"Our goalie bailed us out all game," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "We had spurts where we were playing it right, but it wasn't good enough. The fact that we got a point out of that was pretty good, and we had a chance to win."
Minus: Not good enough
The main takeaway from the Canes' postgame comments was that they didn't have their best game. And that can't happen on the road against the defending Stanley Cup champions, a team that is nipping at the Canes' heels in the Central Division standings. It just wasn't good enough for long enough.
"When you're playing the best team in hockey, you can't play the way we did," Brind'Amour said. "We can't play two periods like that and then expect to get anything out of it."
The positive is that even though the Canes didn't have their best, they were never out of the game. They snagged a point and had opportunities to get a second in overtime. Another positive? The Canes get right back at it less than 24 hours from now.
"We didn't play our game," Brind'Amour said. "It's all about the little plays we didn't do tonight, and we spent way too much time in our own end because of it. We need to up the ante a little bit if we want to get to a playoff-level type game."
Plus: Goals from Andrei Svechnikov and Brady Skjei
Don't look now, but Svechnikov has scored a goal in three consecutive games. He got the Canes on the board in the second period with a laser wrist shot from the top of the left circle on the power play.
