About last night: Hurricanes embarrassed by Senators

Well, that was, um, bad. No need to overcomplicate things. Just three days after a 6-2 loss to the New York Rangers, the Hurricanes dropped a 4-1 lauger to the Ottawa Senators, one of the NHL’s bottom feeders.

It got so bad that a visibly frustrated Rod Brind’Amour joked (I think) after the game that he was thinking about getting dressed and going in. Here a few takeaways from the loss.

Hemmed in- The Canes struggled with exiting the zone cleanly all night, and repeatedly got trapped in the zone after turning the puck over on clearing attempts. This resulted in two of Ottawa’s goals, and a normally strong possession team was dominated in that regard all night.

Winning a measly 36 percent of the game’s faceoffs did not help in this regard, either.

Niederreiter’s debut- The game marked the Canes debut of newly-acquired forward Nino Niederreiter. The former Minnesota Wild winger had four shots on goal, one hit and was a minus 1 on a line with Greg McKegg and Justin Williams. Brind’Amour said after the game that he was pleased with Niederreiter’s debut and that he apologized to him after the game for the rest of the team’s effort.

Poor Mrazek- He gave up four goals, but Petr Mrazek never had a prayer on any of them. He was hung out to dry all night and made some big saves, including a point-blank pad stop on Brady Tkachuk and breakaway save on Ryan Dzingel to keep the game from being even more of a blowout.

The fat lady is warming up- A team that needed a hot run to finish the season needed a win at home against one of the league’s worst teams. It didn’t get it. The Canes’ blowout loss, coupled with the Penguins’ win, puts them nine points back of a wild card spot. There’s still over two months to play in the season, but the Canes would need some kind of finish, if not a miracle to keep the league’s longest-active playoff drought from hitting 10 years.