Canes earn another victory

At season's midpoint, Carolina builds momentum with a win streak

RALEIGH -- Much of the pregame attention was on Brandon Sutter and his father, Brent. And why not? It was a nice storyline.

Brandon is a rookie center for the Carolina Hurricanes and Brent the coach of the New Jersey Devils. It was the first time the two have played each other as rivals, and it was emotional for both.

But for Brandon Sutter and the Canes, beating the Devils 3-2 on Tuesday night at the RBC Center meant more than going one up on his dad. It meant the Hurricanes have reached the midpoint of the season with a four-game winning streak, their best of the season.

"Obviously it's a little cool and a little different to play against him," Brandon Sutter said. "But once the game got going, it was just another game -- that's how I treated it.

"We're at the halfway point now, and we've started to climb a bit in the standings and we're playing good hockey. We're going to keep that going."

Ray Whitney, Sergei Samsonov and Tuomo Ruutu had goals for the Canes, 9-4-3 under coach Paul Maurice.

Samsonov's goal was his 200th NHL goal, Whitney picked up his first goal in six games and Ruutu scored his first in seven games.

Ruutu's goal, his 12th of the season, came at 9:58 of the third period -- on a perfect set-up pass from defenseman Anton Babchuk -- and pushed the Canes ahead 3-0. The crowd of 15,399 sensed the Devils, who had won four of their previous five games, were done.

Then, Sutter turned gambler -- Brent Sutter, that is.

After the Canes' Justin Williams was penalized at 11:18 of the third for roughing, after a scrum formed in front of Carolina goalie Cam Ward, Sutter pulled pull goaltender Scott Clemmensen for an extra attacker.

"It was a good move. Can you believe he did that when his kid was on the ice?" Maurice said with a bemused look.

Devils defenseman Paul Martin promptly scored, with Sutter on the penalty-kill team, to make it a 3-1 game.

"We never really got anything going offensively for much of the night," Brent Sutter said. "So we pulled the goalie. ... We had to try to get desperate."

When Samsonov was called for hooking at 13:02, the Devils did it again. Out came Clemmensen. But Ward, who had 26 saves, and the Canes killed off the penalty.

"It worked once," said Brandon Sutter, who had three shots, once hitting the post. "It's kind of a tough call by their coaching staff, I think, and it wound up working for them."

The Devils, now 2-11-2 when trailing after two periods, kept attacking. Patrik Elias' goal with 21.5 seconds left made things interesting, but the Canes closed it out.

"Most of our best chances came in the third period," Maurice said. "We weren't sitting back. We took the penalty and we got in a little bit of trouble and we had to hang on a little bit.

"The first part of that third period, we were really good. ... We were almost doing to Jersey what they do to everybody else -- with a two-goal lead, the other team has to open their game up, and we were getting our chances."

Whitney's goal, his 13th, came 63 seconds into the game on a pass from Rod Brind'Amour.

"It was a bad goal to give up that early in the game," Brent Sutter said. "It affected us. Their defense is playing well, and we didn't respond the way we needed to."

But the Canes did.

After wins over three teams with losing records -- the Atlanta Thrashers, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning -- Carolina won a game against a team contending in the Atlantic Division.

The Canes also played with a full lineup. Carolina officials said it was the first time since a Feb. 6, 2007, game against the Canadiens at Montreal that the Canes had no injured player -- a span of 140 games.

For the Hurricanes, 10 of the next 13 games are on the road.

"We're going to be playing some tough hockey teams in some tough buildings," Ward said. "But the guys are playing hard, and we're getting rewarded for it -- four in a row."

PHOTO GALLERIES