RALEIGH, N.C. -- Carolina Hurricanes' coaches and players across the board were searching their memory banks Tuesday night to recall a more wild, high-scoring hockey game in their careers.

"I haven't seen it at this level, I can tell you that," Carolina coach Bill Peters said of his team's 8-6 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night, a game in which each team had four-goal outbursts and Carolina scored six third-period goals.

"It was 1987, a 9-8 win against the Czechs in the Viking Cup. That's the last time I've seen that. It was crazy and I'll give our guys all the credit in the world."

Jeff Skinner, Ron Hainsey, Victor Rask and Justin Faulk scored in a span of 4:40 early in the third period as the Hurricanes erased a three-goal deficit en route to their seventh straight home win. It was Carolina's first eight-goal game since April, 2010.

"You don't see an 8-6 game very often in the NHL or any league, maybe in the Austrian League when I played in Europe," said Derek Ryan, one of four Carolina players to log three-point nights. "To battle it out and get two points that's the biggest thing, right?"

Both goalies -- Carolina's Cam Ward in the second and Vancouver's Ryan Miller early in the third -- were pulled in favor of backups during each team's offensive outbursts.

Jordan Staal, back in the lineup after missing seven games with a concussion, scored the game-winner with 7:22 left. But it wasn't without some drama down the stretch as former Hurricanes center Brandon Sutter scored his seventh of the season with 5:50 left and the NHL's No. 1 penalty kill unit had to survive a late power-play by the Canucks.

"You don't like to be shorthanded, especially late in the game, but the way the kill has been going everybody was fine," Faulk said. "We basically thought it was just going to kill two more minutes of the game and get us that much closer to the win."

Lee Stempniak scored an empty net goal with 57.6 seconds to end Carolina's six-goal period -- the seventh different goal scorer for the Hurricanes.

"You can start to feel the buzz in the building, feel the fans starting to get into it and the guys started feeling confident and the other team starts to tense up," Staal said of the Carolina comeback. "It's tough. Throughout my career I've been on both sides of them. When there is blood in the water sometimes teams keep coming. That's what we tried to do; we keep feeding off the momentum. It was a lot of fun."

Carolina (12-11-6) has now won eight of its first 11 at PNC Arena this season and snapped a seven-game winless streak against the Canucks which dated to December 2011.

Heading into the game the Hurricanes had scored just 19 goals in the third period in 28 games. This one produced six.

Meanwhile, the Canucks (12-16-2) have lost an NHL worst 11 games on the road and ended their five-game East Coast road trip 1-4, including losing three straight while allowing 15 goals.

Miller, coming off an ankle injury that sidelined him for two games, couldn't hold a three-goal cushion as Skinner started the third-period rally with his second power-play goal of the game 1:16 into the period to make it 5-3 and give the Hurricanes some life.

Hainsey, Rask and Faulk then added goals 1:42 apart to give the Hurricanes the lead.

"I don't know if we got rattled," said Vancouver coach Willie Desjardins. "They have a pretty good power play and you don't want to give up that early one to get them excited and get them going. The next goal was just a shot from the point that found its way in and then all of the sudden they got lots of momentum."

The Canucks trailed 2-1 after 20 minutes but owned the second period, chasing Ward -- off to the best start of his 12-year career -- early in the second. Goals by Alexandre Burrows and Markus Granlund 1:13 apart gave Vancouver a 3-2 advantage as the Hurricanes' defense was outworked and Ward was caught deep in his net on both goals.

Ward was replaced by Michael Leighton, but the Canucks continued their offensive showcase, getting two more against the Carolina backup, including Ben Hutton's fourth after a turnover by Stempniak in the high slot, and Sven Baertschi's second of the game as a Carolina power play expired. The left winger took a nifty centering pass from Henrik Sedin for a three-goal cushion entering the third.

The two teams traded goals two minutes apart early in the first period with Carolina's Sebastian Aho and Baertschi each recording their fifth goals of the season before Skinner notched his team-leading 10th on a power play midway through the period as the Hurricanes grabbed a 2-1 lead.

NOTES: The Canucks beat the Hurricanes 4-3 on Oct. 16 as part of a season-opening four-game winning streak. ... Since Nov. 8, Cam Ward has started in net in 16 of 18 games for Carolina. ... Ward came into the game with a 2-5-2 record and 3.33 goals against average in his career against Vancouver. ... Canucks C Brandon Sutter was Carolina's first round selection in 2007 (11th overall) and was traded to Pittsburgh as part of the Staal deal in June, 2012.