For two periods, it was the best the Carolina Hurricanes have looked all series.

They overcame an early goal against as Logan Stankoven cleaned up a rebound on the power play, Pyotr Kochetkov was standing on his head with crucial save after crucial save and the team was finally starting to find some real momentum.

They even had a perfect penalty kill, including a crucial one to start the third period.

And then everything unraveled. 

The Florida Panthers scored five straight goals in just over 10 minutes of game time, including two different pairs of goals in essentially a minute of each other.

And it was almost all self-inflicted wounds.

The collapse started with an inexplicable Taylor Hall turnover in the neutral zone, right out of the penalty kill to start the third period.

He left a blind drop pass, that immediately was picked off by Florida, who went the other way and scored.

Then it was just mistake after mistake as the Hurricanes just mentally folded.

"Just to turn pucks over... it’s not what we do," said Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour. "No one does that. I think that… everyone was just pretty surprised. You know what I mean? You just can’t do it and you can’t do it at anytime. Preseason game, it’s going to cost you, but against that team? And you turn it over for an odd-man rush? Forget it. And we know that. That was really demoralizing because we know the margins are tight."

The Hurricanes lost their composure, again, and that was if they even had any in this series to begin with.

The Canes are a veteran team and all year we've seen them stay composed in tough ruts or games, but through three games, we've seen none of that.

Carolina has fallen apart game after game in the Eastern Conference Final and now they're on the verge of elimination at the hands of the Panthers yet again.

They need everyone pulling on the rope if they want to be successful. They're not talented enough to just wing it, but some of the veteran players, some of the players the team counts on the most, just simply aren't carrying their weight.

"The four rookies in the lineup can't be some of your better players," Brind'Amour said. "That can't happen. There's a couple guys in there that I don't think came to play the way they needed to at this time of year. It can't be Jordan Staal and Martinook being our best players. That can't always be that way. And they are every night. We needed more out of some guys."

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