They Said It: Brind’Amour, Aho on big loss to Avs

It was a rough night for the Carolina Hurricanes in Denver Saturday, as the Canes fell 7-4 to the Avalanche while also losing two key players to injury.

The result of the game was a tough pill to swallow for the Hurricanes, as the Avalanche took a 4-0 lead early in the second period and held off the Canes for the victory.

But the bigger loss for Carolina came in the injury department, as both Jordan Staal, who scored twice in the losing effort, and Frederik Andersen exited the game with injuries.

Following the loss, head coach Rod Brind’Amour and Sebastian Aho spoke with members of the media.

Here is what they had to say:

Rod Brind’Amour

On the game: It’s tough because there’s so many things that went on in this game. Obviously we didn’t like the result. And then we had a couple guys get hurt, and that’s really our main concern. It’s not a good night for us, that’s for sure.

On if he has any injury updates: Nope, I don’t. But it doesn’t look good. Like I said, it’s a tough night.

On the power play: Our power play was good. That was good. There’s a little bit of a bright spot in that game. But our penalty kill was no good. That was really the difference in the game. We gave up two power-play goals that kind of put us behind. We were too sloppy, gave up too many good chances. That team is too good to play that way.

On what they can do to better limit chances against a team like Colorado: Against that team, to be honest, a lot of times there’s not much you can do, just to be honest. They’ve got good players. They had some one-on-one battles that they won. They got pucks to the net. I don’t know that it was a total gong show for us, but we gave up too much early. We fought back. We always do. But you can’t spot a team that many goals and expect to have success.

On the Niederreiter - Staal - Fast line: Yeah, they’ve been our best line all year. They do it right shift after shift. They’re big, which helps. They’re big, so they can kind of just control things. Especially games where it gets tight. They’re game doesn’t change.

On if he was surprised by the offensive output in the game: Everything was going in. It was one of those nights.

Sebastian Aho

On the game: We gave too much to them. Obviously a very good team we played against. They’re highly skilled and fast, but still not happy. The way we played, we gave way too much to them.

On Staal and Andersen going down: It’s never fun to watch your own teammate go down. We have a little adversity right now, but we’ll see what we are about. It hasn’t gone our way lately, and a couple very big players go down tonight. These are the moments the team has to come together and come back even stronger. I’m 100 percent confident that’s exactly what is going to happen right now. We’ll be a better team than ever.

On the power play scoring: Too late. Obviously nice to see the power play click there, but we should have cashed in on those early ones, probably. We’ll keep working on that, too.

On if this game can be a wake-up call for them defensively: Yeah, we gave them too much. I don’t think it’s a lack of effort or anything like that. We’ve just got to be a little bit sharper on the details. Hunker down every once in a while when they have momentum in our end. But we’ll learn from this, and like I said, we’ll be better in the future.