Carolina scores two goals late to knock off Penguins
Pittsburgh led 1-0 until the final 1:10 of regulation.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- For more than 58 minutes, the Carolina Hurricanes played for new coach Peter Laviolette like they played for his predecessor Paul Maurice.
Rod Brind'Amour and Jeff O'Neill put an end to that.
Brind'Amour scored with 1 minute, 10 seconds remaining in regulation and O'Neill nailed his first game-winner halfway through overtime of a 2-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday night.
"We had to start thinking, 'Here we go again,' " O'Neill said. "But we said before the game we were finally going to get some results for our work."
Laviolette, who replaced Maurice on Monday, promised an up-tempo system that would produce more scoring and exciting action.
Shots advantage
But the lowest scoring team in the NHL couldn't muster a goal against the worst defensive team in the league -- despite finishing with a 34-11 advantage in shots -- until Brind'Amour broke his 14-game scoring slump. And that didn't come until 15 seconds after Kevin Weekes left the Carolina net for an extra attacker with 1:10 to go.
While change on the ice may come slow under a new coach, there was a major addition in the Carolina locker room.
Laviolette placed a board with the Eastern Conference standings on a wall the players pass en route to the ice.
The goal is obvious for a team that started the game 13th in the East.
"He put it up to know where we stand on a day-to-day basis," Weekes said. "Still, a lot of factors are within our control."
Game-winner
O'Neill, who hadn't scored in a month, scored halfway through the overtime period after taking a pass from Ron Francis on a two-on-one to score his first goal in 13 games.
"That's usually how those things happen," Francis said. "You struggle, struggle, struggle and then all of the sudden you get an opportunity and now he gets that monkey off his back."
As usual, Carolina had numerous chances, especially early in the third when Pittsburgh's Aleksey Morozov took a four-minute, high-sticking penalty 25 seconds in.
But the Hurricanes managed just three shots, and a minute later Eric Staal hit the crossbar.
Sebastien Caron then robbed the Carolina rookie with a glove save with 4:16 remaining as he broke through two Pittsburgh defensemen before Brind'Amour's goal.
"It was wave after wave, they just kept coming," Pittsburgh's Ryan Malone said of Carolina's offense. "It was one of those games where we were just chasing the puck around. We were lucky to get a point."
Konstantin Koltsov scored in consecutive games for the first time this season when he turned a Carolina turnover into an easy goal with 5:19 remaining in the first.
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