Jeff Skinner opened the scoring for the Sabres just 4:26 into the contest. The Hurricanes tied the game at the 12:46 mark on an odd goal from Jordan Staal, who lofted a shot over the shoulder of goaltender Carter Hutton from inside the faceoff circle after an initial attempt was blocked by Marco Scandella.
From that point, Krueger felt the Sabres went flat for some 20 minutes. Sebastian Aho scored a power-play goal with 2:43 remaining in the first period, then helped Teuvo Teravainen bury a feed from Andrei Svechnikov to make it 3-1 less than a minute into the second.
In the meantime, the Sabres went 0-for-3 on the power play despite quality stretches of possession.
"I think we could have had a better start but we drew three penalties, we spent six minutes on the PP, and then the second half of the game I thought we turned it around and I thought we, in my opinion, sort of carried the majority of the play," Skinner said.
"That's the way the game goes. You're going to have stretches where you carry the play, you're going to have stretches where they carry the play. That's just the way the league is."
Krueger emphasized the importance of getting shots and bodies to the net to remedy the power play, which is 0-for-12 in the last five games after a red-hot start to the season. The Hurricanes, meanwhile, went 2-for-3 with the extra man.
"Quite simply not enough shots," Krueger said. "We had so much control, we're looking for the perfect goal. We need to give up that mindset to get our confidence back to be able to make those seam kind of one-timer goals that we'd like to make and get something ugly going.
"We're disappointed in our specialty teams today. We've spent the last few days working on that and speaking a lot about it. The PK and power play need to definitely pick up steam again quickly."
Still, the Sabres fought their way back at multiple junctures of the game. Curtis Lazar, making his Sabres debut in place of an injured Marcus Johansson, blocked a shot in the defensive zone and sped off for a breakaway goal that gave the team new life with 6:56 remaining in the second period.