As he stood behind the visitor bench at KeyBank Center, Rod Brind'Amour knew that his team was going to be in trouble.

After playing less than 24 hours earlier — a  2-1 loss to the Dallas Stars that ended around 10:30 EST — the Carolina Hurricanes just didn't have the mental energy to match a well-rested Buffalo Sabres team.

"I kind of knew this was going to happen," Brind'Amour said. "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"

The Hurricanes, who were winners of four straight before before dropping the latest two, didn't arrive in Buffalo until 1:39 in the morning and it was obvious the team was running on fumes.

"We were trying," Brind'Amour said. "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."

Despite that, the Canes (mostly Spencer Martin) managed to steal a point and take the game all the way to a shootout, before going 0-for-4 and ultimately losing 3-2.

It was another solid performance for Martin, who has yet to lose in regulation since the Hurricanes picked him up off of waivers back in January.

"Thankfully, the one guy that's been rested, [Spencer] Martin, was the difference tonight," Brind'Amour said. "He got us a point because we were not good tonight."

Martin stopped 30 of 32 in the loss, including the first three shots in the shootout, and now has a 3-0-1 record and a 0.925 save percentage with the Hurricanes.

"There wasn't really anyone who showed up and played well besides [Martin]," said captain Jordan Staal.

While Martin was the beacon of hope in the game for Carolina, the offense was the beacon of despair.

The Canes have scored just four goals in their last three games combined.

"They're trying to be cute," Brind'Amour said on the offensive struggles. "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."

Early on, it didn't seem like Carolina was going to struggle much as the Hurricanes got the game's first goal just 2:40 into the contest with Tony DeAngelo depositing a tic-tac-toe feed from the Canes' second line past Sabres' netminder Ukko-Pekka Luukkanen.

However, that's when the dry spell really started to hit. Even with 32 shots on goal by the end of the night, Carolina didn't feel it really got the puck to the net enough.

"It's our mentality," Staal said. "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."

"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," Necas said.

The lack of truly dangerous offensive generation allowed Buffalo to get back into the game and the Sabres tied it in the second period with Jeff Skinner depositing a rebound past Martin on the power play.

Carolina would manage to push back ahead with a power-play tally of their own late in the third period as Martin Necas ripped a one-timer through as Stefan Noesen executed a perfect drive-by screen.

"We haven't had many power plays lately (Since the All-Star break, Carolina has drawn the least amount of power plays per game in the entire league at just 2.10 per game)," Necas said. "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."

The second unit started the second power play after the first unit wasted the majority of the first one.

"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," Brind'Amour said. "They got a good chance and scored a goal. 

However, the mental mistakes and fatigue cost Carolina as just 1:13 after the go-ahead goal, the Sabres tied it back up as Owen Power was left unmarked in the slot.

It was an especially bad game for Carolina's top line in that regard as both Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov were noticeably off.

Eventually the game went to a shootout and Casey Mittelstadt scored the lone goal in the fourth round to win it.

Right before that though, Teravainen had a chance to end it in the 3-spot, but his backhand attempt struck the post after he had Luukkonen down and out.

Even if they didn't have it, they still almost stole it and that's why it's not time to panic about Carolina.