The wildest stats from Panthers-Hurricanes 4-OT marathon originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
If Game 1 was any indication, we are in for an epic 2023 Eastern Conference Final.
The Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes opened the ECF in historic fashion, needing not one, not two, not three, but four overtimes to decide a winner.
The marathon nearly went into a fifth overtime before Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk delivered the game-winner with 12.7 seconds on the clock.
The Panthers’ 3-2 victory marked just the 15th game in NHL history to reach a fourth overtime. And the historically long game unsurprisingly produced some mind-blowing statistics.
Here’s a look at some of the wildest ones:
57:27
Brandon Montour nearly played the equivalent of an entire regulation game. The 29-year-old defenseman was on the ice for a game-high 57 minutes and 27 seconds across 65 shifts, and he was a plus-3. Montour logged the 10th-most playing time by a skater in one game in NHL history.
Florida’s Gustav Forsling (56:10), Carolina’s Brent Burns (54:43), Florida’s Aaron Ekblad (52:10) and Carolina’s Jaccob Slavin (51:41) also reached the 50-minute mark.
139:47
The Hurricanes and Panthers are only one game into their series but it may already feel like Game 3 to the players. The two teams played the length of two entire games (120 minutes) plus almost another extra period.
At 139 minutes and 47 seconds, Hurricanes-Panthers is the sixth-longest game in NHL history and it took close to six hours of real time to finish. The five games that were longer all reached a fifth OT.
80
Carolina’s Stefan Noesen tied the game at 2-2 with 16:47 remaining in the third period. After that score, Carolina’s Frederik Andersen and Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky combined to make 80 consecutive saves until Tkachuk’s game-winner.
The two goaltenders each faced at least 60 shots as the teams combined for 125 shots on goal.
63
Bobrovsky stopped 63 of 65 shots that Carolina got on net. His 63 saves are tied for the 10th-most in NHL playoff history. After making 50 saves in his previous outing, Bobrovsky is just the fifth goalie since 1967-68 to record at least 113 saves over a two-game span in the postseason, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
30
Panthers center Aleksander Barkov stepped into the faceoff circle a game-high 55 times and emerged victorious 30 times. His 30 faceoff wins rank eighth in playoff history, according to QuantHockey.com.
0
Hurricanes center Paul Stastny was the only skater from both teams who did record a single shot attempt. Stastny played 24 minutes and 11 seconds, which was the second-fewest among Carolina’s skaters.
