Hurricanes double up on Senators, 6-3

Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network

OTTAWA, ONTARIO – The Carolina Hurricanes topped the Ottawa Senators 6-3 at Canadian Tire Centre on Monday.

Led by Andrej Nestrasil’s three-point (1 goal, 2 assists) performance, six different Carolina scorers doubled the output of the host Senators.

Jeff Skinner, Nathan Gerbe, Jay McClement, Michal Jordan and Chris Terry all followed suit to support goaltender Cam Ward’s 29-save effort to earn the win.

Carolina outshot Ottawa 36-32.

Erik Condra, Mike Hoffman, and Cody Ceci scored for Ottawa (22-23-10) while netminders Robin Lehner (27 saves, 4 goals against), the starter, and Andrew Hammond (3 saves, 2 goals against) split time in the loss.

“We needed to come out and play a strong game and I thought we did that,” Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters said.

After both teams skated to a 1-1 tie following the first period, Carolina (20-28-7) gained the advantage during the second as Skinner, Gerbe, and McClement scored to carry a 4-3 lead after 40 minutes.

“I thought we tightened up a little bit,” Peters continued.

“I thought we were generating lots of chances through 40, but I thought we were giving up too much, and their D were active. Ceci was active, Karlsson was active – no surprise there. I thought we did a better job handling their active D.”

Carolina’s final two goals in the third period, from Jordan and Terry respectively, came with the man-advantage, and along with Skinner’s goal, completed a 3-for-5 effort on the power play.

“They shot the puck,” Peters said of what worked with the advantage on special teams.

“I just thought fundamentally they did good things on the power play.”

The win split the Hurricanes’ short two-game road trip after falling to the Minnesota Wild 6-3 on Saturday.

Carolina returned home to prepare to face the New York Islanders and finish their back-to-back set on Tuesday.

Notes: Carolina is now 10-5-3 in 2015 – 3-2-1 in February…Jordan’s goal was his first career NHL tally…Skinner extended his current points streak to three games (3 goals).

Boxscore: Carolina 6, Ottawa 3