Bruins drop Game 2 to the Hurricanes
Allow close game to get away from them
The Bruins gave the impression that they’d left their round-robin blues behind them with their Game 1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday, but bad habits die hard apparently.
After being clearly the better team on Wednesday, they were not that on Thursday and they paid for it with a 3-2 loss that they let get away from them in the second and third periods.
Former Bruin Dougie Hamilton blasted a slapper past Tuukka Rask at 8:30 of the third period and the Canes held off a furious Bruins push at the end to hang on and tie the series 1-1. Game 3 is set for noon on Saturday.
For a brief second early in the third it appeared as the Canes broke the 2-2 tie at 3:26 of the third when the puck ended up behind Rask as he knocked it in with his own right leg in a net-front scramble. But referee Wes McCauley immediately waved it off for goalie interference on Teuvo Teravainen, who made a lot of contact with Rask. Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour for the second day in a row challenged the call and for the second time was denied, picking up a minor penalty for his trouble.
The B’s, however, could not cash in on the powerplay, and then the Canes took the lead for real at 8:30. In one of a string of sloppy shifts for the B’s, Martin Necas picked up a loose puck in the left corner was able to cut behind the net before feeding an oncoming Hamilton. The ex-Bruin stepped into the slapper and blew it past Rask’s glove for the lead.
Coach Bruce Cassidy thought the Bruins should have gotten the puck out of the defensive zone.
“You’ve got to punt in those situations and live to fight another day,” said Cassidy. “You’ve got to clear the zone.”
The night started on a disconcerting note for the Bruins when it was announced that Rocket Richard co-winner, David Pastrnak, was termed “unfit to participate” and was unavailable to play.
That required Anders Bjork to move up to Pastrnak’s spot on the top line and Karson Kuhlman was added to the lineup taking Bjork’s right wing spot on the third line.
“We don’t believe it will be long-term. It’s a day-to-day thing we hope. Obviously we’re targeting Saturday at noon,” said Cassidy, who said that without a morning skate it will probably go down to a game-time decision.
The B’s got better as the first period wore on and took a 1-0 lead on their first power-play goal since arriving in Toronto. Ondrej Kase, who continued to have the puck on a string, drew a stick foul on Brad Skjei and Pastrnak’s replacement on first unit scored his second goal of the series.
With a stickless Jordan Staal defending in front of him, David Krejci moved left to right out high, faking a couple of shots before finding a clear shooting lane. His long, hard wrister beat James Reimer at 15:41.
They flurried for the rest of the period, but could not build on the lead before the period was out, and that was unfortunate.
For in the second period, the Canes took over the game and, eventually the lead.
It started off with the B’s making some unforced errors in their own zone, with both Torey Krug and Brandon Carlo throwing some careless passes into the middle and Zdeno Chara fighting the puck. The Canes started to get traction on a 4-on-4 and kept it going when the teams got back to full strength.
With the B’s scrambling in their own zone, Chris Wagner was called for an elbowing that neither he nor Cassidy liked too much. And the Canes made them pay when Teravainen sniped a power-play at 15:13 from the inside of the right circle that beat Rask to the blocker side.
Then Carolina got another one of their young stars going just 1:28 later when Andrei Svechnikov took a feed from Necas in the slot and wasted no time in snapping it over Rask’s shoulder.
That finally got the B’s attention and they then went back on the attack. After a great chance from the slot, Krug was heading back to the blue line when he appeared to trip himself up over Teravainen’s leg. Teravainen may have nudged the leg out just a hair, maybe not, but Brind’Amour, already tagged with a $25,000 fine for his rant about the officials on Wednesday, threw his hands up in disgust on the bench.
And with 4.4 seconds left in the period, they evened it up with their second PP goal of the game when Brad Marchand roofed a rebound of a Patrice Bergeron shot to send it into the third deadlocked at 2-2.