Jarvis lives dream with OT goal for Hurricanes in Game 2 of Cup Final

RALEIGH, N.C. -- It was just three days earlier when Seth Jarvis thought back to his driveway in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to a kid working and playing, shooting and scoring, to a kid imagining the future he hoped he’d have. It was three days earlier when Jarvis was asked about those days and those driveways and those game-winners. 

“I might be undefeated,” Jarvis said on Monday. “I might never have lost a Cup in my mind. But this is a little more real now, and way more exciting.”

It is possible in those dreams that Jarvis pictured himself at the top of the left circle with the game tied in overtime, possible that he saw himself drifting in toward the face-off dot, possible that he envisioned receiving a puck and taking a shot and beating a goalie, setting off an eruption in an NHL arena, giving his team a win in the Stanley Cup Final. 

Being the hero. 

And then, on Thursday at Lenovo Center, it happened. Jarvis’ shot on the power play at 3:56 of overtime beat Carter Hart and the Vegas Golden Knights, and gave the Carolina Hurricanes a 4-3 win, tying the best-of-7 Stanley Cup Final at 1-1.

“It’s incredible,” Jarvis said, of reality meeting his dreams. “I’ve imagined doing that a lot. To be able to do it in real life is awesome.”

When the puck went in and the horn went off, Jarvis pumped his right fist, as his teammates engulfed him and the crowd went nuts and, while the Hurricanes didn’t quite win the Stanley Cup, they got their first win in the series and moved three wins away from a championship. 

“Unreal,” forward Sebastian Aho said. “That was a big win for us. That’s one step forward and you’re creating memories on the way. It was unreal.”

It was what they needed. It was what he needed.

“It was awesome,” said Mark Jankowski, who scored the second goal for the Hurricanes, tying the game at 12:46 of the third period. “He’s been so good for us and maybe it’s not been falling, but that was obviously a huge goal, a huge big-time play by a big-time player. Right before we went out for overtime, I was standing next to him and I said, ‘Hey, it’s your turn. You got one.’ And he delivered.”

The Hurricanes’ top line, composed of Andrei Svechnikov, Aho and Jarvis, has struggled to score throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs, turning a unit relied on to produce into a ghost of itself. Jarvis, who scored 66 points (32 goals, 34 assists) in 71 games in the regular season, had recorded just eight (three goals, five assists) in the first 14 playoff games this season. 

It had been enough of a problem that coach Rod Brind’Amour mixed up his lines during Game 2, moving Jarvis to play with Jordan Staal and Nikolaj Ehlers, something he had done earlier in the playoffs against the Philadelphia Flyers. Of the move, Brind’Amour said that “we were in a little funk there in that stage of the game, where it was just nothing really going and we needed to do something just to change it up.”

So to have that moment, to score that goal, felt like a relief for the Hurricanes, but also for Jarvis. It felt like a dream and a deep breath all in one.

“It’s huge to be able to contribute to a win and (to) help the team out like that’s nice, get the power play going even more after (Jordan Staal), follow his lead,” Jarvis said, of Staal’s power-play goal at 15:25 of the third, which put the Hurricanes ahead before Mark Stone tied it with 1:21 remaining. “Just keep this wave rolling now.”

Coming into Game 2, the Hurricanes were 2-for-21 in their previous six games on the power play: 2-for-19 against the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Final and 0-for-2 against the Golden Knights. They hadn’t gotten a single shot on net on the power play in Game 1. 

That flipped on Thursday, with two goals, including the game-winner by Jarvis, giving Carolina its first Stanley Cup Final victory since its Cup-winning season in 2006. 

“That won us the game, right?” Aho said, of the team finding its way on the power play. “So that was as big as it gets.”

There’s no telling how many different ways Jarvis had scored that goal on a pond or in a driveway, whether his imaginings had him at even strength or on the power play, whether it was in regulation or overtime, whether it was Game 1 or Game 7 or a game in between. 

And then it happened. 

In just his second-ever game in the Stanley Cup Final, he got the pass, he took the shot. 

He scored the goal. 

“What can I say?” Aho said. “He’s a great player. Unbelievable human being. Can’t say enough good things about him.”

It was a moment worthy of all those dreams, all those fantasies. It was, as Jarvis said after the game on ESPN, “the best feeling in the world.”