In his NHL debut, Vasily Ponomarev notched multiple points as the Carolina Hurricanes trounced the Washington Capitals 6-2. His day unfolded like a movie script. Shortly after he arrived at the rink at 10 a.m. this morning, he got a phone call. A flight to Washington D.C. leaves Chicago in three hours, and he better be on it. He was getting his chance to play in the show. Not wanting to waste a trip to the rink, he took a few shots on the net before leaving to pack his bags.
“If he gets here,” head coach Rod Brind’Amour said in a pregame press scrum late in the afternoon. Earlier in the day, the Hurricanes recalled Ponomarev from the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves. Since joining the influx AHL team he’s scored six goals and assisted with another 14 for 20 points in 22 games.
“He’s still not here,” Brind’Amour continued. ” He may play. We have a couple banged-up guys and a couple of guys not feeling great. So we’re kind of not sure who’s all going to be [playing] tonight.”
Ponomarev’s Knee injury
Ponomarev traveled with the team during last season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. He never got the nod to dress. Nevertheless, it was a valuable experience for the prospect looking for his shot to prove himself. Being around the team when it’s do or die reinforced the standards the coaching staff laid out in prior camps. It also allowed Carolina’s coaching staff an opportunity to spend more time with him after his first full season in North America.
Entering Hurricanes training camp this offseason, there was a lot of buzz around the 21-year-old forcing his way onto the team. When talking to Cory Lavalette of North State Journal in September, Brind’Amour confessed he thought Ponomarev wasn’t far away from the big club.
“I don’t think he’s far away,” Brind’Amour said. “He’s had a great summer. We see him here every day, and he’s been working hard. It’s kind of hard to tell. We’ll see. He hasn’t really played at this level. We’ll see, but I think he’s definitely improving.”
Disappointment shoehorned its way in when Brind’Amour announced Ponomarev had “a tweak in his knee.” After the young center didn’t participate in practice the following two days, Hurricanes team reporter Walt Ruff followed up with the coach. “It’s nothing serious, but it’s enough that it’s going to keep him out for a little bit,” Brind’Amour added. In reality, he wouldn’t play for around a month.
With his chances of making the team out of camp dashed, Ponomarev focused on his recovery. In early November, the Hurricanes assigned him to the Tucson Roadrunners of the AHL. In mid-November, he was reassigned to the Chicago Wolves.
Arrival at Capital One Arena
Seven hours after he got the call telling him to get on a plane, he landed in Washington D.C. According to Ruff, the first person to welcome Ponomarev was a former Wolves teammate and fellow Russian native Pytor Kochetkov. He told the assembled media after the game that he arrived with only five minutes to spare before the team meeting.
In a twist of fate, Capital One Arena was the first place Ponomarev ever attended an NHL game. “I wanted to play here,” he said to Bally Sports reporter Hanna Yates after the game. “I wanted to score goals like [Sid] Crosby and [Alexander Ovechkin].” Following tradition, he skated onto the ice for warmups by himself with his long blonde hair flowing through the air.
Bucketless rookie lap for Pono 😮💨 pic.twitter.com/t8dvl2Vtsc
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) January 5, 2024
Thanks to the very same ailments that created the opportunity for the call-up, the Hurricanes were forced to play with one less forward and a seventh defenseman. Ponomarev spent the majority of his 10:29 of ice time with Brendan Lemieux and Jesperi Kotkaniemi on the team’s least utilized forward line. Together, they won the all-important Corsi battle.
Hurricanes Defeat Capitals 6-2
A defensive breakdown and an Ovechkin power-play goal gave the Capitals a 2-0 lead after the first 20 minutes. Hurricanes defenseman Brent Burns cut their lead in half in the second period. Meaning Carolina entered the third looking for an equalizer. 3:23 into the final frame, Ponomarev found himself behind the Capitals net with the puck on the tape of his blade.
