressive shifts, but Raanta did not yield. And the Bruins could not finish on plays where it looked like Raanta was beaten.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="4" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="170"></div>



<p>Moments later, Jarvis scored to open the scoring, and then 2:10 later Nino Niederreiter ripped a shot past Boston netminder Linus Ullmark and the Bruins were chasing the game and never caught up.</p>



<p>The man some of his teammates call ‘Father Finn’ has become an instant favorite around the Carolina locker room, amongst local media and in the community.</p>



<p>We spent about 45 minutes with Raanta around the trade deadline. The jokes was: “How many questions did you ask him? Two? Three?”</p>



<p>As Jarvis enjoyed his milestone night and extended his points streak to eight games. Raanta’s milestone was no less meaningful, perhaps even more so given that he had waited so long to skate into the starter’s crease at the start of an NHL playoff game.</p>



<p>He talked about watching players like Corey Crawford, whom he studied closely in Chicago when the Blackhawks were marching to their Cup win in 2015, but nothing really prepares you for the moment it’s your crease, your saves or non-saves that carry the day.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="5" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="171"></div>



<p>Raanta had also endured a difficult off-season at home in Finland before moving his family to his new hockey home in Raleigh, losing his grandfather and father within days of each other.</p>



<p>So, Monday was more than a little meaningful for Raanta.</p>



<p>“Obviously a little butterflies here and there,” he said after Game 1.</p>



<p>Raanta was forced into an awkward short-side save on the first shift of the game and while there were some tense moments along the way, Raanta justified the coaching staff’s decision, which wasn’t a slam-dunk.</p>



<p>In the days leading up to the series opener, the decision on a Game 1 starter had been debated vigorously by many within the organization. The Hurricanes were the William Jennings Trophy winners for allowing the fewest goals in the regular season. But Andersen hasn’t played since April 16 and is just now getting back on the ice, and there appears to be little thought he would be available in this series. Pyotr Kochetkov may become the goalie of the future for the Hurricanes and he was dynamic, winning all three games in which he appeared, including a division-clincher over the New York Rangers. And there was a body of thought that you could start Kochetkov and he would be almost immune to the pressure given that he speaks almost no English and is 22.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="6" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="224"></div>



<p>But at the end of the day, there was unanimity that it would be Raanta’s goal to start the playoffs, and so far so good for Father Finn, who stopped 35 of 36 shots.</p>



<p>“It was an awesome, awesome feeling,” Raanta said.</p>



<p><strong>Some other thoughts on Game 1:</strong></p>



<p>Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy was noncommittal on whether Ullmark would return to the Bruins’ net Wednesday in Game 2. The loss can’t be placed at Ullmark’s feet, although he did allow four goals on 24 shots and was beaten by a wicked Vincent Trocheck backhand in the third to make the game 4-1 and end any hope of a comeback.</p>



<p>Jeremy Swayman has been very good for a Bruins team that was fourth in the league in goals allowed since the March 21 trade deadline. Cassidy’s biggest challenge – or is it hope – is in seeing some more finish from his team.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="7" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="152"></div>



<p>We mentioned Trocheck: it was a good night for two potential unrestricted free agents on the Hurricanes roster.</p>



<p>Trocheck had a goal and an assist – a lovely pass to Teuvo Teravainen to make it 3-1 Carolina less than five minutes after the Bruins had made the score 2-1. It was Trocheck’s first career multi-point playoff game.</p>



<p>And Niederreiter’s goal giving the Hurricanes a two-goal cushion late in the second period was key and turned out to be the game-winner. Niederreiter had managed just three goals in his previous 29 post-season games with the Hurricanes, and playing with captain Jordan Staal and Jesper Fast for most of the season has seen him once again emerge as an important offensive cog with 24 regular season goals.</p>



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