After a record-setting road trip in which the Carolina Hurricanes went 4-0-1 all throughout Western Canada and Colorado, the Canes returned home, only to fall flat.
In a 4-2 loss at PNC Arena Saturday night, the Canes can split the blame between questionable calls and a solid goaltender. In only his sixth career game, Florida’s Chris Driedger turned away 42 of 44 shots, many of which were high-danger chances.
“Their goalie was great,” said head coach Rod Brind’Amour. “You got to give him a lot of credit. He made a ton of really nice saves.”
The other blame falls on the officiating. The Canes were penalized for a follow-through high sticking infraction and an unsportsmanlike conduct that never happened, both of which the Panthers scored on. Brind’Amour said he was not offered an explanation for either call.
“But, you know, we got to kill those,” Brind’Amour said
“It is what it is,” said captain Jordan Staal on the penalties. “I think we take too many penalties as a group. We can do a better job of keeping our sticks down and checking. Our PK has kind of got run into the ground on that road trip. We killed a lot, probably too much, and it showed tonight.”
It’s a league of no excuses and although some outside the game may try to make some, the players almost never make any.
“Every night calls go certain ways you don’t like,” Staal said. “We could have done a better job of leaving them alone and focusing on the game and letting [Brind’Amour] worry about that.”
One of the bright spots for the team was the return of Erik Haula who missed 19 of the team’s last 21 games due to a knee injury. He looked fast and physical and should look to raise his competitive level in the coming weeks.
The Canes started right on time and did not seem to have the common “road-trip hangover” after a long 14 days away from home. Carolina applied tons of offensive pressure in the first few minutes, but it was an unlucky break that led to the Panthers jumping out to an early lead.
On a play around the zone, Martin Necas pushed it out to the point where Jake Gardiner tried to throw it back into the corner, but the puck bounced on him and the shot fanned to a Florida defender who sent the puck up to Evgenii Dadanov who had fled the zone and buried the breakaway.
The first phantom call came 9:52 into the second period as Svechnikov was called for a high stick as he made a follow-through motion, which according to the official NHL rules, is legal. Rule 60.1 on high sticking states, “A player is permitted accidental contact on an opponent if the act is committed as a normal windup or follow through of a shooting motion.”
On the ensuing power play, the Panthers capitalized with Brian Boyle redirecting a wrister out in front from Aaron Ekblad at the point.
The questionable calls continued into the end of the second after a whole mess came about. Svechnikov hit Brett Connolly in the face with his blade on a legit high stick, Joel Edmundson felt Connolly embellished the call, gave him a cross check, Josh Brown comes in, drops his gloves and more chaos ensues with the referees breaking up any fights.
After separating the teams, the refs conferred for several minutes before assessing everyone involved unsportsmanlike on top of Svechnikov getting called for a high stick.
This was nearly at the end of the second period, so when the third period started, Florida jumped on the power-play chance and scored another one as all of the Carolina penalty killers were caught below the goal line and Petr Mrazek had no chance in alone against Jonathan Huberdeau.
As the game started counting down, the Canes started throwing everything they had at Driedger and eventually, they broke through after a few rockets and loads of possession time. Teuvo Teravainen found a rebound and his shot found Nino Niederreiter’s stick as he was falling in front of the net to cut the deficit to two.
The momentum was cut short as Florida responded right back. The Canes press had found them giving up an odd-man rush the other way and Noel Acciari, who now had seven goals in his last three games, rifled one past Mrazek that he would have liked to have back.
Carolina didn’t go quietly, managing to find another as they finally got the power play clicking. Lucas Wallmark hammered home a feed from behind the goal line by Niederreiter to draw the team back within two, but it was too little too late.
“It’s frustrating for sure,” Teravainen said. “We play really good on the road but now we come home and it felt a little bit off. We took a lot of penalties, I feel like we take a lot of penalties every game, but it’s just tough to play some guys and you can’t play much when you take a lot of penalties.”
The Panthers held on to defeat the Canes and end their seven-game point streak. The Canes will travel north to play one more game Monday, Dec. 23 against the Toronto Maple Leafs before the holiday break.
