Couldn’t have been an uglier start to the home schedule, blowing a 3-0 lead. You just got the feeling when Tampa Bay killed off the two-man advantage that the game was going to be over, end of story. But Matt Carle takes a penalty just after that expires, and you just knew Carolina was going to score on the power play. Sure enough they did and carried that momentum into the third as the Hurricanes outshot Tampa Bay 20-2!!!!!! and eventually won the game in overtime.

In the words of David Byrne and Talking Heads - Same as it ever was!!!

Some postgame comments:
“When you take a two-goal lead into the third period, that should be good enough. We have a two-goal lead in the third period and we go out and we just stop working. We stopped doing the things we were doing in the first two periods. That’s the gist of it. Two periods, we played pretty good, created some penalties because we were skating, and then all of a sudden, they get one more and they get one at the start of the third and we quit doing the things we talked about.’’ - Barry Melrose

“That third period we just got after them and attacked and attacked, and that’s the type of game we play, and that’s the type of game we need to play for a full 60 minutes.’’ - Carolina center Eric Staal.

And one thing I wanted to end off the night with, Steven Stamkos played just 6:05 of ice time and only took two shifts in the second period. Melrose said that Stamkos - along with Evgeny Artyukhin and Gary Roberts - were lost in the special teams shuffle. Since those three don’t take regular shifts on either the power play or the penalty kill, they wind up sitting on the bench for long stretches of time.

Oh, and one more thing, Melrose wasn’t going to throw Matt Carle under the bus, even though he took the penalty late in the second and early in the third that game Carolina life and he got beat to a loose puck in overtime that led to a 2-on-1 on the game-winner.

“Matt was trying to make a play, he was trying to do something,” Melrose said. “For most of the third period, nobody wanted the puck, at least he was trying to do something, so there’s a lot more blame to throw around than just on Matty Carle.”