This wasn't the Avalanche's best game and it would have been nice to have gotten at least a point, but give Carolina some credit. The Hurricanes played well Tuesday night, especially in the first period and for a good portion of the second in a 2-1 win at PNC Arena in Raleigh.
The trick now for the Avalanche is to rebound from the first road loss of the season Thursday in St. Louis, where the Blues are coming off a 3-2 overtime loss to Phoenix and are 7-1-2 at home.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov did his job with 26 saves and by keeping the Avalanche in the game after Carolina jumped to a 2-0 lead on a first-period goal by Jordan Staal and one by Patrick Dwyer 26 seconds into the second period. Limit a team to two goals, particularly on the road, and you'll win almost every time.
The Dwyer-Staal-Nathan Gerbe line accounted for two goals, four assists, eight shots and was a combined plus-6.
"They played well, I have to give it to them," Avalanche coach Patrick Roy said of Carolina. "They played really well at the start of the game. They were skating well and I thought we tried maybe to be a little too perfect. They had a great transition going on. The second half of the game was ours. We buzzed a lot around their net and we just didn't execute around that net. I thought we had a lot of chances."
The Avalanche outshot Carolina 28-17 over the final two periods after getting outshot 11-5 in the first period. Ryan O'Reilly shot one off the post early and Gabriel Landeskog did the same in the second period.
Kind of a rough night for the O'Reilly-Matt Duchene-PA Parenteau line, which was a combined minus-6. The Nick Holden-Nate Guenin defense pairing also was on the ice for both Canes goals.
Duchene has been the team's best player -- one of the best in the NHL -- and he had five shots Tuesday. But aside from being minus-2 he also lost 13 of 20 faceoffs.
Rookie Nathan MacKinnon set up Paul Stastny's power-play goal at 14:34 of the second period and finished with a season-high nine shots on goal. MacKinnon could use more help from his linemates, though I don't know how much you can really expect from John Mitchell and Max Talbot, the latter of whom is more of a defensive guy.
Stastny has six goals and three assists in the past eight games, with seven goals and four assists in the past 11 games.
Give Roy props for taking a chance in the final 31.6 seconds after Erik Johnson was assessed a holding penalty. He pulled Varlamov for a sixth skater even though the faceoff was in the Avalanche end. Duchene stood in the crease until after the draw and the Avalanche eventually wound up with a three-on-two rush and a pretty good scoring chance.
"We finished the game strong," Roy said. "We played well enough to win. Unfortunately, it was not on our side."
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Jean-Sebastien Giguere is scheduled to start in goal for Thursday's game against the Blues, which will be the Avalanche's biggest test yet. Giguere has an impressive career record against St. Louis, going 16-8-3 with a 2.42 goals-against average and three shutouts.