Canes comeback falls short in Ottawa

The Carolina Hurricanes played an abysmal 40 minutes and an excellent 20 minutes of hockey Tuesday night in Ottawa, falling to the Senators 4-3 after going down 4-0 early.

The Canes just kind of never had it in the first two frames, as the Senators scored 1:11 into the game. Ottawa made it 2-0 before the end of the first and then 4-0 after two goals within the first three minutes of the second, with the Hurricanes seemingly out of it completely 23 minutes in.

The third period was actually very good for the Hurricanes, who got three back thanks to Andrei Svechnikov, birthday boy Brendan Smith and Vincent Trocheck. Carolina had quite a few chances throughout the rest of the third period, too, though that four-goal deficit was simply just too much to overcome.

The Canes made it very, very interesting late, as Trocheck scored with Carolina’s net empty to cut it to a one-goal game. Carolina created some more after the Trocheck goal, but four goals was one too many to overcome.

One night after the Hurricanes were quite obviously unhappy with the lack of power-play opportunities, both special teams were quite busy Tuesday night. The Canes went 0 for 4 on the man advantage, while Ottawa went 1 for 5.

Another big game-changing moment came in the final second of the first period, as Sebastian Aho got a shot past Anton Forsberg. It didn’t count, though, as the puck crossed the line after the buzzer by the slimmest of margins.

Speaking of Forsberg, he got the win but certainly wasn’t unbeatable. The former Hurricane stopped 42 of 45 shots faced, but he gave up a ton of rebound opportunities. Carolina capitalized on one of those, but probably could have had more.

In the Hurricanes’ net, Antti Raanta made his first appearance on this side of the All-Star break and stopped 27 of 31 shots against. Brady Tkachuk x2, Alex Formenton (who has four goals in three games against the Canes this year) and Chris Tierney were the goal scorers for the Senators.

The Canes will have Wednesday off before returning to action Thursday night in Boston.