Hurricanes’ Paul Stastny, at 37, still has more to give, shooting team to second round

Paul Stastny remembers them from early in his career, the veterans near the end, their roles shrinking before their eyes, still trying to find a way to contribute, passing along the lessons of a long career like hockey epic poets.

Adam Foote, playing 10 minutes a night on the third pairing in Colorado but with a pair of Stanley Cup rings, teaching a young Stastny how to be a professional. A 37-year-old Scott Gomez in St. Louis, sharing the secrets of the guild of NHL centers with Stastny, then in the prime of his career.

It was guys like that who came to mind when he signed with the Carolina Hurricanes over the summer, accepting a lesser role on a contending team at age 36 (now 37) despite the 284 goals to his credit, becoming a teacher as much as a practitioner. He still had something to contribute, maybe not as much on the ice as earlier in his career, on a team with younger players looking to get better.

And for most of the season, Stastny labored occasionally on the third line but usually on the fourth, his nine goals a career-low for a full season.

“You’ve played this long in your career, you sign with a team like this, you know your role’s going to change,” Stastny said. “I’m just enjoying it. I’ve got no complaints. Some days are tougher than others.”

Turns out Stastny still had a lot to contribute on the ice, and he has in the playoffs when the Hurricanes needed him most. Had the Hurricanes been fully healthy, he might not even have been playing. Instead, he scored his third goal of the postseason Friday to send the Hurricanes through to the second round with a 2-1 overtime win over the New York Islanders.

After a furious third period erased an early deficit thanks to a Sebastian Aho goal to force overtime, Stastny snuck the puck under Ilya Sorokin from a tight angle to Sorokin’s left, bouncing it off Sorokin’s right skate and launching a ferocious celebration at both ends of the ice — half the team surrounding Stastny, the other half mobbing Frederik Andersen, who in his first playoff start for the Hurricanes kept the team afloat during the first two dismal periods.

“It was good to see (Stastny) get rewarded,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “See that big ol’ toothless smile.”

Just as Stastny’s upper jaw is missing a few pieces, this was very much the spirit of the Hurricanes, without Max Pacioretty, without Andrei Svechnikov, without Teuvo Teravainen. They needed everyone. The Hurricanes rolled the dice on Andersen after five straight Antti Raanta starts, and he delivered. Brent Burns was a beast in the third period, but the defense played impeccably all night, right down to Jalen Chatfield winning an icing race to set up the winning goal.

And all four forward lines fed off each other in the third, building momentum shift by shift until Aho finally broke through, drawing inspiration from the effort of the outstanding if unrewarded Jordan Martinook. It was only fitting that the fourth line finished things off in overtime — Derek Stepan hustling to keep the puck in the zone and keep the eventual winning play alive, and Stastny with the finish on one of the least likely chances the Hurricanes had to score on Sorokin all series.

“I figured I’m just going to try to shoot this without looking,” Stastny said. “I’ve done it in practice before. Seen, played with guys, Alex Steen would do it all the time. You just get lucky sometimes.”

There was some reward in that for Stastny, who had a quiet season from a scoring perspective while willingly assuming a new and more limited role on the ice and a larger one off of it. At the beginning of this series, Stastny was out on the ice with young Jack Drury, doing for Drury what Gomez once did with Stastny, mentoring a player who might very well take his ice time.

“He’s playing power play, he’s doing some things, but nothing like he’s used to in his whole career, and he couldn’t have a better attitude about it,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “That’s really been important. He’s a veteran guy. He knows how to play the game. He knows what it takes. His attitude has been spot on.”

But Drury was out again Friday, as Pacioretty and Svechnikov and Teravainen will continue to be, and the Hurricanes found a way anyway — using everyone, top to bottom, from A(ho) to S(tepan). Collectively is more than the slogan the players have adopted; it’s a way of life.

And it took everyone to get past the Islanders, whether it was a goalie who won a series-clinching game for the first time since 2015 or a veteran center who accepted a new role thinking his scoring days were behind him, only to be the Hurricanes’ second-leading goal-scorer in the series, saving the best for last.

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