Hurricanes' Conference Final Losing Streak Continues

It would be an understatement to say that the Carolina Hurricanes didn't start the Eastern Conference Final the way they wanted to.

Despite having home ice and being the more rested team, the Hurricanes were run out of their own building Tuesday night in a 5-2 loss to the Florida Panthers. Pretty much nothing went right for the Hurricanes in this game. They missed prime scoring opportunities, they badly lost the special teams battle, and goaltender Frederik Andersen, who had been so dominant throughout the postseason, had easily his worst game of the playoffs.

To add insult to injury, the loss continued an extremely troubling trend for Carolina.

The Hurricanes have now lost 13 straight games in the conference final dating back to 2009. They were swept by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009, the Boston Bruins in 2019 and the Panthers in 2023.

Their last conference final win came in Game 7 against the Buffalo Sabres on June 1, 2006, when Rod Brind'Amour, who's now in his seventh season as the Hurricanes' head coach, scored the game-winning goal. If that, and the fact that the Sabres were deep in the playoffs, doesn't put that streak into perspective, then there's also the fact that this game took place a week before the original "Cars" movie released in theaters.

"We've got to learn from it," Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said, per NHL.com. "Obviously, it wasn't good enough. There's little things that we need to do better. Special teams is always big. The kill hasn't let a couple in in a while and that hurt us tonight. The power play had some good looks but can always get one to help us get some momentum. They played a good game. We've got to be better, obviously. That's a good team. We'll learn from our mistakes and try to find some edges so we can have a better result."

While it also marks the Hurricanes' fifth-straight playoff loss to the Panthers, this game was very different from anything in that 2023 series. All four games in that series were decided by one goal, with two of them ending in overtime - including a marathon of a Game 1 that needed four overtimes - and a third featuring a game-winning goal with less than five seconds left in regulation. This game, however, wasn't even close.

The Hurricanes need to figure out whatever is holding them back in the third round, or this is going to be another very quick series.