The Carolina Hurricanes lost to the Winnipeg Jets 5-3 Saturday afternoon despite leading 3-0 after 40 minutes of play.
Martin Necas, Teuvo Teravainen and Sebastian Aho all scored for Carolina within a nine minute span in the second period, but then the Canes gave up three goals in the opening six minutes of the third before surrendering the game-winner with under five minutes to go.
After the game, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour along with Jordan Staal and Aho spoke with the media. Here's what they had to say:
Rod Brind'Amour
On the third period unraveling: The first goal shouldn't have gone in, but it does. Then the second one, Pesce was coming back to the bench for a stick because he lost his and then his guy goes to the net. Every goal there was some silly thing we did. You play good teams that's what they're going to do. They're going to capitalize and that's what happened.
On Pyotr Kochetkov: He had a tough night, let's be honest. He's been so good and we love his aggressiveness because that's part of his routine, but it was maybe not the time to do that. Still, why are we giving that little rush chance? Made a mistake in the o-zone jumping out. Shouldn't do that. Every goal there was a reason for it and like I said, you play a good team and they're going to make you pay.
On if he felt the whistles went away in the third: I don't know. That's not... yeah. I think we've had 13 games in row where we haven't had more power plays than the other team, but you can't take o-zone penalties. That's the story for me. We take too many o-zone penalties and they scored on that power play even though we should have had it out three times. You're not going to be able to do that against good teams and we obviously saw that.
On what he said to the team during the timeout: What do you say? We already said it two minutes before we went out there. Be ready, they're going to come. It's human nature. We were just trying to stop the bleeding but clearly that didn't work.
On if this game is a wakeup call: There's no such thing as an easy game. We had a tough month. We just played a boatload of really top-end teams and managed to do pretty well, but now you look to turn the page and have a whole bunch more coming. It's not a wakeup call. We know how we messed this game up, it just can't happen.
Jordan Staal
On the third period unraveling: It was definitely a meltdown in the third period. A bit embarrassing... really embarrassing. We have to give ourselves a squeeze and man up and start playing hockey. We kind of just sat back and hoped it wasn't going to go the way it was going and it did. It was ugly. Really just one ugly period and they capitalized on every single chance they had.
On the start of the third period: I don't know what it was. It just ended up in the back of the net. We were clearly out to lunch there and especially my line. It wasn't pretty.
On the officiating: We took one too many penalties tonight. Whether they were good calls or not, that's the way they were calling them tonight. A lot of cheesy ones but we had the game in the bag. I don't think it was the refs, we just didn't execute in the third. We just kind of thought it was going to be easy. Give them credit, they made a push and every shot just ended up going in. That's all she wrote.
Sebastian Aho
On if the team got complacent and thought it would be easy after two periods: If it was, that's a brutal way to think. I don't think that was the mindset at all. Bad period by us. They got kind of lucky on the first goal and got momentum. After those goals, you have to do whatever you can to kill their momentum and we weren't able to do that. Got out of our hands.
On the amount of penalties becoming an issue: You can't expect to kill, I don't even know, 10 penalties a night. Just have to be better there.
On the message to the team during the timeout: Just reset. You want to try to kill their momentum and that's part of it. Just a little extra whistle and 30 seconds to regroup. We were up a goal at that point, so it's not a big deal, it happens. They have guys that can score too, but it was a response after those two goals to try and get the momentum back to us.