Despite not playing since Tuesday, and needing a win to continue their playoff race, the Carolina Hurricanes put in their worst effort of the season at PNC Arena Friday night, falling 8-1 to the Winnipeg Jets.
Forward Greg McKegg scored the lone goal for Canes (36-24-7), who never got going. They trailed 3-0 10 minutes into the game and 4-0 after the first period. Carolina struggled to get any kind of a consistent offensive attack going, and struggled mightily with the Jets’ (40-23-4) talented offense, repeatedly leaving goalie Curtis McElhinney out to dry.
“I’ve got to process it a little more,” head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Obviously it’s not something we want to see and it’s certainly not acceptable. We haven’t had one of those this year. We’ve had a couple bad games, for sure, but nothing like that. So that’s a little shocking. I didn’t expect that at all. The good news is we’ve got to play tomorrow so we can kind of tank this game and move on.”
This one was pretty much put to bed in the opening 20 minutes, as the Canes were outscored 4-0 in their worst period of the year.
The Jets took a 2-0 lead just 5:48 into the game on goals from forwards Kyle Connor and Blake Wheeler. Both goals came off odd-man rushes, as the Canes’ struggled to control the neutral zone early.
“We didn’t have anything going,” defenseman Justin Faulk said. “I don’t think there was one part of our game that was any good. We got beat right from the beginning: loose pucks, puck battles, just up-ice skating. We made it very, very easy on them.”
Shortly after, Canes captain Justin Williams shot the puck into the Winnipeg net after play had been blown dead offsides. That led to a skirmish behind the net, and both Williams and Jets defenseman Dmitry Kulikov went to the box.
Just seconds into the 4-on-4 sequence, Jets defenseman Ben Chiarot put Winnipeg up 3-0. With 1:16 left in the first, after the Canes were hemmed into the defensive zone and failed to clear multiple times, Ehelers snapped home a shot from the slot to make it 4-0 and wrapped up an abysmal opening frame for Carolina.
“You name it, we weren’t there,” Williams said. “You name any play there, they won it.”
The Jets took a 5-0 lead with 30 seconds left in the second period on a goal from forward Andrew Copp.
The Canes broke the shutout about halfway through the third period; forward Greg McKegg tipped in a point shot from defenseman Calvin de Haan. Connor’s second goal of the game on a Winnipeg power play with 6:15 left restored a five-goal lead for the Jets, and Winnipeg scored twice in the game’s final minute to make it a real laugher at 8-1.
“We addressed it a little bit after the game, but what happened in the first 10 minutes of the game, what happened in the last three minutes was totally, totally inexcusable,” Williams said. “It’s something that, quite frankly, we’re all ashamed of. Leaving our goaltender, who gives it his all for us all the time, it was three late goals and then just chance after chance after chance. We all owe him an apology for that.”
Hurricanes forward Micheal Ferland, who has left both of the team’s past two games with injuries, took a helmet-to-jaw hit from Kulikov in the third period and was slow to get up before going to the locker room. Brind’Amour did not have an update on Ferland after the game.
Despite the loss, the Canes still hold the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference and are two points clear of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the first team outside the playoff picture. Carolina will be back in action Saturday in Nashville against the Predators.
“We’re lucky enough that we play tomorrow and can try and get past this,” Faulk said. “But that can’t happen. We’re not in the position to let that happen. We need every point we can get and if we come up like that we’re not going to get any points.”
