They Said It: Brind’Amour, Jarvis, Raanta on OT loss in Tampa

The Carolina Hurricanes were gassed on the tail of a back-to-back and third game in four days, but they managed to snag a point from the Tampa Bay Lightning as they lost 4-3 in overtime.

Sebastian Aho reached a new franchise milestone with his 175th career goal as a Carolina Hurricane and Seth Jarvis recorded his fourth multi-point game in his last seven games. Antti Raanta also stopped 28 shots in the loss.

After the game, head coach Rod Brind’Amour along with Jarvis and Raanta spoke to the media. Here’s what they had to say:

Rod Brind’Amour

On earning 5/6 points on the road trip: Well thank you for having a positive first question, because that actually made me feel a bit better. I could tell from the first shift, we were gassed. I was like, “Oh, we’re in for one tonight.” Guys tried their hardest, but we were just so slow on everything. It was clear to see. To have a chance to win the game — give credit to them — but Raanta held us in there. I feel good as a whole about the road trip. It was a great road trip. We don’t look at it that way though. Tonight wasn’t a great game.

On the call in overtime being a weak call: What’s the question? Do you want me to agree with you? Agree. Good observation. Tough.

On Sebastian Aho passing him on the franchise scoring list: He’s certainly grown as a player. He’s become a very elite player. I think he’s going to get better. He wants to be known as that kind of player and, to do that, you have to keep getting better. Obviously he’s pushing us to try and be the best team in the world. That’s the goal here. I think he has that in mind and that’s what he’s all about. It’s what makes him a special player.

On Aho’s ability to get to the front of the net despite being a smaller framed player: All smart hockey players know to score goals, that’s where you have to get to. The other night he got a very skilled goal. He has that ability and the talent. To score goals, and more than a couple, you have to get to the net. He has to know how to do that too and obviously be good at hand-eye coordination. All that kind of stuff adds to that, but you have to get to the dirty areas if you’re going to score.

On the penalty kill: We were a step slow on everything we did and not only physically, but mentally. We were just a step slow. You could just see it. Power play was atrocious. Same thing. Everything you were doing was just slow and they were on you. Give them credit, they were good tonight. We were just losing all the puck battles. How many clears did we have on our sticks were we don’t get it out? Just a little slow. That to me was mental and physical fatigue. More mental than anything. The schedule caught up to us a little bit. Every team has it in stages. You could see it tonight.

On Niederreiter’s goal: That game, honestly, was how it sometimes feels with us. We have some of these great starts and we have nothing to show for it or we’re down a goal. That’s happened so much to us this year and this was the reversal, where we were up and had no business being up in the game. We still got a point out of it and had a chance to win the game. Somehow we were still hanging around. Again, tough game for us, but just going to flush it. That’s what we do.

On Seth Jarvis’ progression: You learn a lot from games where you are not at your best. Well, why? What’s the reason? Why is it not working? I think he’s a very competitive kid and he’ll just keep getting better. We’ve talked about him a lot. It’s all about learning. Always. Everybody can keep getting better and especially a young kid.

Seth Jarvis

On playing with Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen: It’s awesome. Really fun if you’re an offensive player like myself. We create plays pretty well on the rush. You saw tonight we had a few chances where it was kind of clicking. It’s a ton of fun.

On the game being decided by special teams: That sucks. Obviously you never want to take penalties, but especially at a time like that. You don’t like that that’s the way to decide the game and it leaves kind of a bad taste in your mouth.

On gaining more confidence as of late: [My confidence] is pretty high, but I think obviously it feels a lot better when you win. Right now, we’re just focusing on the outcome, but my confidence is good.

On what it’s been like playing against guys he grew up watching: It’s a big whirlwind. I can remember watching the Stanly Cup last year and, yeah, it’s pretty crazy just sitting back and thinking about where I am now compared to last year. It’s pretty cool, but now that I’m in this position, I have to take full advantage.

Antti Raanta

On playing against a power play in overtime: It’s one of those teams that has so much skill. Even though you try to cut down the passing lanes and everything, they still probably will find a way. It’s tough. Overall, like the whole game, we probably didn’t have our best, but still to get to the overtime. Then we got the penalty and I felt like maybe they could have gotten one behind the net when Slavin got the puck, but that’s the game there. They score and we only got the one point. Have to keep working.

On how he felt over the course of the game: I probably could have been better a little bit here and there. Obviously, the first goal was kind of tough to give up. When you play these kinds of games, you can’t give up those soft goals. That kind of bugged me. But in the third period, they got a couple of chances and I was able to make those saves. So at least I got something positive from there. But I think overall, I could be a little bit better in the small details. I have to be a little bit sharper against that kind of team. Have to keep working, myself also.

On summing up the entire road trip: Two big wins. Then today I thought we did a good job in the first period getting pucks deep. Whenever we did that, we scored. Obviously they scored three power play goals today. I have to be much better in there, but that’s how it’s going to be when the season gets to the last 20 games and then the playoffs. PK and power play will be the main things. They capitalized those. But five points out of six, we’ll take that and get back home and get ready for Thursday.