Hurricanes knock out Islanders with first four-game sweep in franchise history

The Hurricanes, who went a decade between playoff berths, earned the first four-game sweep in franchise history and have reached the Eastern Conference final in each of their last four post-season appearances since 2002. They’re also unbeaten in five home playoff games.

Now the Hurricanes, after winning six straight and eight of nine, have some time to heal before they face the Columbus-Boston winner.

Mathew Barzal scored a power-play goal and Brock Nelson added a late goal for the Islanders, who managed just five goals in the series and were swept for the first time since the Rangers did it in the first round in 1994.

They kept the identity of their starting goalie a secret until warm-ups, when Robin Lehner led them onto the ice for the fourth straight game in the series. He didn’t last long.

Coach Barry Trotz pulled him in favour of backup Thomas Greiss after the bang-bang goals by Teravainen and McKegg early in the second period.

Teravainen put the Hurricanes ahead to stay after some slick passes from Aho and Warren Foegele set up his sixth goal of the post-season. And McKegg chased Lehner when the goalie couldn’t keep hold of the rebound of Brett Pesce’s shot and the Carolina rookie stuffed it in for his first playoff goal.

Greiss wasn’t much better against the relentless Hurricanes, with Williams scoring their third goal of the period off a give-and-go from Nino Niederreiter at 8:51 and Svechnikov riling up the rowdy Caniacs with his goal with 4:47 left.

Lehner and Greiss each finished with eight saves for the Islanders. McElhinney wouldn’t let the Islanders make this a game again, stopping Josh Bailey from point-blank range with a little more than minutes remaining.

With elimination looming over his team, Trotz declared this game as a Game 7 and the Islanders approached it with the urgency of one, taking full advantage of a high-sticking penalty to Andrei Svechnikov 73 seconds in. Barzal slipped behind Jaccob Slavin and poked the rebound of Devon Towes’ shot past McElhinney for his second goal in three games.

From there, though, it was all Hurricanes, who got some help from an Islanders defenceman to end their lengthy power-play drought.

Carolina was 3-for-34 with the man advantage during this post-season and had no power-play goals since Game 3 of the Washington series, but when Islanders defenceman Adam Pelech accidentally shovelled the puck into his own net during a scrum in front of Lehner — for a goal credited to Aho — that dry spell was over.