It was "deja vu" all over again as the Carolina Hurricanes dropped a 4-1 contest to the New York Rangers in front of 17,457 at the PNC Arena on Saturday night. The Carolina powerplay went 0-5 while the New Yorker's went 2-5 with the man advantage.
After an exciting and evenly played first period, the still very fragile Canes allowed two goals within a 31 second span in the second as the visitors took control.
The Hurricanes turned up the desperation in the third and attacked more often and with more intensity, but Henrik Lundqvist answered the challenge for New York and the Rangers held on for the win. In all, the blueshirt's goalie made 48 saves for his club.
The loss makes seven straight at home for Carolina and gives them a 1-10-1 record in their last 12 games. They are now tied with Tampa Bay for 13th place in the conference. They fell six points behind the Jets and are four points behind Washington in their division as both rivals won tonight.
It was an exciting first period of hockey as both teams had several chances and were skating well. But two minutes into the second, the Rangers scored a powerplay goal and then 31 seconds after that, would score again when Dan Ellis got caught out of his net trying to play a puck. Ryan Callahan cashed in on the open net.
Midway through the period, Rick Nash made it 3-0, but the Hurricanes did not give up.
Zac Dalpe finally got the home team on the board with a nice snap shot in the slot area off of a sharp pass by Jeff Skinner. But that would be all the Canes could get past Lundqvist even as they took 21 shots on goal in the period.
Brian Boyle closed out the scoring on an empty netter with a fraction of a second left, to make it 4-1.
Justin Peters replaced Dan Ellis to start the third period and stopped all eight shots he faced.
After the game, Carolina players and coach Muller felt like they had played a good game once again, but goaltending made the difference. Muller said that he "hated to sound like a broken record, but they deserved better than what they got."
Next, the Canes will travel to Boston to battle the Bruins on Monday night.
Game Notes:
- Jeff Skinner led the way with eight shots on goal. Next up was Jamie McBain with six. The team had a total of 49 for the game.
- The team was credited with 28 hits led by Tuomo Ruutu with seven.
- Muller went with seven defensemen tonight to try to cut back on some of the excessive ice time his defensemen were logging. They recalled Brett Bellemore because they liked what they saw from his play previously. Eric Staal led all skaters with 25:22 of TOI. Joe Corvo led all blueliners with 21:16.
- There was no update on Alexander Semin's upper body injury. His status is listed as day-to-day.