COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Carolina Hurricanes had blown a 3-0 lead and were dealing with heavy, weary legs after playing for the third time in four nights, including two road games on opposites sides of the country.

"The momentum was gone," Carolina center Jordan Staal said. "You're doing everything you can to get it back. And once you get to overtime, it's a clean slate. It's anybody's game."

Staal scored at 2:45 of overtime to secure a 4-3 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday in Nationwide Arena.

He poked the puck around Blue Jackets left wing Brandon Saad in the Carolina end, skated the length of the ice and beat Blue Jackets rookie goaltender Joonas Korpisalo with a wrist shot.

Style points? Zero. Standings points? Two. Or is it four. The Hurricanes swept the weekend home-and-home against the last place Blue Jackets.

"We'll take the four points and move on," Hurricanes coach Bill Peters said. "We were playing the right way early in the game, moving the puck paying attention to detail. Our shift length was right where we needed it to be.

"But then we made it harder than we needed to. They started to believe. They fed off it. We let them hang around and they made it hard on us."

Center Andrej Nestrasil, right winger Kris Versteeg and defenseman John-Michael Liles also scored for the Hurricanes, while goaltender Cam Ward finished with 21 saves.

The win improved Carolina's record to 5-2-2 over the last nine games.

Right winger Cam Atkinson, center Alexander Wennberg and rookie right winger Josh Anderson scored for the Blue Jackets, while Korpisalo had 26 saves.

The Blue Jackets, who trailed 3-0 midway through the second period, have lost six of their last eight games (2-5-1), including three in a row (0-2-1).

"We have to stay positive here while we grind away," Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. "I see a lot of good things from the kids (in our lineup). In the third period we started making plays. I appreciate that we battled back."

Carolina took a 1-0 lead on the power play at 10:09 of the first period. Center Elias Lindholm, who had two goals on Friday, fired a cross-zone feed that Nestrasil one-timed for his fifth goal of the season.

The Hurricanes threatened to run away with it in the second period.

At 1:27, Versteeg scored his sixth goal of the season off the rush. Versteeg was trying to dangle the puck in front of Korpisalo, but lost possession of the puck as he came out of the right circle.

No matter. The pick skidded innocently through Korpisalo's pads and into the net.

At 7:32, the lead grew to 3-0 when Liles -- pinching deep off the rush -- fired home a rebound over Korpisalo's extended right pad.

Columbus cut the deficit to 3-1 when Atkinson recorded the fourth short-handed goal of his career, scoring at 15:28 of the second period.

After that, the momentum seemed to gradually tilt toward the Blue Jackets, with a hard tilt in the third period.

"We kept fighting," Blue Jackets center Brandon Dubinsky said. "We found a way to get a point. Obviously we needed to get two."

Only 10 seconds after a power play expired, Wennberg split the Hurricanes defense for a clean shot at Ward. When his first shot was partially stopped, Wennberg reached behind Ward at net front to bury it, making it 3-2.

It paid off at 11:54 of third, when rookie left winger Kerby Rychel made a soft pass across the goal mouth to Anderson for an easy goal, the first of his NHL career.

The Blue Jackets, however, found a way to lose again. Despite the point, the Blue Jackets remained in last place in the NHL's overall standings, and they drifted nine points behind the Hurricanes in last place of the Metropolitan Division.

NOTES: The Blue Jackets will be without captain Nick Foligno for at least a week after he was hit by Carolina C Brad Malone early in the third period of Friday's game. Foligno was placed on injured reserve Saturday with what the club termed an "upper-body" injury. ... Malone avoided supplemental punishment from the NHL's department of player safety, which ruled that his left shoulder struck Foligno's right shoulder, not his head. ... The Blue Jackets recalled RW Kerby Rychel from Lake Erie of the American Hockey League on Saturday to take Foligno's spot in the lineup. Rychel requested a trade over the summer, and has spent most of this season in the AHL.