RALEIGH, N.C. — The goal was always going to be remembered. What made it unforgettable was who was there to see it.
When Seth Jarvis blasted a one-timer from the left face-off circle past Carter Hart at 3:56 of overtime Thursday night, sealing a 4-3 Carolina Hurricanes comeback victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final, the Sportsnet broadcast cut immediately to six grown men in matching Jarvis jerseys falling into one another’s arms. They were screaming. A few looked as if they might cry. Their denim jackets — hand-painted with rhinestone lettering by the boys themselves — read “WAGs” on the sleeve. The abbreviation, in this case, stood for “wives and guy friends.”
These are the Jarvy Boys. They grew up playing hockey with Jarvis, or against him, back in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They have followed him to Milan for the Olympics. They attend his Team Canada games. And on a Thursday night in Raleigh, when the Carolina Hurricanes needed everything they had to pull off the kind of comeback that had not happened in a Stanley Cup Final since 1944, Jarvis needed his people in the building too.
The comeback itself had an unlikely catalyst. With the Hurricanes scoreless through two periods and trailing by two goals, the video board at Lenovo Center asked fans to go “tarps off for the boys.” The Caniacs — as the Hurricanes fanbase styles itself, not coincidentally matching the word “insane” — obliged. Shirts came off across the lower bowl. The Jarvy Boys, presumably, had already planned to stay dressed. They had the jackets.
“That’s the best thing about them: they’re crazy,” Jarvis told reporters afterward. “It’s an amazing atmosphere to play in, and to have people like that — it’s not warm in there. So, to take your tarps off and kind of get the crowd going and get the energy going, that’s kind of what kick-started our whole little press there in the third.”
What followed in those final ten minutes of regulation was, statistically, historic. The Hurricanes became the first team since the 1944 Montreal Canadiens to overcome a multi-goal deficit in the final ten minutes of the third period in a Stanley Cup Final game, according to NHL.com. Logan Stankoven outmuscled a defender behind the net for a backhand wraparound that made it 2-1. Mark Jankowski fired one from the slot to tie it. Then, after a chaotic goaltender-interference controversy swung the power play to Carolina’s favor, Jordan Staal tipped a Shayne Gostisbehere point shot in with 4:35 left to put them ahead.
Vegas tied it back with 1:21 remaining on a Mark Stone goal, as if the hockey gods had decided one act of absurdity per game was not sufficient. And so overtime. And so the power play, awarded because Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella challenged the goaltender-interference call and lost. The penalty for a failed challenge is two minutes. The Hurricanes, who had been a combined 2-for-21 on the power play across the previous six playoff games before Thursday, had already scored twice on it. They were not done.
Jarvis took the pass from Gostisbehere, drifted to the dot, shot. The puck went in. The horn went off. The Jarvy Boys collapsed into each other again.
“It’s incredible,” Jarvis said. “I’ve imagined doing that a lot. To be able to do it in real life is awesome.”
He had imagined it, literally. Asked earlier in the week about childhood dreams, Jarvis said he might be “undefeated” in his imaginary Stanley Cup Final games growing up. Thursday night, the driveway in Winnipeg and Lenovo Center in Raleigh finally occupied the same moment.
For Jarvis personally, the goal carried an extra weight. The 24-year-old had scored just three times in the first 14 playoff games this season, a drought puzzling enough that coach Rod Brind’Amour shuffled him off the top line mid-game to skate alongside Jordan Staal and Nikolaj Ehlers. That line change, Brind’Amour said later, was meant simply to “change it up” when “nothing was really going.” It worked immediately. “Somebody had to step up,” the coach said. “Somebody had to make a play, and that’s what happens.”
His teammates had been watching and waiting for that moment. Mark Jankowski said that just before overtime began, he turned to Jarvis and told him: “Hey, it’s your turn. You got one.” Sebastian Aho was more straightforward in his assessment after the final horn. “What can I say? He’s a great player. Unbelievable human being. Can’t say enough good things about him.”
It was Jarvis’s first career playoff overtime goal, and it made him the youngest player to score an overtime game-winner in the Stanley Cup Final since Joonas Donskoi in 2016, at 24 years and 123 days old. The series is now tied 1-1 heading to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for Game 3 on Saturday night. Carolina is 6-0 in overtime games this postseason. The Hurricanes have, at this point in the playoffs, won every single Game 2.
Whether the Jarvy Boys will make the trip west remains unconfirmed. Given that they went to Milan for the Olympics and back to Raleigh for the Final, Las Vegas seems like a reasonable bet. The WAG jackets, presumably, travel well. As Jarvis noted: it’s not warm in the arenas. You need layers. Or you go tarps-off for the boys, and see what happens.
The Hurricanes’ earlier Game 2 overtime recap and the injury update on Brayden McNabb, who was struck by an 87-mph slapshot in the first period and taken to hospital, detail the other storylines from a night that had no shortage of them.
