Recap: Canes Come Up Short In Colorado, 4-1

DENVER, CO. -The Carolina Hurricanes moved to 9-5-1 on the season Saturday after falling to the Colorado Avalanche by a score of 4-1.

The Story

The first 40 minutes of the contest were riddled with penalties, as each side was afforded four power play opportunities.
Fittingly enough the game's first goal came with Colorado on the man advantage, although it made its way by Antti Raanta in an atypical fashion. Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar put a shot on from the point and while it missed the net, it jumped off of the Ball Arena glass, off of the back of the Canes goaltender and into the net behind him.
3:22 later Makar capitalized again, extending the home team's lead to 2-0 in the first period.
Carolina was unable to make good on their man advantage tries but Raanta remained a bright spot for the team as the game progressed. Similar to Wednesday night in Florida, the 33-year-old made a slew of timely stops to keep his team's deficit at just two.
In the back half of the second period the Canes finally broke through Colorado netminder Pavel Francouz, courtesy of a beautiful connection between Jordan Martinook and Jordan Staal.

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The second in as many games for the Canes captain brought them within one but that was as close as they would get the rest of the way.
In the third period Nathan MacKinnon put home a two-on-one feed from Mikko Rantanen, who factored in on all of his team's four goals, to go up 3-1. Then defenseman Josh Manson hit the empty net to close out the victory.

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They Said It

Rod Brind'Amourgiving his assessment of how the contest went...
"It was a tough game. I didn't like our start. We gave them two goals in the first and then we were chasing the game. They're too good of a team to give them two. I thought after that the game was pretty even. Our power play stunk. It was good, actually, early. We just didn't connect. Then that one in the third we needed to be good and we didn't do a good job there. Tough game overall. We need everyone going, especially playing against this team and we didn't have that tonight."
Jordan Staaloffering his thoughts...
"You have to tip your cap to them. I thought they played well and we didn't. We didn't get to our game. We got hemmed in our end too much, took to many penalties and our power play wasn't good enough. Special teams battles, it's hard to win the game if you don't win that. I thought five-on-five was sporadic, not taking over the game - the style we normally play."
Jordan Martinookon if he felt the team was getting to the way they needed to play...
"I thought we were starting to build [our game] in the third. They scored their third goal and the wind kind of came out of our sails. We were only down two. We needed to keep pushing and keep pushing and we didn't have the push we needed after we got scored on, that's for sure."

Bonus Notes

• Canes forward Teuvo Teravainen was placed on injured reserve Saturday afternoon, retroactive to Thursday, November 10. #86 suffered an upper-body injury in the team's win over Edmonton earlier this week. As a result, forward Stefan Noesen skated on a line with Sebastian Aho and Martin Necas.
• Antti Raanta finished with 24 stops on 27 shots against. His record on the year moves to 3-2-1.

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What's Next?

The team is scheduled to travel to Chicago post-game and then have an off day Sunday. They'll then return to game action Monday night against the Blackhawks.
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