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Brind'Amour scores in third period to lift Hurricanes

Nov 16, 2006 - 2:41 AM RALEIGH, North Carolina (Ticker) -- Rod Brind'Amour and the Carolina Hurricanes rang four shots off the goalpost against the New York Rangers, but only the last one did them any good.

Brind'Amour scored the go-ahead goal with just over six minutes remaining to lift the Hurricanes to a 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers.

Brind'Amour snapped a 1-1 with with 6:05 left when he took a pass from Justin Williams in the low slot and fired a shot off the goalpost past New York goaltender Kevin Weekes' blocker.

"We lost the faceoff," Brind'Amour said. "But I got a good read, a good shot and was able to get it by Weeksy (Weekes). You know he's going to go down. The shot went exactly where it needed to. So I'll take it."

"It was a really, really good shot," New York's John Cullen said. "(Brind'Amour) was out really far. He got up high in the slot and made a perfect shot."

Brind'Amour has eight goals and 18 assists in 20 games this season

"He's playing great," Hurricanes coach Peter Laviolette said of Brind'Amour. "Offensively, he's on top of his game. He's in great shape for having to go through as long a year as he did. Night in and night out, all the minutes that are asked of him. It's been terrific."

Earlier, the Hurricanes had hit three posts but had nothing to show for it.

"That's the way it goes," the Rangers' Jaromir Jagr said. "We cannot complain, because one night you get lucky and sometimes you get this."

After Craig Adams gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 2:51 of the first period, New York tied the game on Jagr's power-play goal.

Jagr took a pass from Brendan Shanahan and one-timed a shot from the top of the faceoff circle between the legs of Carolina goaltender Cam Ward at 16:02 of the second period.

It was the 559th career goal for Jagr, who tallied twice in a 26-second span in Tuesday's 3-2 victory over New Jersey.

Jagr, who has 29, points, entered as the second-leading scorer in the league, trailing only Atlanta's Marian Hossa, who has 30 points.

Ward finished with 23 saves for the Hurricanes, who won for the fourth time in six games.

"He had a lot of shots, especially early on," Laviolette said. "Sometimes you see the puck leave the stick and you know it's labeled for a corner. You're just hoping your goalie sees it, and at the last second he kicked out a pad or he got a glove on it. He made a couple of difficult saves that went under the radar. I thought he was really sharp."

The Hurricanes, who surrendered a season-high seven goals in a 7-4 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Monday, improved to 4-1-1 in their last six games.

New York coach Tom Renney was happy with his club, who rallied with three goals in 1:30 to defeat the Devils on Tuesday.

"When we fell behind 1-0, I thought this will be really interesting and how we choose to deal with this," Renney said. "The bench was excellent, real supportive, identifying the proper things in the game to get some ice back and put some pressure on them. As it went on, we really believed we were going to win the game."