VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Rod Brind'Amour's groin was too injured to allow him to play Friday in Carolina's 4-3 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks. That left the Hurricanes captain's heart torn as well when he missed a rare chance to play in front of his family and friends.

Brind'Amour grew up in Campbell River, six hours away on Vancouver Island, and had been looking forward to his first appearance here in almost three years. But he tweaked his groin in Wednesday's 3-1 loss to Edmonton. The Canes hope a few days of rest will enable him to play Monday at Colorado.

"You want to play, obviously, and we're in a situation coming back here where it would be nice," he said. "But it's a long season, and you don't want to be out longer than you should be. We don't come here very often, especially with the schedule the way it is. I have a lot of family here, and a lot of other people came up to watch. There's not much you can do about it, unfortunately."

Without Brind'Amour, and with Cory Stillman's return from offseason shoulder surgery delayed again, Canes coach Peter Laviolette was left to scramble his lines in an attempt to shake loose an offense that generated only one goal in the two previous games.

Craig Adams jumped up to play with Eric Staal and Erik Cole while Ray Whitney played with ex-Canucks Trevor Letowski and Scott Walker. Eric Belanger centered Andrew Ladd and Justin Williams, while David Tanabe, a healthy scratch for eight of the past nine games, entered the lineup as a seventh defenseman.

For many of the coaching questions presented to Laviolette during a game, Brind'Amour is an easy answer. Even strength, power play, penalty-kill -- there's a reason he sees more ice time than all but two NHL forwards.

"Obviously there are certain situations that come up," Laviolette said. "We've had to deal with this before. The reason Rod draws the microscope is the amount of things he does out there. Right away, who's going to be the first guy out if we have to kill a five-on-three? It was kind of automatic."

Last year, Carolina went 1-3-0 in the four games Brind'Amour missed, scoring only two power-play goals and giving up six. This year, if possible, he's been even more important to their success, leading the team in not only ice time but also scoring.

Stillman had been targeting Friday for his season debut after offseason shoulder surgery, but he suffered a groin injury last week and has practiced only once since. There's still a chance he could play Monday, but he didn't skate Friday morning, making that unlikely.

"It is frustrating," he said. "I skated for a while getting prepared to play on this road trip. Somehow I did something that set me back."

VOTE FOR RORY: Canucks defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick hasn't played since Nov. 6 because of a broken bone in his foot, but he's shooting up the All-Star balloting faster than anyone. As of Wednesday's update, he's fifth among Western Conference defensemen with 144,819 votes.

When Fitzpatrick, a depth defenseman with Buffalo last season who signed with Vancouver as a free agent, somehow ended up on the All-Star ballot, a number of contrarian fans hit upon the idea of making a statement about the state of All-Star voting, and voteforrory.com was born.

"It's nice to see everyone putting so much time into it," Fitzpatrick said before modeling a "Vote for Rory" T-shirt. The Canucks started selling them at Friday's game.

He is 172,554 votes out of a starting spot, but it's not out of the question that he could beat out leaders Scott Niedermayer and Nicklas Lidstrom for a spot.