The Carolina Hurricanes lost their second straight game to go past regulation, falling 2-1 to the Washington Capitals Sunday night at PNC Arena.
Game Recap: Carolina Hurricanes Can't Get Enough Bounces, Lose 2-1 in Shootout to Washington Capitals
Sebastian Aho scored the lone goal for the Canes and Pyotr Kochetkov stopped 20 shots in the win.
After the game, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour along with Aho and Seth Jarvis spoke with the media. Here's what they had to say.
Rod Brind'Amour
On the game: We did everything we wanted to do, we just didn't score. If I look back at that game, we knew coming exactly how it was going to go just based on how they've played all year. They've played tight, tight games and I thought we stuck to our game plan really well, hit a few goal posts. So a few inches here or there, it could be a much different story. Overall I liked it.
On Pyotr Kochetkov: He was really good. Had to make a couple of big ones and he did. Allowed us to just keep playing and gave us a great chance to win.
On the power play: Early it was good and then the last one wasn't great. Hit the goal post on one too, so again, it's been tough. I thought tonight was a real solid game. I liked it. We just lost a skills competition tonight.
On Jordan Staal: When you see a guy coming off with blood coming out and everything, that's not good. But it was good to see him get back.
On the Captials' OT strategy of reloading constantly: They're the one team that does that a lot. Our games are not quite like that. Normally, if you watch overtime, almost every game that we've had has been really exciting and you really wouldn't want to change a thing. I get where fans are like, 'Argh,' but that's part of their strategy. Shootouts are a big deal for them so they're not too concerned if it goes there. I'm okay with it.
On Evgeny Kuznetsov in the shootout: He's the best one there is. Gotta give him credit. Tip your hat.
On the power play not converting to start the third period: That one was tough because we did hit a goal post and then we had a couple of other good chances. Pesce came down and ripped one off the post there. So it just wasn't our night to get the win, but I loved how we played tonight.
On Frederik Andersen being cleared to skate: A month is a long time and he hasn't played. If we get cleared and he's ready to go that'll be a good day, but that's a long time away.
On Antti Raanta's reassignment to the AHL: Just a little reboot for him might be good. The good news is that he's still around essentially. I think he just needed to recharge and refocus. We know what he's capable of.
Sebastian Aho
On the team getting back to their style of play: I felt that at 5v5 we were fine. We created enough scoring chances obviously and they played a really good game defensively. So they made it a tight, hard-fought game. Obviously, in this kind of game, a power play goal would have been a game changer. There's some good things. Scored a goal off a turnover, hit a couple posts and all that kind of stuff. It wasn't all bad, but obviously scoring a power play goal gives us an edge tonight.
On Pyotr Kochetkov: He's been good. Real solid. Obviously we're going to need him moving forward.
On the game: I think the effort was there. The 5v5 game, like I said, was good enough to win this hockey game obviously. You wish you could score on a few more of those chances. I don't think the power play was that bad, but obviously you just gotta score in this game.
On the Capitals' overtime strategy: I mean, when you have puck possession, you can do what you want with the puck. It's on them. I don't know how they end up with the puck, but that's how it goes. Whoever has the puck controls the OT and controls the game anyways. I don't really have anything to comment on with that.
On Jordan Staal being cut by a skate blade: You never want to see anything like that, but from what I saw and heard, he's fine. So that's good for him and us.
On preparing for Tuesday's game against the Vegas Golden Knights: Another huge game for us. Just the normal stuff. Going to practice tomorrow, go over this game, try to take a couple of learners and some good things and move on. Obviously if you want to be a champ you got to beat the champ. So it's a big one for us.
Seth Jarvis
On it being a hard-fought game: I thought we did pretty good. Lost though, so you can only say so much. But at 5v5 we did pretty good. Power play wasn't good. PK did well. But yeah, still lost.
On the power play goal being disallowed: We just have to forget about it and move on past it. We had plenty more power plays, plenty more chances and we didn't capitalize.
On Pyotr Kochetkov: [Kochetkov] did great. Sucks we couldn't bail him out in the shootout, but he did a fantastic job of even getting us there.
On getting back to their game since the road trip: I don't think we could have gotten worse from the start of that road trip, so it's nice to see improvement. Nice to finally be in games and make them competitive again. We still have a lot of room to grow and a lot of stuff to figure out.
On Antti Raanta's reassignment: It's a tough business, but everyone loves Rants in here. He's one of the best guys I've ever met. A great goalie too. So to see that go down... like I said, it's a business and you have to move past it. He's going to be really missed whatever happens with him. But I know for a fact that everyone in here loved him.
On moving on: Just forget about it, I guess. I mean we did good things, so we'll build off that, but we have the defending champs coming in and an opportunity to do something good.
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