For the second game in a row, the Carolina Hurricanes suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of a divisional opponent. Fresh off a 4-1 loss in Columbus on Tuesday, the team fell 7-1 at home to the Pittsburgh Penguins Friday night in PNC Arena.
Pittsburgh was better than Carolina in all phases of the game, as the team put up by far its worst performance on home ice, and perhaps overall, this season.
“It’s two in a row now, you can call that embarrassment,” forward Jordan Staal said. “It was a team that made us look like a high school team.”
The Penguins struck first in an opening period that saw plenty of chances both ways, the only one in which the Canes did anything resembling competing in this one. Forward Teuvo Teravainen tried to clear the puck from behind the net, but made a blind pass up the middle that found the stick of Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley. Daley blasted it home to give Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead about 12 minutes into the first.
The Penguins thought they took a 2-0 lead with 4:20 left in the period, but it was ruled the net was off its moorings. A video review that lasted longer than many feature films upheld the call.
The Canes played an awful second period, looking inept in all phases of the game. The Penguins got goals from forwards Carl Hagelin, Conor Sheary, Bryan Rust and Phil Kessel on defensive lapses, including another Teravainen turnover, and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to forward Jeff Skinner to make it 5-0. Pittsburgh fired 17 shots on net compared to just nine for the Canes in the middle frame.
“The last two games for us, as a team, we haven’t been hard enough at the paint,” head coach Bill Peters said. “We’ve allowed people access to the blue paint; we’ve allowed people access to stay there and get second and third [chances]. On the flipside in the offensive zone, pucks have been there, and there was a couple pucks there in the first period that we didn’t get to. They were more desperate and had a little more bite in that area then we did.”
After Teravainen’s two turnovers for goals against and Skinner’s two unsportsmanlike penalties in the first two periods, neither forward played a shift in the third.
“It’s tough to take a penalty like that,” Skinner said. “I didn’t think I said enough to warrant a second penalty, but obviously [the official] felt I did. That’s what I got, and that hurt the team, because they scored on the power play. That’s pretty much what happened.”
Malkin made it 6-0 in the third, wrapping one in past Ward’s pad. Ward lost his temper after the goal, punching Hornqvist down on the ice and earning a roughing penalty.
Canes forward Viktor Stalberg broke the shutout with a shorthanded goal on Ward’s penalty, about the only positive of the night for the Canes.
Sheary scored his second of the game on another Canes defensive breakdown right after Stalberg’s goal to make it 7-1.
The loss represented the team’s biggest margin of defeat this season, and its worst performance in a long time. It came at a terrible moment for the Canes, as they could have moved into a playoff position with a win tonight. The team still sits one point out of a wild card spot, but will need to turn things around from the last two games quickly to stay in the race.
“At some point, you have let it go,” Staal said. “We wanted to do that with the last game in Columbus, and then come up with a better effort tonight. We didn’t. It’s not good enough, and we’re going to have to give it a lot more tomorrow if we want to compete against the top teams in our division and make a push here for the playoffs.”
The Canes will get a chance to erase this one quickly and will have to do so with a quick turnaround. Carolina is right back in action tomorrow night against the Blue Jackets.
