Hurricanes 5, Blackhawks 0

The Carolina Hurricanes put together their best effort of the season in defeating the World Champion Chicago Blackhawks, 5-0 on Tuesday night in front of 14,588 at the PNC.

Riley Nash scored twice and Eddie Lack was solid throughout in earning his second shutout of the season.

The Canes took over the game early, led 3-0 in the first period, and never looked back as they improved their record to 23-20-8.  They now have a 7-2-1 record in their last 10 games.

Just 2:12 into the game, Jeff Skinner banged home a rebound in front of the net on a play in which Jay McClement was originally credited with the score.  Either player could have gotten credit, they both had their sticks on it.

About 11 minutes later, Riley Nash tipped in a Jaccob Slavin shot to make it 2-0.  Then John-Michael Liles scored off a nice pass by Kris Versteeg and the Canes were cooking with gas.

At this time, the Hurricanes were also out-shooting the Hawks, 15-4 and had dominated play.

Chicago changed goalies to start the second and that was the end of the night for starter Corey Crawford.

About half way through the second period, Joakim Nordstrom took the puck, turned and rifled it at the net to make it 4-0.  That made three goals in the past three games for the former Hawk.

Replacement goalie, Scott Darling, had trouble on this play as Skinner took the puck behind the net and fed Nash again, who banked the puck off the goalie to make it 5-0.

That was the end of the scoring but Carolina continued to dominate much of the play and continued to rack up scoring chances and shots.

Afterward, Eric Staal said the team knew this game was going to be nationally televised and they wanted to put forth a good showing.

"We wanted to show everyone that we can play with anyone, on any given night", the captain said.  "We still have a long way to go," he added.  They certainly accomplished that goal on this night.

Next up for Carolina will be a game at Calgary in a week.

Game Notes:

• The Canes outshot the Hawks 40-26.  McClement, Nash, and Skinner led the way with five shots each.
• Carolina killed four Chicago powerplay attempts.  They went 0-2 while with the man advantage.
• With the win, the Canes swept the season series with the Blackhawks.  Earlier this season they beat them 2-1 in Chicago as Lack just missed another shutout by three seconds.
• The Hurricanes won 68% of the game's faceoffs.  Jordan Staal was best with 88%, (15 of 17).
• Jaccob Slavin had another very good game and played evenly with Justin Faulk as both led the team with about 22 minutes of TOI.
• The Canes had 23 takeaways and were led by Skinner and Nash with four each.