ATLANTA (AP) -- Considering his awful start, Arturs Irbe was delighted with the outcome.

The Carolina goalie gave up a goal 35 seconds into the game, but earned the victory when the Hurricanes rallied for a 4-2 win over the Atlanta Thrashers.

	Atlanta's Jason Botterill fights off Sami Kapanen's stick Saturday during the Hurricanes' 4-2 win over the Thrashers. Kapanen scored the winning goal.

"First shot, first goal -- that's no good," said Irbe, who made 24 saves but faced only three shots in the third period. "It's a game of 60 minutes. It's a game of mistakes. But it's not the way you start. It's the way you finish."

Ron Francis, Sami Kapanen and Paul Ranheim each had a goal and an assist as Carolina broke a four-game road losing streak.

Kapanen scored the game-winner 6:08 into the third period with a wrist shot on the stick side of Atlanta goalie Scott Fankhouser. Standing just outside the crease, Kapanen took a pass from Francis to score his team-high 15th goal.

"We tried it earlier, but this one worked," Francis said in describing the give-and-go play. "Sami made a good play. He kind of hesitated and froze the D on that side. I knew what he was doing and once he dropped it to me, he did a great job of sliding through them and getting himself back open.

"He was wide open, and it was just a matter of getting it back to him."

Francis, who increased his team-points lead to 33, gave the Hurricanes a 2-1 lead with his 10th goal. Francis scored 4:11 into the second by knocking in a rebound of Kapanen's wraparound shot.

"It was not a pretty game," Kapanen said. "But we got two points (in the standings) and that's all that counts."

Ranheim forged a 1-1 tie at the 13:02 mark of the first with a shot from the top of the left circle. He was also credited with an assist on Robert Kron's shot from the top of the right circle when the Hurricanes went up 4-2 with 8:43 left to play.

The Hurricanes won for the second time since rallying from a two-goal deficit in the first period to beat Atlanta 4-2 on Dec. 18.

The Thrashers, who dropped to an league-worst 8-25-4, had only three shots in the third period on Irbe, who raised his record to 12-12-7.

"We're going through a pretty rough stretch right now," said Atlanta coach Curt Fraser, whose club is 1-10-2 in 13 games. "Every time we play a team with speed, and we've said it 100 times, it gives us all kinds of problems. Our D-zone coverage -- we work on it every day, and we still have breakdowns."

Fankhouser, a rookie making his second career start, fell to 0-2-1 after stopping 25 shots.

Nelson Emerson gave Atlanta a 1-0 lead with a shot from the top of the right circle. Ray Ferraro tied it 2-2 when he scored while standing in the crease at 12:44 of the second.

But the final period only resulted in three Atlanta shots as Andreas Karlsson, Yannick Tremblay and Ed Ward all missed.

"They don't finish up well, but when we get into third periods like that with a 2-2 tie, we have to find a way to energize ourselves and win that game," Fraser said.