NEWARK, NJ. - The Carolina Hurricanes know exactly how they lost Game 1.
There were no surprises and the team made no excuses in the aftermath.
A perfect special teams performance from the New York Rangers, 2/2 on the power play and 5/5 on the penalty kill, served as the difference, forcing the Canes to now have to win four out of the next six games.
The message on Monday, as the Canes practiced at the New Jersey Devils' practice facility in Newark, was to learn from what happened, and execute better tomorrow.
"We've got to be a little better in all areas, obviously. Maybe one area in particular," Rod Brind'Amour said, alluding to the team's troubles on special teams. "They have a great team over there and they had to make high-end plays on the goals. We've got to find a way to be that much better."
While much was made of the Rangers striking twice in a total of just 23 seconds of power play time in the first period, the Canes had as much, if not more, of an emphasis on the fact that they had five opportunities to try and get a power play goal of their own and they didn't cash in.
"We didn't do a good enough job. That was the game," Sebastian Aho remarked of the man advantage and its fruitless performance. "We obviously watched the tape and we talked about it a lot. A lot of times it comes down to executing the last pass or shot."
Brind'Amour spent a healthy amount of time working with the team's first power play unit during today's skate, hoping to have everyone on the same page come 7 p.m. tomorrow.
"We had our looks, we just didn't convert. That's the difference," the head coach continued. "We have to find a way to get more looks and we'd like to have more opportunities when you get your power plays, but they did a nice job of blocking shots. They pressured us at the right times. The execution wasn't quite where it needed to be."
Outside of special teams, the group remained adamant that they liked their five-on-five effort.
Quick to give New York credit for their ability to stay in the shooting lanes yesterday (28 blocked shots), the agenda for tomorrow is to find ways to get pucks through traffic, while also creating enough chaos to disrupt Igor Shesterkin's line of sight.
"The only thing I would say is that we need to shoot the puck a little more," Stefan Noesen offered as one thing he'd change from the way the group operated on Sunday. "I think we tried to make a few too many plays here and there, but overall, they did block quite a few shots. We need to stick with our game, create some traffic, and make it difficult on them too."
Brind'Amour also wants his group to remember that they can't take the lead in the series tomorrow, but if they take things one game at a time, they could be headed back to Raleigh with things even at 1-1.
"It's one game. We know we were right there," Brind'Amour continued. "It's one game, but we certainly don't want it to bleed into two. So we've got to be that much better tomorrow."
