Notes and Quotes from the Hurricanes’ 7-1 loss to the Penguins

From the Coach

Bill Peters:

I didn’t think we managed the puck very well. We turned it over too much. Their transition game was good and they capitalized. We got away with it a couple times when we outscored our mistakes, and tonight there was no chance to do that.

Our [power play] execution hurt us tonight. There were a lot of passes that were off or not on the tape. We’re squeezing the stick. Confidence is an issue. We’re going to have to change quite a few things, probably give some different guys some looks, and try to freshen it up in that regard.

The last two games, we haven’t been hard enough in the paint. We’ve allowed people access to the blue paint, to stay there and get seconds and thirds. On the flip side, there were pucks that we didn’t get to.

Tonight was a grind. The fact was that we started OK, but from then on we had a hard time getting anything going. The team that worked the hardest tonight won the game. We have to get back to having a semblance of our identity. We have to be able to play all four lines, get the pace of the game high, and wear the opposition down. Tonight we didn’t do that.

In the Room

Jordan Staal:

It’s two in a row now. You can call it an embarrassment, but it was a team that made us look like a high school team.

At some point you have to let it go, but we wanted to do that with the last game in Columbus and come out with a better effort tonight. And we didn’t again. It’s not good enough. We’re going to have to give a lot more tomorrow if we’re going to want to compete against the top teams.

Ron Hainsey:

We haven’t had a run of giving up 40 shots and chances like this since Bill took over, in 2 ¹⁄₂ years. This is the most we’ve given up over the course of games. We tried to address a lot of that, and it worked for ten minutes.

It’s a long season. You have to grind through it. The farther the score got away from us, the worse we played. We started out great in the first ten minutes with a ton of chances. Usually when a team gets up four or five, the other team starts to take back over because the team sits back. That did not happen here. We struggled to generate anything.

Jeff Skinner:

We need to bounce back. We have to get back to playing the way we play: fast, making strong plays, playing together. We need to be fast through the neutral zone so we can spend time in the offensive zone. We hung Wardo out to dry tonight.

I thought we had a couple good chances, and the chance right at the end of the power play where he made a good stick save. The power play hasn’t been going as well as we’d like lately. We were able to create a little momentum, but we weren’t able to sustain it.

Game Notes

• This was a record-setting performance for the Penguins against the Canes/Whalers franchise:

• Peters indicated that they were “leaning” toward playing Michael Leighton against the Blue Jackets tomorrow, which at this point should probably be a foregone conclusion, yes?
• Mentioned this in the recap, but it’s worth saying again: Carl Hagelin has 7-14-21 in 22 career games against the Canes, his highest totals against any team in his six-year career. Conor Sheary is also up there, now at 3-1-4 in 6 career games.
• At the other end, Sidney Crosby is now 13-33-46 in 37 career games against Carolina, although to the everlasting credit of Brett Pesce and Jaccob Slavin, he finished with just one power-play assist and was only a +1 on a night where all but two Penguins finished above even.
• Benched for the entire third period, Jeff Skinner played just 10:22. That’s his least amount ice time since a 2013 game against the Wild when he was injured midway through the period. The only other time he’s played fewer than 11 minutes while healthy? His rookie year: November 26, 2010, when he played 9:46 against the Bruins.
• For Teuvo Teravainen, the news is even worse: 8:56 on the ice, the fourth-lowest total of his career and his lowest by more than two minutes over his previous low-water mark with the Canes.
• Carolina is now on a 1-for-35 skid with the man advantage. They’ve now gone seven straight games without scoring a power play goal, tying the season-long streak that was broken with the 1 in that 1-for-35 number: a goal against the Blues on January 4. Outside of that goal, they’ve gone more than a month without a PPG.
• The Canes fell to 5-3-2 in the front half of back-to-back sets, and look to improve on their 6-3-0 number in the back half tomorrow as they head back to Columbus to face the Blue Jackets for the second time in four days.