They Said It: Brind’Amour, Trocheck, Bear on loss in Toronto

It was a second straight loss for the Carolina Hurricanes Thursday night in Toronto, as the Canes fell 3-2 to the Maple Leafs.

The Hurricanes went down 2-0 in the game, as Ilya Mikheyev opened the scoring in the first period and Mitch Marner doubled the home team’s lead in the second. Ethan Bear got one back for the Canes in the third, but Ondrej Kase made it a two-goal game once again just over three minutes later. Vincent Trocheck added another for the Canes with Carolina’s net empty, though it was too little, too late.

Following the loss, Hurricanes’ head coach Rod Brind’Amour,

Here is what they had to say:

Rod Brind’Amour

On if the game was nearly all of their own mistakes being capitalized on: Yep. Pretty much. I thought we played hard. Give the guys credit. We always play hard, which is good, but we need to capitalize on our chances, which we didn’t. That magnifies the mistakes we made. You’re going to make mistakes, but give them credit. They capitalized. They obviously got the win out of it.

On what he’d like to see differently on the power play: I’d like to see a little better execution with our plan. We got away from what we wanted to do. Give them credit. They were aggressive and they did what we thought they would do, we just didn’t execute it the right way.

On Tony DeAngelo’s imminent return meaning hard decisions are ahead for lineup choices: For sure. It’s tough to say anybody played poorly, but we just didn’t score. First shift of the game, we had an empty net. First shift of the second, empty net. Great saves. But we have to capitalize on those, because if you don’t, a good team is going to make you pay and that’s what happened.

On Jordan Martinook’s status: I don’t know. It didn’t look good, but I haven’t been back there yet so I don’t know.

Vincent Trocheck

On if this game was just a matter of their mistakes ending up in their net: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. There’s not much more I can say about it.

On if there were any other big differences that stuck out: No, I think there was a lot of similarities in the way both teams played. The systems are similar. We both played very hard. I think it was just a matter of those couple mistakes on very simple plays that we know and practice all the time.

On what they need to do better on the power play: I don’t know if we even know. I think we’re just trying to figure that out right now. I think it’s a matter of us getting more pucks to the net and maybe playing a little bit simpler. It’s something that we really need to figure out here shortly before the playoffs start.

On the effort and on how they can finish out a game like that: I thought our effort was there the whole game. We’ve just got to bear down on our chances. I thought we got a lot of chances in the first and second that we just didn’t capitalize on. It’s just about bearing down. If we score those, it’s a different game.

Ethan Bear

On dominating the beginning of the game but then giving up the first goal: Yeah, that sucks obviously. Toronto is a good team. Obviously they have a lot of skill, and they’re a fast team. When you get behind, it’s tough to claw out of these games. It’s tough. You always want to get that first goal.

On the mindset of the team: Honestly, we’ve just got to keep working and play our game. That’s as simple as it is. We’ve just got to keep working and stick to it. We can’t get down on ourselves. That’s really it. At the end of the day, we’ve just got to keep working.

On what needs to be done better on the power play: We just need to get more shots and be more tenacious in front of the net. That’s really it. That’s all I can really think about. We just need to get more shots and create those hard battles in front. We have an extra guy out there. At the same time, we’ve got to work harder than them.

On emphasizing the defense getting more involved in the offensive game: We always want to be in front of our guys and let our offense come from solid defense. I think we’re all pretty good players to make those reads offensively. As soon as we take care of our own end defensively, we’ll get those opportunities.