Hurricanes 3, Rangers 1

The Carolina Hurricanes had lost 10 straight games against the New York Rangers, including a game at home to them just last week Friday night, but they played a solid all-around game to defeat the Blueshirts, 3-1 in front of 15,667 at the PNC Arena on Tuesday night.

The win gives the team a 28-28-9 record, good for 65 points, and they will stay in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division, five points behind sixth place Washington and still eight points outside third place.

The team said that they will not quit though, regardless how tough things look.

Jordan Staal played one of his better games as a Hurricane and earned first star honors with a goal, an assist, and solid play at both ends all night.

Cam Ward won his first game in quite some time and made 24 saves on 25 shots for the home team.

After a scoreless first period in which the Canes outshot the Rangers 13-5, Carolina jumped ahead 1-0 just 33 seconds into the second when Jiri Tlusty took a nice feed from J. Staal and beat Henrik Lundqvist inside the slot area.  It was Tlusty's 11th goal of the season.

Kevin Klein scored his first goal as a Ranger less then four minutes later as he beat Ward high glove side with an open shot a few feet inside the blueline.

That would be it for New York though as the Canes played one of their better defensive games of the season.  During one of the few breakdowns, when Mike Komisarek and Ron Hainsey collided leaving Martin St. Louis alone, Ward came up with a big save.

The second line would light the lamp again late in the second period when Jordan Staal made a nice play, winning a battle along the boards and feeding Tlusty across the ice.  The Czech drew the defense to him then fed the puck back to Staal, who was all alone in front of Lundqvist for the score.

The Canes added an insurance goal at 14:31 into the third period when Elias Lindholm knocked in a Jeff Skinner rebound, to make it 3-1.

The Rangers were unable to do anything the rest of the way.

If there was a negative for the game it had to be the powerplay, which went 0-4 for the game.  But the kill was perfect and did not allow a goal on three New York opportunities.

The Canes will practice at noon tomorrow and then will face the Buffalo Sabres at home on Thursday night.

Game Notes:

• The Hurricanes outshot the Rangers 35-25 and were led by Jay Harrison who had six.
• Ron Hainsey had a team high four blocked shots. He also tied with Patrick Dwyer for a team high four hits. 
  
• Andrej Sekera led the team with 24:50 of ice time. Manny Malhotra had a team low 6:14
  
• Sekera leads all NHL defensemen with 64 takeaways and had another three tonight.

)

)

)

)