The Carolina Hurricanes lost 3-2 in the shootout to the Buffalo Sabres Sunday evening at KeyBank Center.

The Hurricanes held the lead twice, with Tony DeAngelo and Martin Necas scoring the team's only two goals, but the team just couldn't hold on.

Spencer Martin stopped 30 of 32 as he backstopped Carolina to at least a point.

After the game, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour along with Jordan Staal and Necas spoke with the media. Here's what they had to say:

Rod Brind'Amour

On the game: Well, we were pretty awful, to be quite honest. I kind of knew this was going to happen. We were mentally not there and that's what happens when you have a tough schedule and three [games] in four nights with the travel. I could just feel it on the bench in everything. We were just not sharp. Thankfully, the one guy that's been rested, [Spencer] Martin, was the difference tonight. He got us a point because we were not good tonight.

On the effort: We were trying. You could see it, but when you're not engaged like you need to be, that's how it looks. It was bad. And we still had a chance to win, which I don't know how, but you see the mental mistakes on the tying goal... it's just not how we play. Just throwing pucks around, not getting it out, careless kind of hockey. It was tough to watch.

On the power play: The other group [PP1] was just winging it and that doesn't work, as you saw, so I put the other group [PP2] out there and they did it how they're supposed to. They got a good chance and scored a goal. That's what I meant, tonight we were just off. Like I said, [Martin] was not. He was on and thankfully got us a point.

On the offensive difficulty as of late: They're trying to be cute. We had four odd-man rushes and didn't get a shot on net because we overpass, overpass, overpass. Same thing the other night. We're falling into that trap a little bit where we want to get on the highlight reel. That's not working out too well for us. Teams go through this and we've managed to get some points out of these games. We have to be better.

Jordan Staal

On the game: It wasn't great. There wasn't really anyone who showed up and played well besides [Martin]. I thought we'd have a little push in the third and it only got worse. Fortunate to get a point. We'll move on from here.

On the offensive difficulties: It's our mentality. We're not shooting enough. We're trying to look for a pretty pass or a pretty play and a lot of times, the best play is just ripping it on net and creating chaos that way. Especially on our rush chances. In the offensive zone, we've done a good job of trying to get to the net. Obviously there's been a lot of teams that play us that block a lot, but we still have to find ways to pull the trigger and just create more volume.

On any positive takeaways: I mean, the power play had a big goal for us. [Martin] played really well. We'll build off of that, I guess.

Martin Necas

On the offensive struggles: We haven't really produced much lately, to be honest, at 5v5. It feels like we're not playing much in their end. We don't get enough shots. We haven't created enough offense, but it starts with good defense. Obviously we have two more games on this road trip and we have to be much better at that. Wasn't great.

On the power play: We haven't had many power plays lately. On our second unit, we got the chance to go first and it was nice movement with me, [Teuvo Teravainen] and [Brady Skjei], then a great screen by [Stefan] Noesen. Obviously it's good to get power play goals, but 5v5 has to be much better.

On what needs to be different in the offensive zone: Definitely getting more on net. Sometimes teams change their play a little bit and have more layers of blockers, so we just have to figure out the ways to get pucks to the net. I feel like that's the most important thing because once it gets blocked all the grinding kind of goes away. But we haven't gotten much o-zone time lately and that's what needs to be changed.

On finding the balance between shooting and passing: When you play in their zone for a bit, even if the shot gets blocked, usually we get on the puck first, but we didn't create much zone time to do that. If it's just one shot, it goes away. We have to roll them and once we do that, teams get tired and they make mistakes and we capitalize on that