In Pittsburgh, Curtis McElhinney made 23 saves for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 4-0 win over the Penguins.
“No complaints. I’ll never complain about a shutout,” McElhinney said. “So it’s nice to get a lead on the road, especially against a good team like Pittsburgh. … I probably should’ve taken the extra week. I was originally hurt around Christmas time. So this worked out pretty well. It was nice to get two weeks. Body feels great. It was nice to get a few practices in before this game.”
The Pens have lost six of their last nine matches and dropped to 28-19-6.
“When we’re at our best in the offensive zone, we stay close and support one another in the battles and on the 50-50s,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “When there’s 50-50 pucks or there’s not a lot of ice to play on, you need a third stick. You’ve got to stay close. … I didn’t think, tonight, there was a circumstance where we were under siege. There wasn’t an exorbitant amount of shots being taken.
“We’ve got to find a way to score. We’ve got to find a way to make it hard on their team defense by having more offensive zone time.”
Jordan Martinook, Brett Pesce, Micheal Ferland and Andrei Svechnikov were the strikers for the Canes who improved to 11-4-1 in their last 16 games.
“To come out and kind of play the exact style we need to play to be successful is definitely nice to see,” Martinook said. “For [McElhinney] to come back in and play phenomenal just adds to our confidence of our goaltenders. That was a complete win and I think everybody should be pretty happy about that.”
[WATCH: All Hurricanes vs. Penguins highlights]
Matt Murray made 28 saves in the loss.
“We have to play 60 minutes,” Kris Letang said. “We have to be invested with 20 guys. … We had good shifts, and after that, they had good shifts. So it’s just a question of sustaining the attack, sustaining our momentum.”
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