Less than two hours after trading away their captain, Eric Staal, the Carolina Hurricanes were beat down, 5-2, by the St. Louis Blues at PNC Arena Sunday.
As to be expected after hearing the news of losing their long-time captain, the Hurricanes (28-26-10) started sluggish, and despite fighting back, weren’t in the right mindset to beat the Blues (36-20-9).
“There was a lot of stuff going on, obviously,” Jordan Staal said. “It was a difficult game to get the mind right. I thought the guys did a good job of battling, sticking with it and playing through it, and ultimately having a pretty solid game.”
Just 2:17 into the game, Blues forward Ty Rattie pounced on a rebound in the slot, without drawing any attention of Carolina defenders, and fired it over the glove of Canes goalie Cam Ward.
With the players’ minds likely all over the place after the trade of Eric Staal, Carolina could have easily gotten down on itself and packed it in for the remainder of the game. Instead, the Canes responded with two goals within a minute and a half of each other.
“I think that has a factor for sure,” Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters said on if the trade affected the team. “That’s reality, right? It definitely plays a part in it.”
Carolina forward Jeff Skinner, playing in his 400th career NHL game, scored his team-leading 22nd goal of the season with a shot that snuck between the arm and torso of St. Louis netminder Jake Allen.
Shortly thereafter, Canes defenseman Ron Hainsey scored to give the Canes a 2-1 lead with a slapshot blast from the point. Carolina forward Brad Malone positioned himself in front of the net and set a perfect screen, preventing Allen from seeing the shot.
After initially battling back from the first Blues goal, it all fell apart for the Hurricanes in the final two periods as they gave up four unanswered goals.
Just 20 seconds into the second period, Blues forward David Backes tied the game, as once again Carolina defenders left the eventual goal scorer wide open in the slot.
“You never want to give up a goal right out of the chute — the start of the second period,” Hainsey said. “It changes everything. You have the lead at home, now you’re tied. That was a big goal. I think we had a guy fall so it was an unfortunate break, and we weren’t able to seal the neat.”
With a chance to retake the lead on a power play in the second period, a Carolina mistake led to a St. Louis shorthanded goal. Canes forward Victor Rask sent a bad pass to defensemen Noah Hanifin that eventually led to a 2-on-0 rush, with Blues forward Kyle Brodziak scoring the go-ahead goal.
The Blues scored two more goals, in a less than 40 second period, in the final frame to take a commanding 5-2 advantage.
Blues forward Robby Fabbri found himself on a breakaway and put a beautiful move on Ward to easily score the first of the two goals.
St. Louis defenseman Alex Pietrangelo scored into a wide-open, vacant net as Ward got tangled up with a Blues player outside the crease. Following a coach’s challenge, the goal was upheld for the contact was deemed legal since it occurred outside of the goalie crease.
The Hurricanes next play Tuesday night in New Jersey with what could be a much different-looking team as Monday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline fastly approaches.
