Jordan Martinook, Brady Skjei and Stefan Noesen each scored for the Hurricanes (14-12-1), who lost their fourth straight of a six-game road trip. Raanta made 20 saves for Carolina, which had a players-only meeting after the game.
“I'd obviously like to keep it in the room, but obviously we're not happy and we're frustrated,” Aho said. “We've done a lot of talking. That's not the first meeting that we had. The time is now to show it to us and to everyone what we are capable of, and the only way out is together.”
Lafferty gave Vancouver a 1-0 lead at 6:17 of the first period by tapping in a rebound after Pettersson’s rush shot from between the top of the circles.
“This is definitely the way we want to play,” Lafferty said of his line with Pettersson and Mikheyev. “We’re starting to get a little more familiar with each other. We can anticipate where the puck’s going to be so we can be a bit faster.”
The Hurricanes had consecutive power plays late in the period, including 35 seconds of 5-on-3 time. Demko made three cross-ice one-timer saves on the two-man advantage and slid left to deny Aho on a 5-on-4 backdoor chance before the second power play expired.
“We had three good looks, one-timers, seam passes, I thought they were pretty quality shots.” Aho said. “Kind of how it goes sometimes. Obviously a little frustrated, you hope you cash in on those, but everyone knew on the bench we gained some momentum and that didn't take the wind out of the team.”
Mikheyev made it 2-0 at 6:54 of the second period, scoring off a backdoor pass out of the left corner from Pettersson.
“We gave them two goals, just lack of coverage, just standing there watching the guy tap it in and that can't happen against any team, especially a good team that knows how to play and plays hard,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
Martinook cut it to 2-1 with his first goal of the season 29 seconds later at 7:23, taking a lateral rush pass from Jesper Fast at the left hash marks and snapping a quick shot past Demko high blocker side.
Miller extended it to 3-1 at 13:46, skating off the bench after Pettersson’s change and into Brock Boeser’s pass inside the left face-off dot that he one-timed past Raanta’s blocker.
“Great change by [Pettersson], really selfless by him,” Miller said. “He easily could’ve hung around there to see what happened on offense and I don’t blame him, but he changed and I kind of got lost in coverage by coming off the bench.”
