Canes rally past Tampa Bay for OT win

In Raleigh on Sunday, the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning built a 3-1 lead in the first period over the Carolina Hurricanes.

The problem for the Lightning was, the game had another 40 minutes of regulation and two minutes of extra time.

The Hurricanes posted a goal in each period including overtime to rally for a 4-3 win over the Bolts.

Jaccob Slavin completed the rally with a strike at 1:53 of the extra session.

“We got a pretty clean 2-on-1,” Slavin said. “Honestly, I just tried to hit the net. I let it rip as hard as I can.”

Petr Mrazek made 10 saves, yes the Lightning had a total of 13 shots on goal.

“We just gave up too many easy ones,” Brind’Amour said. “It felt like the rest of the game, we took that part out of it.”

Tyler Johnson, Steve Stamkos and Kevin Shattenkirk scored for the Lighting after the Canes had taken an early 1-0 lead in the fist period.

“Today was a [terrible] game for us,” Stamkos said. “Unless we change things, it’s going to be a really, really long year. We rely so much on our goaltending and our power play and the passing. It’s three games into the season, that’s the good news. There’s lots of times to correct these things. I don’t want to get too down, but it’s frustrating knowing the group we have in here and we keep continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.”

The Canes improved to 3-0-0.

“When you have to rely on everyone to have a good game, to dig in and come back, it’s not ideal,” Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “But everyone’s contributing and they’re giving you what they can. It’s a good start for us.”

Erik Haula, Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce also scored for Carolina.

“We don’t quit. It’s the same mentality we had last year. We didn’t play it for 60 minutes (tonight), so we had to come back,” Hamilton said. “but if you can play that way consistently through the whole game, it’s pretty hard to beat us.”

[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Hurricanes highlights]

Curtis McElhinney made 40 saves in taking the loss against his former team.

“It was the Curtis McElhinney show,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “He was the one guy who really showed up in the last two-thirds of the game. It’s too bad we didn’t play better in front of him.