Sliding towards the front of the net with no defenders blocking his way, Seth Jarvis collected a pass by Ponomarev from the trapezoid. He switched to his back head and beat the netminder glove high. After raising his hands triumphantly into the air, he points directly at Ponomarev. The man who made the play.
Related: Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho Named 2024 NHL All-Star
A recently common story followed with the Hurricanes’ top power play unit converting on the man advantage twice in just over a minute of game action. Not wanting to be left out of the scoring party, Dmitry Orlov buried a short-handed goal in his first game back to his former home arena of 12 years. With a practically insurmountable lead and less than two minutes left in regulation, the game was in the bag. The Hurricanes came back from a two-goal deficit, scored two power-play goals, and another short-handed goal. Even Orlov got his storybook ending. What more could you want from this game?
Capitals defenseman Joel Edmundson patted an airborne puck down with a glove with 1:03 left in the game. It fell to the ice, bouncing between his skates. Ponomarev collected the puck and directed it to Kotkaniemi, who was now skating over the blue line with a trajectory for the crease. Fading towards the left, he passed it back to the Russian center alone in front of the net. Ponomarev sent it over Darcy Kuemper‘s glove and scored with just over 52 seconds remaining in regulation.
60 minutes in the book, his first NHL games under his belt, and his first two points. There was truly nothing more for Hurricanes fans to ask for before their team boarded a plane back to Raleigh for a game against the St. Louis Blues.
Singing Praises
“Love seeing that! Love seeing that,” Brind’Amour said about Ponimarev’s results postgame. “We love this kid. He’s been around for a while – a couple of years. He came to camp, and then he got injured. Ugh, tough break for him. [We] couldn’t really see what he was about. Then he was just playing really well. Waiting for his time, for his game tonight. Obviously huge impact tonight. That’s a great memory for him, and I’m really happy for him.”
“I had such a good time with him in the summer,” Burns remarked about Ponimarev after the game. “He worked so hard. I mean to see the amount of work that he put in. And how seriously he took this summer. How badly he wanted to make the team. For the guys that were in town early skating with him every day, you could just see. It was like, ‘Wow, this guy is really, really special.”
“It was a great energy to be around,” Burns continued. “To have that injury happen and see you lose all that work that he put in, it was tough. I can’t imagine for him how tough it was because, for us, you feel bad for him. So to see him go down and then get his chance and come up like that is just awesome. It’s such a cool thing to see.”
Vasily Ponomarev’s Future
I don’t know if I could have written a better game for Ponomarev. If anything, the Hurricanes falling behind by two goals early in the game only adds to the legacy it will have for him. We know this isn’t the way he wanted to earn his spot on Brind’Amour’s roster, but now that he’s here, I don’t think he truly cares about how it happened. My hope is that he’ll be able to spend at least a few games with the team before being sent back to Chicago. If he gets sent back down at all, that is.
Thinking one game is enough to prove Ponomarev belongs in Raleigh is clearly lunacy. Yet, I can’t keep the back of my mind from tossing it around. This very well could become a story for the ages. A young prospect gave it his all in the offseason in hopes of breaking the NHL roster just to get sidelined by an injury. Without admitting defeat, he accepted the cards he was dealt and waited to get another opportunity. When said opportunity finally arrives, he has to constantly check his watch to reassure himself that he won’t miss his moment. Not again.
Then, with the second-lowest amount of ice time on the team, he still finds a way to produce and make an impact on the game. If he’s able to maintain his effectiveness, he’ll earn a more permanent role in the lineup.
Oh, yeah, do you remember those shots he took before he left the rink in Chicago? Would it surprise you to know he would score his first NHL goal in the same area of ice? – I wasn’t joking when I said this story unfolded like a movie script.
It’s unclear where this story will fall in importance as a part of the pantheon of Hurricanes history. But what we can say is that this game will live in the heart and mind of Ponomarev long after his time in North Carolina’s capital comes to an end.
