Looking to go into the holiday break on a positive note after two gut-wrenching losses in Florida last weekend, the Carolina Hurricanes laid another egg in Raleigh on Tuesday, falling 5-2 to the Florida Panthers after one of the more dismal periods of hockey the team has played under Rod Brind’Amour.
Just as they did in Sunrise on Friday, the Hurricanes got the scoring started when Eric Robinson buried a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky off a patient feed from Sebastian Aho early in the first period.
Carolina got to its defensive game for the rest of the first period, ensuring that Frederik Andersen only faced three shots in his first 20 minutes of action since December 4.
Defense led to offense in the second period when right after a successful penalty kill, captain Jordan Staal fired off a perfect stretch pass to send Andrei Svechnikov in on a breakaway right out of the box. Svechnikov sold the high shot and slid the puck past Bobrovsky low to give Carolina a 2-0 lead that would stand up through 40.
It all unraveled from there, both for the team’s defensive structure and for Andersen between the pipes, as the Panthers put together the sort of run that used to win Roy Williams’ UNC teams national championships.
Niko Mikkola got it started from distance to cut the deficit to 2-1. Less than three minutes later, Luke Kunin hammered home a feed from Noah Gregor to tie things up with his second tally of the season.
Just 53 seconds after that, Florida took its first lead of the game on a similar-looking play to the previous goal when Sam Reinhart found Anton Lundell in the slot. Lundell, admirably filling the Aleksander Barkov role in the latter’s absence, sold Andersen on glove-high and then went stick-high after the Danish goalie bit hard.
Sam Bennett added an insurance goal to make it 4-2, though the Hurricanes had given up by that point. Seth Jones added another on a power play with just under five minutes remaining to make it 5-2.
Now with three straight losses after multi-goal leads to the Florida teams, the two teams in the East you really worry about in a playoff series, the holiday break has to become a time for introspection for Brind’Amour and the team.
The Canes will take the ice in Raleigh on December 27 against a surging Detroit Red Wings team that just earned a dramatic win on its home ice on Tuesday.