B’s-Canes opener postponed till today
Marathon matinee pushes Game 1 to this morning
Everyone knew that this 24-team Stanley Cup tournament would be unlike anything any of us had ever experienced in hockey.
But on the first day of the playoffs, things got even weirder than expected.
Because the first game of the day at Scotiabank Arena between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets, which began at 3:09 p.m., pushed into a fifth overtime and was still going over six hours later, Game 1 for the Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., was postponed till 11 a.m. today. Brayden Point finally won it for Tampa in the the fifth OT, but by then the decision to postpone had already been made.
Bruins’ coach Bruce Cassidy believes the league made the right decision to postpone. And the bubble set-up does provide the league with some flexibility to adjust when things don’t go according to script.
“It’s obviously strange to wait that long and then to find out you may or may not play, then you start thinking ‘Well, is it productive to play at 10 o’clock at night?’” said Cassidy. “You start thinking about the safety of the players, the ice conditions, a number of things. Having said that, what are the options to not play? (Wednesday) there’s two scheduled games already tomorrow at 3 and 8. It comes out of your hands anyway. As a coach, you’re just thinking how are you going to prepare your players who’ve been sitting around that long. That’s a tough one to answer because you typically don’t go through that, especially the goaltenders. They’re dialed in all day, so it would have been tough on Tuukka (Rask) and (Petr) Mrazek for sure.”
Cassidy and his coaches have been given one of the bunker suites at Scotiabank Arena which are under the lower bowl and across the hall from the locker rooms, and he and his staff watched the Tampa-Columbus game — the 4thlongest game in history — as they tried to stay out of the way of the participants coming and going in what sounds like a pretty congested area with four teams in close proximity.
Cassidy started getting updates about contingency plans after either the first or second overtime before the plug was finally pulled when the Jackets and Bolts could not decide a winner in the fourth overtime. As much as he thought it was the right decision, it wasn’t easy to decompress after all the preparation.
“It’s tough because we want to play,” said Cassidy. “Coming out of the round robin, we feel that this is what we were getting ready for all season to be honest. This didn’t just happen last week. This started back in October that we were preparing for building our game toward having another playoff run. We put that out there openly. We called it unfinished business. So now we’ve done the prep work the last 10 days plus the two weeks at Warrior. We were ready to get going. It’s 16 teams left and it’s best of seven, your traditional playoffs. Disappointing we didn’t get to play (Tuesday), but once the night drags on, players start thinking ‘Are we going to play? Is this really happening?’ So 11 o’clock (Wednesday), we’ll have the same emotion there. I really believe that. And I think Carolina will be the same.”
Now the B’s will be playing on back-to-back days, with the morning affair today and another 8 p.m. start on Thursday night. Games 5 and 6 were scheduled for consecutive nights and Cassidy was already thinking about utilizing Jaroslav Halak somewhere in that situation. Now Halak could make an earlier appearance in this series.
“We’re going to let the game play out first,” said Cassidy. “The good news about the back-to-back is there’s a day and half. Not quite, but it’s an 11 o’clock game and 8 o’clock game, so there’s a little more rest than typical, no travel involved. It may depend on the work load of Tuukka. We’ll discuss it with him. We’re very comfortable with both goaltenders.”