Sebastian Aho hopes to continue his happy homecoming on Saturday when his Carolina Hurricanes face the Seattle Kraken in the second game of this year's NHL Global Series in Helsinki, Finland.

The Hurricanes won 4-1 on Thursday in the first contest as Aho, a native of Rauma, Finland, had two goals and Finnish defenseman Juuso Valimaki also scored.

Aho leads the team in goals (12), assists (16) and points (28) and has multiple points in each of his last three games.

"Obviously it felt good," he said. "Actually (I was) a little nervous before the game. You hope to win that game for sure, that's the main thing. But I'd be lying if I said that didn't feel good."

It was Carolina's seventh win in eight games.

Aho attended an NHL game between the Hurricanes and the Minnesota Wild in Helsinki in 2010 when he was 13.

"It's so cool. I mean there's a lot of friends and family at those games and that's obviously special, but I was at the game in 2010 when Canes played the Wild and I do remember it was amazing," Aho said. "You can watch more NHL games live in Europe and get more highlights and stuff like that now than you could before, but it brings it that much closer when you are there in the building. It's cool to see all of it, the show and high-pace, high-level hockey."

A group from his youth club, Karpat, traveled to Helsinki for the games.

"Those are people that are in the same position that I was in years ago," Aho said. "You know what it means now because you went through it, how life-changing it can be."

Nikolaj Ehlers contributed a goal and an assist on Thursday and Logan Stankoven and defenseman K'Andre Miller each had two assists.

Brandon Bussi only had to make 12 saves. Pyotr Kochetkov will likely get the start on Saturday. He is 11-1-0 with a 1.67 goals-against average, .920 save percentage and two shutouts in 12 games.

Jackson Blake has a 10-game point streak and Stankoven stretched his scoring run to six games.

Frederick Gaudreau scored the only goal, his team-leading eighth, for the Kraken, who lost their second in a row and third in four games.

"They're obviously a very good team," Gaudreau said. "They're fast, they're connected. It seems like they just know two seconds before where the puck is going to go. We weren't as connected."

Philipp Grubauer made 26 saves.

"We had a plan coming in; I don't know that we stuck to it very well," Seattle coach Lane Lambert said. "They're Stanley Cup champions for a reason. There's not a lot of ice out there. I think mentally we have to be better prepared individually for that."

Finland native Kaapo Kakko of the Kraken said he had "around 20" family members and friends at Thursday's game.

"It will be good to see them," Kakko said after the loss. "I've seen just a couple of them before the game, and all the rest of (them) after. So, hopefully they had fun. They wanted us to win also, but ..."

Berkly Catton's eight-game point streak for Seattle was snapped.

--Field Level Media