The Hurricanes suffered a close loss in their first game out of the All-Star break, falling to the Canucks 3-2 in PNC Arena Tuesday night.
The Canes (28-16-5) finished the night strong with a tenacious third period performance, but in the end it wasn’t enough to overcome a great showing by the Canucks (34-11-5).
“That was what I was afraid might happen,” said Rod Brind’Amour. “We were terrible to start. They were good. We got lucky to get out of that first period with it even. Then we got a little better. I knew we were going to get to it. Probably deserved better in the third. That was a pretty good third period, just didn’t happen.”
Vancouver pulled ahead early in the final period thanks to a funky bounce off the end boards in the Canes zone. Pyotr Kochetkov lost track of the puck, allowing J.T. Miller to charge forward and score the eventful game-winner with 16 minutes left to play.
The Canes sparked to life after that, outshooting the Canucks 12-3 in the final period, but a solid performance by Thatcher Demko in the other net kept Carolina from pulling even again. Though the Hurricanes finished strong, they sorely missed that execution in the first two periods.
“You got to give give some credit to that team that came out,” said Jordan Martinook. “They knew what they wanted to do and they were doing it, it every felt like every shift. Give a lot of credit to them. We needed to have a little more urgency to be able to withstand some pressure and go and do what they were doing us against them in the first and the second. In the third we figured it out. We were pushing as hard as we could.”
On the bright side, Martinook picked up right where he left off, opening the scoring with a short-handed goal in the first period. He notched five goals in eight games prior to the All-Star break, then nice made it six in his last nine with some great hustle.
“Turbo, good breakup there in the D zone,” Martinook said. “He put in a good spot for me to get it back. When he joined, I thought we could make a play out of it. That was a good one to get.”
Seth Jarvis also continued his steady play from the past couple weeks. He extended his assist streak to five games by helping set up a pinpoint power play goal by 2023-24 NHL All-Star Sebastian Aho
Though the result wasn’t what they wanted, the Hurricanes can also use this game for an extra jolt coming up out of the break. Vancouver leads the Pacific Division and boasts the best goal differential in the league at +60. Newly minted Canucks Elias Lindholm notched two power play goals, both on tip-ins. Facing stiff competition like this right away gives Carolina a chance to bolster its game down the home stretch of the regulars season.
“You got to love playing these games,” Aho said. “These are good teams that most likely will make the playoffs. If we want to get better, we got to get these tests this in. We couldn’t find the result today, but learned a lot from it.”
The Hurricanes will go up against another Western Conference powerhouse on Thursday when the Colorado Avalanche comes to town. Puck drops at 7 p.m. in PNC Arena.