Canes fall short despite heavily outshooting Stars

It was a game of call and response all night long Thursday as the Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars kept scoring right off each other’s heels as eventually the Canes fell 4-3 in the shootout.

It was yet another case of a backup goaltender posting a ridiculous amount of saves against the Hurricanes’ onslaught as Scott Wedgewood turned aside 44 shots n his Stars debut, leaving the Canes still searching for answers on how to turn these chances into goals.

It was also not a great game for Frederik Andersen who turned aside only 12 shots. He had his moments, like the early first period save on Jason Robertson and the penalty shot by Michael Raffl, but the team needed him to make at least one more save.

It was, again, a dominant start for the Hurricanes as the top line got the energy going early with a flurry of chances. Carolina easily controlled play through the initial 20 minutes, outshooting the Stars 18-4, but Wedgewood stood on his head to keep the game even.

Stop me if you’ve heard that one before with cut and paste random goalie here.

And as you could have predicted with that sort of dominance with nothing to show, the Stars were the ones to open the scoring early into the second.

Well, the Hurricanes helped it along as the goal ended up being an own-goal. As Jamie Benn tried to send a pass across the ice, Ian Cole swatted at it and redirected it straight into his own net.

So despite the dominance, Carolina was in a hole off of an unlucky bounce.

And to add to the misery, Brett Pesce was given a misconduct penalty after he had to take matters into his own hands after catching an elbow from Vladislav Namestnikov, so he would be out for the rest of the second period.

But the team stuck with it and Brady Skjei executed a perfect pinch and pass to Nino Niederreiter in the slot who knocked it home.

Early into the third period, the Hurricanes were finally awarded their first power play opportunity of the game — despite having outshot the Stars 34-9 and controlling the majority of play at that point — and it was for one of the only non-subjective calls in the game: delay of game for puck over the glass.

The Hurricanes power play got to work though and it didn’t take long for Vincent Trocheck to put his team ahead after collecting a Sebastian Aho rebound and tucking it in past Wedgewood.

However, exactly a minute after that go-ahead goal, the Stars’ top line struck.

Unmarked in the slot, Roope Hintz stood still and waited for Joe Pavelski to find him for the tying goal.

And just like that, all the hard work to get ahead was lost.

But the Hurricanes just kept chugging away and eventually they retook the lead as Skjei found Niederreiter again, this time as the Swiss winger was cruising through the slot where he redirected the shot up over Wedgewood.

Like clockwork though, Hintz was there to deflate the Canes again this time as he blew past the flatfooted defense of the Canes and cut across the front of the net, depositing a backhander past Andersen.

Another deflating feeling.

Despite a couple more egregious non-calls as regulation expired, the Canes were still buzzing into OT, but Wedgewood made his biggest stops of the night in succession, robbing Aho and then Necas a few seconds later.

The Hurricanes were whistled for a late trip, but the team held out for the remainder of overtime.

In the shootout, Trocheck, Andrei Svechnikov and Tony DeAngelo were all stopped by Wedgewood with Tyler Seguin was the lone scorer to win the game.

The Canes now hit the road for a mini road trip with the first stop being in St. Louis to take on the Blues Saturday at 8 p.m. EST.