Back from long break, Hurricanes’ late rally not enough against the Golden Knights
There wasn’t much for Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour to say Friday after a 4-3 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights at PNC Arena.
Did a poor start cause the Canes to chase the game the whole way?
“Yep,” Brind’Amour said.
Was it the kind of game he feared?
“Yep.”
Coming off an extended break for the 2020 NHL All-Star Weekend and then the team’s bye week, Brind’Amour expected some sluggishness, perhaps a slip in mental focus. But this?
“It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s not acceptable to come out and play like that for two periods. For two and a half periods, to be honest with you.
“They were good, I give them a ton of credit. They played the way they had to, played desperate, played fast. We weren’t ready to kind of match that and that’s what you get.”
The Golden Knights (26-20-7), like the Canes, also had been off for the All-Star festivities and then their NHL bye week. But they were energized and ready from the drop of the puck, taking a 2-0 lead in the first period on goals by Paul Stastny and Jonathan Marchessault and leading 3-1 in the third before the Canes rallied.
Goals by Brock McGinn and then Sebastian Aho tied the score 3-3, bringing the crowd of 18,150 to full throat. Aho’s goal, his 25th of the season, came on a power play with 3:39 left in regulation, the center redirecting a Jaccob Slavin shot, but the Golden Knights maintained their poise.
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“They pushed back hard but we didn’t sag,” Vegas coach Pete DeBoer said.
Aho was called for a hooking penalty with 2:34 left in regulation. The Knights scored in six seconds on the power play, Alex Tuch getting the winning goal after a faceoff win by the Golden Knights’ Stastny, who then tipped a pass from defenseman Shea Theodore to Tuch for the easy shot and score.
The Canes pulled goalie Petr Mrazek for an extra attacker but the Knights were stout in front of goalie Malcolm Subban, who made his first start since Jan. 9 -- goalie Marc-Andre Fleury was suspended one game for skipping the All-Star Weekend after being selected to the Pacific Division team.
Aho and Teuvo Teravainen each had a goal and assist for the Canes, and Justin Williams, in his third game of the season, assisted on McGinn’s goal. But there was not much to like for the Canes (29-19-3), who won their last two games before the break but now are out of playoff position in the Eastern Conference.
“We lost a lot of battles and played kind of slow,” Teravainen said. “They started better and I think that was the game. We tried to get going but it took some time. Still, not very happy about the game.”
Not Brind’Amour.
“We got what we deserved,” he said. “We played about eight minutes of hockey. In the situation that we’re in, that’s a tough one. We were slow and they were fast.
Brind’Amour decided to make forward Nino Niederreiter the healthy scratch -- Niederreiter missing part of Thursday’s team practice. During the game, Brind’Amour shuffled his lines, looking for some answers.
“There were just a lot of no-shows tonight,” he said. “We’re not good enough to have one or two guys not show. We had probably half a dozen and that makes it tough.”
After the game, the Canes’ locker room was a somber spot, with only the sounds of weights hitting the floor as the players went through a postgame workout.
“I wish I had the why,” forward Jordan Martinook said in trying to describe the Canes’ poor play. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the break ... I don’t know. I’m saying I don’t know a lot because I don’t know.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 10:10 PM.
