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Despite a great performance from Dougie Hamilton and Haydn Fleury’s first goal of the season, the Hurricanes fell 3-2 to the Dallas Stars at PNC Arena Saturday night to open an eight-game homestand.
Fleury, Hamilton and Rod Brind’Amour spoke to the media after the game, here’s a full breakdown of everything they had to say:
Rod Brind’Amour
On the lack of power plays: It’s a good observation. I think we were just kind of going back through it. We had one game here where we had a bunch of power plays. Now we’ve had four or five where we’ve had one. That seems a little weird, especially when we play the game we play when we have the puck a lot in the O-zone. But that’s the way it goes. Usually all that stuff evens out at some point. But it is kind of strange.
On if the team isn’t getting enough respect from the officials: It’s just strange that we didn’t get more than one power play in the last four or five. That is a little bit concerning. But I’m not blaming the referees on anything. We gave them a goal. We can’t give goals to good teams. It’s too hard to come back from.
On Dougie Hamilton: He was really good. He had a lot of opportunities and made a lot of good plays. He played well defensively. He was really good. He was definitely one of the better players out there.
On his takeaways from the game: We played hard and played well. I don’t like the penalty that [Andrei Svechnikov] takes, because that’s 150 feet away from our net. He doesn’t really need to do that. That leads to a goal. Momentum was all going our way for sure. You’re going to lose faceoffs here and there. Give them credit. We know the pucks are getting to the net from them,and they beat us off the wall for a tip-in. That’s how they design it. We know that. We’ve got to better there. I thought we played well. I can’t fault our guys. That’s a good effort from start to finish. A couple mistakes you’d like to not have, but they’re going to happen. We played hard enough to win. You come with that effort most nights, we’re going to be rewarded.
Haydn Fleury
On getting his first goal of the season: Yeah. I’ve had chances all year. It wasn’t really from a lack of looks. The puck just wasn’t really going in.
On Cedric Paquette’s hit to open up his goal: He gets in there on the forecheck. .That’s one of the things he’s really good at. He separates the guy from the puck. It ended up being a really big hit. We kind of just buzzed around the zone from there. [Steven Lorentz] made a good play there to let it go through his feet. I just tried to get one through.
On having to match Dallas’ desperation and energy: That’s a big thing. That third goal there was my fault. I was a little too casual. It ended up costing us the game. You’ve got to bring that every shift and learn from it.
Dougie Hamilton
On the Hurricanes not getting the respect they deserve as a top team from the officiating: I can’t really comment on the refs. Obviously as power play players we want to be on the power play as much as we can. We’ve been talking about how it’s been tough just getting one a game. I think other than that Tampa game where we had a bunch and scored two goals, I think the last two weeks or something we’ve been one, maybe two a game. It’s pretty hard. We’ve got to do a better job, I guess, of drawing penalties, holding onto pucks, challenging guys. Make it hard on the refs, to make them make calls. I think that’s on us. I don’t think we can really complain about the refs.
On his goal resembling his usual shootout move: I wasn’t thinking, to be honest. I just tried to get the puck and it’s a read and reaction for me. I wasn’t really getting the puck and thinking ‘I’m gonna do this move.’ I saw he was kind of a little late coming to me. I didn’t want to rush the shot. Then I kind of looked for five hole. It wasn’t really there, so I could go around him. But you’re right, I think it was very, very similar to the shootout goals. It’s nice to do it in the real game, I guess.
On matching Dallas’ desperation and energy: We knew that they would do that. I think every game against them has been a tough, physical, hard-checking game. There’s a reason they made it to the finals last year. You could see from their game today that they play the right way. That’s playoff-style hockey. We’ve got to play better, and hopefully we can do that tomorrow.