A few months before they thought about being -- or became -- the last teams standing in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Penguins shared a different goal: just making the playoffs.

Carolina had been playing well under coach Paul Maurice since he took over for Peter Laviolette Dec. 3 but still was looking up at the playoff cutoff in the East. The Penguins also were in danger of missing the postseason.

Both teams kicked it into something closely resembling playoff gear weeks early.

The Penguins went 18-3-4 in the 25 games after Dan Bylsma took over as coach for Michel Therrien to climb to fourth in the conference, and the Hurricanes went on a 13-3-2 tear to close the season. From late February, Carolina had a nine-game winning streak overall and a 12-game home string without losing.

The one game between the two in that time frame, April 4, the Hurricanes won at home, 3-2, in overtime in a lightning-paced game that clinched a playoff berth for Carolina.

"When you look at our season, as it went along, we started to get better and better," Carolina goaltender Cam Ward said yesterday after his team arrived in town for Game 1 of the conference final against the Penguins tonight at Mellon Arena.

"It's great going into the playoffs on a high note. We're playing some of our best hockey right now. Pittsburgh was that other team doing exactly the same kind of thing."

The Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup in 2006 but missed the postseason the past two years. The Penguins reached the Cup final a year ago.

"Both teams handled the pressure of potentially not making the playoffs, Pittsburgh with having gone to the final last year and this team having won the Cup a couple years ago," Carolina coach Paul Maurice said. "They both dealt with similar pressure, survived it, and now they're pretty excited about where they're at."

That would be four wins away from this year's Cup final.

During their 13-3-2 run, the Hurricanes played nine one-goal games.

That experience helped in the playoffs, when half of their 14 games over the first two rounds against New Jersey and Boston were decided by a goal.

"We really kind of found our game the last two, two and a half months of the year," Carolina center Eric Staal said. "We found the right way we need to play to win games. We played a lot of tight games -- a lot of 3-2s, 2-1s, one-goal games.

"I think that just built us to be prepared for anything, especially in the playoffs."

Two of their one-goal games in the playoffs came in Game 7 of each round. They scored twice in the final 1:20 to eliminate New Jersey, then got a goal from Scott Walker in overtime to oust Boston.

The Penguins were able to use their late-season run to climb to fourth in the East, two rungs higher than Hurricanes, who are underdogs for the third round in a row.

Maurice likes that role.

"It helps," he said. "There was a shift in the Boston series, though. We went from underdog to having a 3-1 lead, and that was a change in pressure for us."

Carolina faltered some with that commanding lead against the Bruins, losing Game 5, 4-0, and Game 6, 4-2, before the overtime clincher.

"I think we played better, believe it or not, than our 8-2 score says over [those] two games. Boston was better, but it wasn't nearly as lopsided [as it looked]," Maurice said. "But that was our first taste of having the pressure of not being the underdog. There is an advantage to it.

"It's not equal, though, because the advantage to being the favorite is you get to start your first two games at home and you get home-ice advantage. I would trade the underdog status for home-ice advantage."