Hurricanes lose to Red Wings with 4 seconds left, Metro lead shrinks

DETROIT-- The Carolina Hurricanes lost ground off their Metropolitan Division lead when Jake Walman scored with four seconds left in the third period to give the Detroit Red Wings a 3-2 win at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday.

Carolina's division lead is down to one point after the second-place New Jersey Devils won 2-1 against the New York Rangers on Thursday.
Frederik Andersen made 19 saves for the Hurricanes (47-18-9), who have lost three in a row (0-2-1).
"That's brutal, because we played well enough to win and we gave away the points at the end," Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "We just didn't get any breaks and then we took a breather at the end of the game, and it ended up in our net."
Walman one-timed Andrew Copp's pass from the point through traffic in front for the game-winner.
"That was just a great play by (Copp), really," Walman said. "We were going for broke, because there wasn't much time left. He made a really good pass and we had a screen in front."
David Perron had two assists for the Red Wings (33-32-9), two days after scoring a third-period hat trick in a 7-4 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
"He's a huge part of this team," Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. "He only knows one way to play, and that's been important on a team where some guys have struggled for motivation since the trading deadline (on March 3)."

Alex Nedeljkovic made 31 saves against his former team.
"It's nice to get a couple games in a row and get into a good rhythm," he said. "It's always special to play against a former team, and I like playing against those guys."
The Red Wings took a 1-0 lead on the game's first shot when Dominik Kubalik scored his 20th goal of the season at 59 seconds. Kubalik is the second Red Wings player to reach 20 goals this season, joining Dylan Larkin (28).
"If you told us at the beginning of the season that (Kubalik) would give us 20 goals, we would have taken that in a heartbeat," Lalonde said. "He's been a really nice addition."
Brent Burns made it 1-1 at 22 seconds of the second period, beating Nedeljkovic with a point shot through traffic.

Carolina took a 2-1 lead at 4:18 when Jaccob Slavin's long shot deflected off Pius Suter past Nedeljkovic.
"[Nedeljkovic] played really well, especially in the third period, but we have to make it harder on him," Slavin said. "We have to get more traffic in front and we've got to get better shots on the power play."
Larkin knocked in Alex Chiasson's pass at 7:26 of the second for a power-play goal to make it 2-2.
NOTES:Burns and Slavin's goals gave the Hurricanes an NHL-leading 50 from defensemen. Burns scored his 241st NHL goal to pass Rob Blake for 10th on the all-time list among defensemen. … Carolina had 85 shot attempts to Detroit's 34, but the Red Wings blocked 26 shots and the Hurricanes missed the net 26 times. … Walman scored the third-latest go-ahead goal in Detroit history, behind Steve Yzerman (59:58 on Oct. 9, 2003) and Brendan Shanahan (59:57 on April 4, 1998).