RALEIGH — The Hurricanes doubled up the Wild in shots, but Kirill Kaprizov had his third career hat trick to lead Minnesota to a 5-2 win Sunday at PNC Arena.
Martin Necas and Michael Bunting scored for Carolina, and Antti Raanta stopped 14 of 17 shots to lose for the eighth time in his career against the Wild, the most defeats he has against any team in the league.
Three observations
1. Bunting tied the game at 8:17 of the third, seemingly giving Carolina momentum, but it was quickly taken away on the next shift.
The Hurricanes dumped the puck into the Minnesota end on the ensuing faceoff and started their cycle. Dmitry Orlov pinched down, and Brendan Lemieux covered at the point.
Orlov won a board battle and backhanded the puck back to Lemieux, but the puck bounced over his stick and left the zone. Lemieux retrieved the puck at center ice but then turned it over. The Wild had a chance in front that Raanta stopped, and Lemieux collected the rebound and started to skate the puck out of the zone. Instead, he had the puck stolen from behind by Marcus Foligno. That led to Joel Eriksson Ek tying the game on a scrum in the crease.
“This is the NHL,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said of the turnovers after the game. “You can’t do it.”
2. Necas scored for the second straight game since returning from an upper-body injury to give Carolina a 1-0 lead in a dominant first period.
Orlov started the sequence by kicking the puck to hold the blue line. Jack Drury collected it and passed to Stefan Noesen, who dished back across the grain to Necas for his 11th goal of the season with just under 6 minutes left in the first period.
Necas was also on the ice for just one high-danger chance against — he is last among Carolina’s forwards in allowed on-ice high-danger chances at 2.83 per game.
It was another step forward for Necas in a season that didn’t go his way in the first half.
3. The Hurricanes’ power play went 0 for 4, including misfiring — both figuratively and literally; Brent Burns had two shots from the high slot that went wide — on their final chance when down a goal after Brock Faber was called for tripping Jesperi Kotkaniemi with 5:42 left in regulation.
“I thought we had a lot of Grade-A’s,” Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho said of the team’s power play. “I felt, especially the first two power plays, we had a lot of them. You score one of those and it’s a whole ’nother story.
“Even the last one we had Grade-A’s. Some other nights we’ve been scoring on those looks. You just can’t get too frustrated and you just try to keep working on it, and I’m sure that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”
Kaprizov finished off his hat trick about two minutes later with the first of two empty-net goals by the Wild.
Number to know
3-0 — Lemieux’s night at the faceoff dot. He came into the game 0 for 7 on the season.
Plus
Michael Bunting, Hurricanes forward — Bunting’s 10th goal of the season tied the game briefly in the third period, and his six shots were the most he’s had since joining the Hurricanes in the summer. He now has 30 points on the season and is quietly on pace for 56 points.
Minus
Brendan Lemieux, Hurricanes forward — See above. Lemieux was inserted into the lineup because Andrei Svechnikov was a late scratch with an upper-body injury.
They said it
“I think this is a good learner for us, and as long as we get better and learn from this, it’ll be good.”
— Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho
