The Carolina Hurricanes suffered a 3-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday, April 2 in PNC Arena.
Even though the Canes (45-16-8) doubled the Wild (42-20-5) in shots, 38-19, goaltender Frederik Andersen simply got outperformed by Minnesota netminder Marc-Andre Fleury on the other end of the ice. Carolina avoided the shutout with a third-period goal by left wing Teuvo Teräväinen, the Wild simply had the upper hand all night.
“When he’s starting to feel it like he was tonight, he’s pretty tough to beat,” said center Jordan Staal. “We could have done a little better job of getting in his eyes. They did a pretty good job of keeping us out of the front of the net and keeping shots to softer ones from the outside.”
Special teams were an issue for the Hurricanes all evening. Carolina’s league-best penalty kill started on the wrong foot by allowing a power play goal to Mats Zuccarello in the first period to open the scoring, while Canes’ two power play opportunities mustered just one and two shots on goal, respectively.
The Wild extended its lead to 3-0 with one goal in each period, as Dmitry Kulikov and Kirill Kaprizov scored in the second and third, respectively. Teräväinen’s goal gave the Hurricanes a sliver of hope with under seven minutes to go, but a win just wasn’t in the cards for Carolina. The Canes nearly pulled within one in the final minute, but the goal was negated due to a goalie interference call on right wing Nino Niederreiter for standing in the blue paint.
Teräväinen’s night turned out to be a microcosm of Carolina’s as a whole. In addition to his lone goal, Teräväinen took a puck to the face in the second period that sent him to the locker room with an apparent facial injury. The incident didn’t seem to affect Teräväinen too much as he returned to the bench to start the third and eventually scored.
“That’s the standard that our team plays to,” said defenseman Ian Cole. “He got his lip cut in half there, so coming back out and obviously, scoring was huge for us. It gave us little life there at the end, gave us a chance to come back.”
Although the loss was against Minnesota, a Western conference team, the Hurricanes lost a bit of ground in the topheavy Eastern Conference playoff race with the result. Carolina still sits atop the Metropolitan division, but only six points separate them from the third-place Pittsburgh Penguins.
With 13 games left on the schedule and just seven points separating Carolina and the Boston Bruins, who are currently slated as the seventh seed, there is hardly any margin for error when it comes to playoff seeding.
The Hurricanes will get their next opportunity to get back in the win column on Tuesday, April 5 when they hit the road to take on the Buffalo Sabres. Puck drops at 7 p.m.
