Against a lesser team, the Canes slow start followed by a mini-surge might have been enough to get to overtime to steal a point and play 5 minutes plus a possible skills competition for the 2nd point. But against the Pens, all a little flurry of scoring did was wake the bear. When the Pens reawoke after the Gerbe goal, the Canes had no answer. The key is to learn a little and quickly move on to the next game. Many a team will leave Pittsburgh with 0 points, so while it is a bit of a wake up call, it is not that big of a setback in the bigger picture.

I was most curious to see the Canes defense against elite NHL scorers and minus the ability to strategically pick matchups and situations. It looked better than last March or April but still dicey at times.

--The 1st Jokinen goal came when Dwyer and JStaal got caught deep on the penalty kill trying too hard to make something out of nothing 2v3. They busted their butts to recover well and JStaal even got a piece of the pass, but it just was not a good decision to push forward 2v3 shorthanded with that crew on the ice. At the point where Crosby, Kunitz and Jokinen enter the zone with speed and a man advantage, it just too often ends badly like this time.

--On the Martin goal, none of Bellemore, Semin, Staal or Ward seemed to react to the lively rebound off the end boards. Any 1 of them could probably have thwarted the chance.

--After Cam Ward offered as good of a 30-second goaltending flurry as you will see all year, Murphy missed an assignment that saw Glass walk right past him for an easy tap in around Ward.

On the player note front, there were positives:

--Justin Faulk. He continues to play well, and I think his skating ability is rounding into form. He had a couple heady shots into traffic. He continues to take steps toward representing our country in the Olympics with this 1 being bigger than most with Bylsma on the opposing bench. Sekera also continues to play well.

--Nathan Gerbe. I am starting to really like his game. He had another goal and scored it by going to the front of the net which is obviously a good thing. But what impresses me most is his consistent motor. If some players played games like him, people might comment about how they were flying that game. He just always is. He is a noticeable puck hound and hard-working skater for 40-45 seconds every single time he comes over the boards.

--Heady shooting from up top. The Canes D had a very good game throwing pucks at the net and within range of Canes forwards. EStaal’s goal was a great individual effort but also a heady shot by Faulk to put the puck where he had a chance. Faulk also had a few other similar shot attempts. I think it was Harrison who gave JStaal a real good chance to score a similar goal. And Gerbe’s goal came after Sekera stepped past a shot blocker to make a lane to throw a bad angle shot to a good place likely to result in a rebound which it did.

--Drayson Bowman. Good for him rising to the occasion and providing a bit of a spark when moved up to the top line. Against a lesser team, I might have been writing a blog about how he helped jumpstart the team to steal a point in the standings.

--The Ward flurry. He was okay not great overall, but that 30-second flurry when the team really needed it to stay close in the 3rd was utterly spectacular.

--Room for Ruutu. After 1 loss, it is not that it is time to chuck anyone under the bus, but the pause in the good start does make a better entry point for inserting Ruutu if he is ready.

And as is always the case in a 5-2 loss also negatives:

--Eric Staal. While I think breaking onto the score sheet was important and it did yield a bit of a surge afterward, I did not think his game was very good overall in a game where you would hope he could rise up and match or nearly match the star centers on the other bench. Whereas Malkin and Crosby were a factor all night, Staal managed only a spark here and there. It was also he and Semin who got caught standing around a bit on the Martin goal when neither went to the puck or the guy retrieving it.

--Jordan Staal. He just was not nearly as good as the 1st 2 games.

--Jussi Jokinen gift. He managed a hat trick and was only a post away from 4 goals. I would love to hear the whimper in Rutherford’s voice if he was asked about that trade. As much as Pittsburgh is up against the salary cap and heading toward the same division the next season, it still boggles my mind why you would send a very versatile skilled player with offensive upside to a future division rival for nothing and eat a chunk of the salary to help solve their salary cap issues with adding wings on the cheap in the process. Who would Schero have filled that spot with for $2M had Rutherford not so generously helped out?

--The dot. The Canes managed only 38% faceoff percentage with the bottom 2 centers really struggling with Sutter winning 2 of 11 and Nash 3 of 10 which makes for a lot of time chasing the puck against a team that is pretty good at keeping it.

--Ryan Murphy continues to look mostly capable of handling the speed of the game, pressure, etc. carrying the puck. Even when he has turned it over, he seems to have decent judgment to avoid the big oops that Corvo struggled with some nights. But he struggled in this game with positional stuff and sorting things out. The Glass goal saw him walk right past Murphy with the puck after earlier having Kobasew bounce off a hip check and walk right off the end boards to in front of Ward.

Most important for the Canes is to move forward. Sometimes good teams make you look bad. The Pens are a good team. They were better than the Canes on Tuesday. The Pens are very likely better than the Canes over the course of the regular season once they get healthy. Both of those things are okay. The Canes are trying to beat 8 teams out of 16 in Eastern Conference to win a playoff spot. Pittsburgh probably is not 1 of them. Washington who the Canes see in 2 days could be.

Next up is Ovechkin and company. A win makes for a very successful 2 points in games for the first road trip. It will be interesting to see if he is available if Muller just inserts him somewhere or does a bit bigger reshuffling after the team's first loss. If I wanted to experiment a bit, I think I would try Skinner/Lindholm/Ruutu. Timing is decent because that gets a bigger body who can skate on that line for Ovechkin. And while I generally like Nash's game, at least theoretically Lindholm should provide more offensive upside with 15ish minutes of ice time.

Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63

Go Canes!

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