Late charge by Blackhawks not enough in sloppy loss to Canes

Maybe it was tired legs.

Or perhaps it was a team riding a four-game winning streak that was a bit too confident.

Whatever it was, the Blackhawks looked completely out of sorts during the first two periods against Carolina at the United Center on Tuesday.

And it ended up costing them, as the Hurricanes raced to a 3-0 lead in less than 32 minutes, then survived a frantic comeback effort to post a 4-2 victory.

"I guess your bound to have a game like that where (we) play a lot of games, (have) a lot of travel, all those things," said captain Jonathan Toews after the Hawks fell to 9-8-4. "You've got to find ways to get your energy from the get-go even if you're not feeling it 100 percent."

Especially against a dangerous, high-octane team like Carolina that is happy to pounce on the smallest of mistakes - let alone the massive one that led to a 2-on-0 breakaway and the Hurricanes' first goal.

After the Hawks' Erik Gustafsson fell down at the defensive blue line, Duncan Keith jumped in to try and pry the puck loose, but it squirted directly to Nino Niederreiter. Six seconds later, Martin Necas completed a gorgeous back-and-forth passing play to make it 1-0 at 14:24 of the first period.

A bad second-period change led to Carolina's second goal by Andrei Svechnikov. After snaring a 110-foot stretch pass from Jaccob Slavin, Svechnikov, drove into the offensive zone and fired a shot that deflected off Brent Seabrook's stick and past Robin Lehner just 53 seconds into the period.

"A goal like that cast a big shadow," said Lehner, who finished with 29 saves. "It looks bad. It is bad. Starting with the direction of it, it's a high shot and I go with it with my blocker and it dives down. It's a bad goal, but it's a little bit unlucky at the same time."

Gustafsson and Connor Murphy breathed plenty of life into the Hawks by scoring 70 seconds apart at 12:05 and 13:15 of the third period to make it 3-2. Patrick Kane, who turned 31 Tuesday, assisted on both goals to push his point streak to 10 games.

The Hawks' furious push continued after that with:

• Toews nearly tying it moments after Murphy's tally.

• Dominik Kubalik getting a great look at the goal mouth during a power-play chance that generated 9 shot attempts.

• Kane almost pulling off an incredible move through traffic, only to get denied at the last moment by Mrazek's right leg with 3:14 remaining.

Carolina, which has won four straight and is now 13-7-1, put the game away on an empty netter by Sebastian Aho with 17.6 seconds remaining.

"Two bad periods, one good one," Lehner said. "We've been playing pretty good. Just gotta go win the next one. Don't lose two in a row. We're fine. We're fine. Everyone's just got to be a little bit better."

Especially against Steven Stamkos and the Tampa Bay Lightning, which invades the United Center on Thursday.

"I liked that we showed some fight in the third and we got going and put a scare into them," Colliton said. "But it's frustrating because we showed that was a winnable game ... if we turned on a little bit earlier.

"We've had a good stretch (of games) and that was a setback. Now we've got to respond on Thursday."