They Said It: Brind’Amour, DeAngelo, Raanta discuss overtime loss to Sharks

The Carolina Hurricanes are indeed beatable, as the San Jose Sharks took down the Canes 2-1 in overtime Monday night to hand Carolina just its third loss of the season.

The Canes got a great effort in net from Antti Raanta and a second-period snipe from Tony DeAngelo to secure one point, but couldn’t muster anything on the power play as the Sharks battled back and one it in the extra period.

Following the loss, head coach Rod Brind’Amour, DeAngelo and Raanta met with members of the media. Here is what they had to say:

Rod Brind’Amour

On the team’s performance: It was way better. It was a good game. We played well. It was one of those things where we didn’t get pucks through, but we were trying to do the right things. We gave them a few chances at the end. I didn’t love our last couple shifts. But other than that, I thought we had a solid game. We didn’t have our power play. That could be better. That’s obviously the difference in the game. They got a power-play goal. It doesn’t count as one, but it’s essentially a power-play goal. We didn’t. But I thought it was a good effort.

On Raanta’s night: He was solid. Both goalies played really well and kept their teams in the game. It was a much better game than the one before, that’s for sure.

On San Jose’s ability to block the shooting lanes: We knew that coming in. That’s kind of how they play. Some nights you’re going to have that. Some nights those are going to go through, and you’ll be all alone at the net. We had a few of those too. You’ve got to take what they give you, and we did. We just didn’t capitalize.

On if pucks just weren’t bouncing for them after the blocked shots: Yeah. Exactly. There’s not much else you can do. You can try to get a little cuter, and that doesn’t usually work, either. I thought we worked really hard. We didn’t get the bounce we were looking for. It was a pretty good game.

On the way the team mentally kept fighting through it: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. It wasn’t easy. We were doing a lot of good things. I thought our D played really well as a group. We didn’t give them a heck of a lot, either. The chance they had was more of our forwards blowing their coverage a little bit. You’re going to get games like that. I can live with that game. It’s better to me than the one we won a couple of nights ago.

On if it’s keeping things going the same in Seattle: Yeah. There’s obviously a lot of things we can get better at, but I liked the way we played. I liked how we just stuck with it the whole game. That’s what we have to do.

On being able to move DeAngelo up to play with Jaccob Slavin, and on how worried he is that the team could have more COVID cases coming after Ethan Bear tested positive: We knew Tony could play. Tony has played with [Slavin] before in a lot of games this year. Maybe not to start the game, but we’ve moved him up there. We know that we can do that. Your other question is the one that we worry about with the nature of it. When you look around the league, it’s very rare that one guy gets it. It’s just an unfortunate thing that everybody is dealing with. We’ll take it as it comes, I guess.

On if he knows how long Bear will be gone: I have no idea, to be quite honest with you.

Tony DeAngelo

On his goal: Yeah it was a shot that got blocked and then another one that I think [Seth Jarvis] threw across. It came out and their guys were covering the middle there, screening their own goalie. So I just tried to pick a spot.

On the team’s performance: Getting a point was good. It was a big faceoff win there at the end trying to kill that 21 seconds off. Tough time for a penalty call there. I don’t know. We just got tripped right before that, and then we trip. Tough call. But, it’s good to get a point. We would have liked to get two, but you can’t win every game. I thought we did a pretty decent job. It wasn’t a terrible game at all. We had some chances and couldn’t capitalize. [Raanta] played really big for us and kept us in it. You take a point and move on.

On San Jose’s ability to block the shooting lanes: Yeah, they blocked a lot. They were in the lane. They had two layers. They had the first guy blocking the point man and then the second layer in front of the net. We just didn’t get bounces. A lot of the time it’s usually that you’re going to get it to hit off of someone and break to one of our guys because nobody is covering them when you’re blocking twice. No bounces tonight.. It is what it is.

On the struggles of a long trip: Road trips are alright. This one is obviously a little bit longer, doing a lot of travelling. No back-to-backs, so a lot of days in between. I don’t mind road trips. I can’t speak for everybody. We would like to get home, but it’s just playing hockey and having fun. It’s our first long trip as a team with a lot of new guys. There’s team bonding and all that stuff. Sure we would like to be home, but I don’t find it to be that big of a deal.

On the power play: Our power play wasn’t very sharp. It was different than our 5-on-5. Much sharper, our 5-on-5 was. We didn’t get much going, didn’t get much zone time, didn’t get many shots. It wasn’t good enough. When you have two power plays, especially one in the third, us 10 guys have got to find a way to get one. You can’t be going 0 for 3, 0 for 2, 0 for 1 or whatever. We’ve got to start bearing down there.

Antti Raanta

On his performance and how he felt: Like in Vegas, I’m just starting to feel more comfortable in there. We kind of knew what it was going to be today. There was going to be a lot of shots from the point, a lot of screens. For me, I just know that if I can control my rebounds and makes saves we’re gonna be successful. Maybe a couple too many rebounds where it went straight to their guy. It was unfortunate with the first goal what they got, I don’t know if it hit a little on Tony’s stick or not, but I can make that save and keep us in the lead. That’s hockey. Sometimes bad bounces happen. It’s getting better. I feel good. I feel confident. It’s fun to play. Obviously you want to get those two points.

On getting two starts relatively close together after the start to his season: Yeah, obviously every goalie wants to play and every goalie wants to get in that rhythm. But when Freddie [Andersen] is playing like he’s playing and when the schedule is giving us the chance, obviously you have to go with the hottest goalie in the league. Whenever I get the chance, I just want to get out there and give the team a chance to win. I put in the work in practice and get that confidence and good feeling from there. Obviously the last couple games I’ve been better. I’ve been close to what I can do, but I still feel like I can be a little bit sharper in some moments. It’s getting better.

On if the road trips get harder when they get this long: Yeah, obviously it’s always tough, especially with my mom, she actually came last Saturday to Raleigh. I need to wait a few more days to see my mom, but it’s nice for my wife and for the kids to have the grandma there. Now we just try to hang out with the boys for a couple more days. Obviously we’ve been playing every other day, so it goes pretty fast. We’re travelling in between the games. It’s fun. I think we have a lot of new guys in the team, so I think this trip has been kind of good for team building and getting to know the other guys a little bit better. When you’ve got a couple of weeks on the road, you get to know the guys pretty well. It’s been a lot of fun. A couple more games to go, and we’ll try to get a couple more wins and go home for one game.