Antti Raanta suffered some bad injury luck at about the worst time.
Raanta’s Carolina Hurricanes were down 2-0 in the second period of Game 7 of their Eastern Conference second-round playoff series with the New York Rangers on Monday.
A puck was deflected and headed towards Mika Zibanejad near the crease. Raanta lunged to try and block a possible shot from Zibanejad. He appeared to hurt himself while lunging/splitting to block the net.
Raanta exited the game after the play and was replaced by rookie Pyotr Kochetkov. Almost immediately, the Rangers attacked Kochetkov and Ryan Strome scored to increase the Rangers’ lead to 3-0.
While Carolina’s goalies had allowed three goals over the first two periods, Igor Shesterkin had stopped all 28 shots he had faced.
This has been a bad stretch for Raanta, who was pulled early during Carolina’s 5-2 loss in Game 6.
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