RALEIGH, N.C. — During the first postseason go-round of what we used to call a Southeast Division Showdown, Alex Ovechkin probably scores twice in the first period Saturday and the Carolina Hurricanes spend Sunday figuring out what went wrong.

But 2025 isn’t 2019. There’s only so much the Washington Capitals can do now. And when their first-period onslaught was turned entirely away by Frederik Andersen, they were at the mercy of the Hurricanes at their best.

It was the kind of game that can break a team, to play as well as it can and come away with nothing, then end up utterly stomped in a 4-0 loss. The kind of game that can end a series, mentally if not mathematically.

Don’t the Hurricanes know it. They’ve been on the other side too many times.

There have been times in this series when the Capitals have been the better team, and Saturday’s first period was unquestionably one of them, but when the Hurricanes have imposed their will, Washington just can’t keep up.

“The perfect example, our first game against those guys, we just kept the pressure on them, and they didn’t really have the chance,” Hurricanes forward Andrei Svechnikov said. “The first period was OK, and the second and third we played good. That’s how we have to play.”

What Andersen held together for 20 minutes and Svechnikov got started with a breakthrough goal in the second period, the rest of the Hurricanes finished. And unlike the two closely contested games in Washington, this was a flat-out blowout over the final 40 minutes.

The only question was, really, what took them so long to get in gear? Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour moved some players around — Seth Jarvis up, Jackson Blake down — but it was a group effort, a collective commitment to play the way they play when they’re at their best. “Stress,” is the world Brind’Amour likes to use, pushing and pressuring until the splitting seams turn into cracks, and the Hurricanes tore the cracks into gashes over the final two periods Saturday.

“That’s textbook Hurricanes hockey,” Andersen said. “Long shifts in their end, making it tough on them to break out and it’s up to the next line to continue to do the same. It’s tough to change that momentum when you’re in it as the defending team.”

There’s not much more the Capitals can throw at the Hurricanes than what they did in the first period. It was one shot after another, wave upon wave. The Capitals even had a rare edge in shot attempts in the first period, not something the Hurricanes usually allow. The Caps’ failure to score will surely spawn the same “just asking questions” thinkpieces about whether their “shot volume approach” works in the playoffs? Right?

Instead, it’s the Hurricanes out there sniping goals. Svechnikov outfought John Carlson to turn a faceoff loss into a win, then beat Logan Thompson in a narrow opening short side, blocker side. Jack Roslovic had time and space to pick his spot on the power play, and did. Eric Robinson looked like Eric Lindros, a freight train swooping in from the wing and going far side over Thompson’s blocker, a shot so hard it caromed out as fast as it went in.

And behind it all, Andersen playing what might have been his best game with the Hurricanes, full stop, given the stakes and circumstances.

“Sometimes you need those individual efforts,” Brind’Amour said. “We had that tonight. This one’s more, to me, that’s what it was about tonight. We talk about Freddie. We talk about Robbie, that’s a huge goal at the start of the third period, but that’s an individual effort. Svech’s goal’s an individual effort. Sometimes that’s what you’ve got to have.”

And Ovechkin? He had those two prime chances late in the first period, right on the doorstep, and maybe at 29 instead of 39 he finishes at least one of those if not both, but Andersen got the better of him, as he did the Capitals all night long. Ovechkin is still scoreless in this series, a fabled warrior fading in front of our eyes, a spectator on the power play where he used to be the ultimate weapon.

“Whenever we’re playing from behind, it’s not a good recipe for our group,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “We just don’t have the firepower that can snap it around, be able to score five or six goals.”

That’s a pretty stunning statement for the team that has the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer, but it’s also a window into how helpless the Hurricanes can make a team feel when they’re on their game, and how frustrated the Capitals are now. Even-strength shot attempts were 19-18 Washington in the first ... and 48-23 Carolina after that. Andersen made nine saves in the first, and 12 after that.

The Capitals have certainly shown the ability to match the Hurricanes’ intensity in spurts, and this series is far from over, and Ovechkin only needs one good look to get hot, but the Hurricanes have also shown the capability to make the team that beat them to the division title — Metropolitan, not Southeast — look overmatched and overwhelmed.

You can’t win a series in one game, but you can break a team’s spirit. The Hurricanes are up 2-1 heading into Monday, and after weathering Washington’s storm, they have become the storm.

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