Canes Rally to Tank the Sharks!!

Coming off a heart-wrenching loss to Vancouver on Tuesday night, the Hurricanes faced a stern test Thursday night at the Shark Tank in San Jose. Captain Rod Brind A'mour was back in Raleigh with a "lower body injury", rumored to be a groin. Jakub Petruzalek got the call up from Albany for his 1st NHL game. Michael Leighton got the start in goal for the first time in 17 games (a bit of a surprise move if you ask me). The Sharks were in a foul mood coming off a rare home loss. Not exactly the recipe for success if you are a Hurricanes fan.

But the Canes played a gritty hard nosed road game, keeping things simple and coming away with an unlikely 4-3 shoot out win over one of the NHL's top teams. The Canes came back from deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 in the second period, and played the entire third period without Eric Staal ("lower body injury") to force overtime. After a scoreless five minutes of overtime, Tuomo Ruutu and Sergei Samsonov tallied for the Hurricanes while Michael Leighton stopped 2 of 3 from the Sharks. A tremendous win for the Canes, picking up 2 points to stay just one point behind the Florida Panthers for the 8th and final playoff spot in the Eastern conference.

The Sharks led 1-0 after the first period on a goal by Ryane Clowe at the 12:33 mark.
It was a hard fought first period from both teams as the Sharks came out strong, and the Hurricanes tried to keep things simple and clamp down on defense. Leighton was challenged early but stood his ground well, showing little rust from more than month of bench time. The Canes seemed to get their legs around the 10 minute mark of the first, and even though they trailed heading into the first intermission, the men in the white sweaters had to feel good about their overall effort.

San Jose grabbed the momentum early in the second on a goal by Alexi Semenov at the 3:10 mark. It was Semenov's first goal in 46 games - deflecting off Anton Babchuk at the top of the circle and catching Leighton leaning the wrong way. Things did not look too good for the road team at this point. But Matt Cullen got the scoring started on a penalty shot 5 minutes into the period to give the Cane's life. Marc-Edouard Vlasic extended Sharks' lead to 3-1 with a power play goal less than 3 minutes later. Still the Canes would not go away. At the 14:50 mark of the second, Sergei Samsonov found the back of the net off of a great hustle play and beautiful feed from Petruzalek to make it a game again heading into the third. The assist was Petruzalek's first NHL point.

Both teams played it pretty close to the vest early in the third, with the Canes shuffling lines to make up for the loss of Staal. Seven and half minutes into the third Matt Cullen struck again, this time with a dazzling feed to Ray Whitney. Whitney tied the score with his 17th goal of the season.

From there both teams had chances, with Sharks' goalie Evgeni Nabakov making at least 3 stellar saves and the Canes defense playing strong in front of Leighton with several key blocked shots, helping keep the high powered San Jose offense off the board in the period.

Overall a gritty, hard fought team win. One that was sorely needed after the point given away in Vancouver. On this night the Cane's secured that point and then were able to steal a 2nd point in the shootout. Now they head into Phoenix on Saturday night against a Coyotes team that has lost 5 straight and will have the opportunity to salvage a key road trip that got off to a brutal start. The team showed character and drive to step up and take two points from a team the caliber of the Sharks. Let's hope that Staal's injury is not serious (John Forsland commented during the broadcast that Staal wanted to come out for the third, but the team sat him as a precaution) and the Hurricanes can harness a little momentum and bring it back home to Carolina.

-m