Seth Jarvis turned heads during his episode of Faceoff: Inside the NHL due to his humility, self depreciation, and openness about struggling with his mental health. Now he’s making waves once more — by doing something nobody has ever seen in the NHL before.
Jarvis scored his sixth goal of the season on Saturday night in overtime, giving the Hurricanes a 4-3 win over the Los Angeles Kings. Not only did it keep Carolina’s perfect record intact, but Jarvis became the first player in NHL history to score four game-winning goals (GWG) in the first five games of the season. It’s established not only a new level of clutch play in 2025-26, but makes Jarvis a must-watch player this season to see if he can set the all-time record for game-winning goals.
On the surface you might think that netting the game-winner is a fairly commonplace event. Naturally there’s going to be a GWG in every game that doesn’t go to a penalty shootout. However, the unpredictability of scoring in the NHL rarely means that a single player is routinely the final difference maker on the scoreboard. Two of hockey’s greatest ever scorers haven’t really managed to stack up huge GWG numbers.: Wayne Gretzky’s best season saw him score 12 GWGs, Alexander Ovechkin’s career-high for a season is 11.
The current NHL record is tied between Phil Esposito (twice) and Michel Goulet with 16 GWGs in a single season. While it’s dumb to extrapolate out a season based on five games, it’s also fun to note that Jarvis on pace for 66 game-winning goals. It’s easy to chalk this up to luck, but we’ve seen that Jarvis has quickly become the go-to player for the Hurricanes in the clutch. He is option 1A for a Carolina team that has struggled to have that go-to superstar, and top of this team’s wishlist in 2025-26 was to see Jarvis break out, and assert himself as a top player in the NHL. That’s happening.
It’s difficult to find a player who is a better extension of their coach than Seth Jarvis. The similarities in his motor, forechecking, and relentless work against the boards is eerily similar to how Rod Brind’Amour played the game, and it’s for this reason Jarvis has also become Rod’s go-to guy. Jarvis is tailor made to excel in Brind’Amour’s system, which rewards two-way forwards, insists on players attacking the puck, and preaches team success over individual glory. While this system has faltered in the playoffs where teams have a tendency to rely on stars to carry them through, it has turned the Hurricanes into one of the most consistent regular season teams in the NHL.
What makes Jarvis so unique among his peers is that he’s a 23-year-old player who doesn’t want individual attention of glory. There’s a natural predilection from Jarvis to hate the spotlight — instead being at his happiest when he’s respected by his peers, and the team is winning. Young athletes are conditioned to wanting their names on SportsCenter and trending on social media, but Jarvis would sooner drift into the background, put his head down, and work.
It’s going to be impossible for Jarvis to achieve this if he keeps up this tear. We’re witnessing the rise of one of the best two-way forwards in the NHL, in which Jarvis is marrying his Selke-level defense with becoming one of the most prolific scorers so far this season. While it’s near-impossible Jarvis will keep up his 100 goal pace, there’s a very real chance he could be a 90+ point player this season, while playing defense at a level of Aleksander Barkov or Sam Reinhart, who finished 1st and 2nd in Selke voting a year ago.
The arrival of Seth Jarvis is here. Now we wait to see how far he can take the Canes.
