The Carolina Hurricanes remain winless this season in the shootout as they lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday night, 2-1, (SO).
It was another pretty evenly fought game, although the Pens did outshoot the Canes 41-26.
The contest had plenty of emotion and hitting. At one point in the third period, Brooks Orpik laid out Jeff Skinner, who was reaching for a puck near center ice. Skinner, who had just come back after missing 16 games due to a concussion, laid prone on the ice and was helped to the dressing room. Still, he came back to finish the game a few minutes later, which may prove to be an unwise decision if symptoms pop up in the days ahead.
There were also two fights as Tim Gleason and Tim Brent dropped the gloves for Carolina.
Jamie McBain started the scoring off when he crept in for a nice shot just 2:11 into the game. But Evgeni Malkin would even things up with just a minute and change left in the opening period.
Marc-Andre Fleury and Cam Ward would steal the show the rest of the way as neither team could score the rest of regulation or overtime.
In the shootout, Malkin would start things off with a goal and James Neal would put in the game winner for the home team. Jussi Jokinen scored on his attempt for Carolina, but Skinner and Eric Staal were stopped.
Game Notes:
- Ward looked solid until the shootout, which is usually a problem for him. Out of the "elite" goalies in the league, he's one of the worst performing in the skills competition. We will dig out the stats later.
- Staal also looked out of place in the shootout.
- Jay Harrison and Staal led the team with four shots each.
- The team won an outstanding 62% of their faceoffs: (Staal 53%, Sutter 86%, Jokinen 67%, Brent 20%, Skinner 63%)
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Bryan Allen remains one of the league leaders and blocked a game high six shots. The team blocked 24 for the night.
- check out post game quotes at Canes PR.
UPDATE: The Canes announced this morning that they reassigned Brett Sutter to Charlotte and they are recalling Zac Dalpe back to Raleigh.