In Raleigh, the beleaguered Los Angeles Kings entered their match with the Hurricanes on Monday riding an eight-game skid.
The Kings scored four times in the third period after skating to a 1-1 tie through the first 40 minutes of the game.
Phillip Danault scored 61 seconds into the third period to give the Kings a 2-1 lead.
“There wasn’t one key to what happened,” McLellan said. “[The goals] all came in different forms. I can’t say there was a trend or we made an adjustment. It was just playing the game. I thought we went to the net hard when there was stuff laying around, and we got rewarded for it.”
Alex Laferriere extended the advantage to 3-1 at 2:21 from down low off a wrister.
“I think relief is a word you would hear from a lot of guys,” Los Angeles coach Todd McLellan said. “But I would rather choose reward because we did do a lot of things the right way, and we have on this trip. That’s a good sign for us. A lot of energy and emotion went into that game for us.”
There was a Pierre-Luc Dubois sighting i the game, his goal at 5:20 made it 4-1.
“This team knows how to come back,” Dubois said. “There’s going to be adversity, and adversity is great for a team. Obviously you don’t want to lose eight in a row, but this is a resilient group.”
The Hurricanes dropped to 24-14-5.
“We had a few bad shifts,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Then it was boom, boom, boom, in the net and the game was over. That’s what happens when you play a good team. There wasn’t going to be much. We needed to capitalize on the ones we [had]. We didn’t.”
LA took a 1-0 lead in the opening stanza on a marker from Trevor Moore at 6:24.
“It felt like we’ve been playing [well] in a lot of the games over the last stretch,” Moore said. “But we put the puck in the net tonight, which is huge. It feels good.”
Carolina tied in the middle frame on a strike by Jordan Martinook at 5:38.
“The jump coming out of the intermission wasn’t there,” Martinook said. “After that, I felt like we were pushing, but you’re almost out of it. Tough one, that’s for sure.”
Jack Drury stopped the third period run by the Kings when he struck with 11 minutes left on the regulation clock for a 4-2 count on the scoreboard.
Moore collected a double at 18:44 when he scored a shorthanded goal into an empty net for the 5-2 final count on the scoreboard.
Antti Raanta got the start for the Canes, he yielded four and made 20 saves before getting the hook at 5:20 of the final frame.
Yaniv Perets made one save in relief, it was his NHL debut.
“It wasn’t a terrible game,” Brind’Amour said. “It was just we had those couple lapses. That’s what it does in this league.”