After Game 1 rout, solution for Game 2 is simple: Scoring
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Bruins have some fixing to do, and in a hurry, after a 5-1 loss Monday night to the Hurricanes in their postseason First Night.
Once again, much to the frustration of the Bruins, the Canes were faster, more opportunistic, and much better at figuring out the basic objective of the sport: Generating ways to put the puck in the net.
Through four games this season, the Canes have outscored the Bruins, 21-2. No one has had the Bruins’ number this season like them.
The distant sons of the Hartford “Forever .500” Whalers yet again scored first, and yet again never allowed the Bruins as much as one second of lead time.
So, the quick, short list of “fix its” prior to Game 2 here on Wednesday: Better action around the offensive net.
The list doesn’t end there, but it was clearly the No. 1 problem. The one they fix or go home.
This is not a total shots issue. If that were the metric, the Bruins would be OK. They outshot the Canes, 36-25, but it did not translate to the scoreboard.
In fact, with 12:36 gone in the first, the Bruins landed their 14th shot on Canes backup Antti Raanta, while the Canes had placed only four on Linus Ullmark. Had they been able to keep up that kind of attack, perhaps by just sheer volume of shots, the outcome might have been different. Perhaps.
But the speedy Canes did not allow the Bruins another shot the remainder of the first. Then they struck for their two goals late in the second — 2:10 apart, by Seth Jarvis and Nino Niederreiter — with Ullmark having little chance of stopping either.
Jarvis made a tip near the right post on a Jaccob Slavin shot fired toward net from above the right-wing circle. Ullmark then didn’t get eyes on the Niederreiter shot from above the left-wing circle, with Jordan Staal and Martin Necas each parked near the top of the crease.
As is so often the case at this time of year, they were not great scoring chances. But they turned into great
goals — and a 1-0 advantage in the series.
“If you’re standing in front, and the puck’s not arriving there, it’s pretty easy for them to push you out of the way,” said Taylor Hall, who had the lone Bruins goal. “So if we can get a guy there, and he gets pushed out of the way, and then another guy comes in and creates a hard setup for them to pick up in their D zone . . . it’s about hanging around there. I saw a lot of pucks that were really close to going in . . . can we get a guy there . . . can we get a guy that stays there?”
Long ago, in a boisterous league that no longer exists, the post-game talk for the Bruins would have been how to generate traffic by racing a forward or two, sometimes all three, into the crease and roughing up the goalie.
If said goalie got knocked dizzy, well, too bad . . . but that was the plan. Games and series could turn on knocking the goalie for a loop.
Such tactics in today’s NHL would lead to nothing other than power plays. Not to mention maybe a hearing with Player Safety and possible supplemental discipline.
The Bruins have to figure an alternative method, which is to say they have to copy the Canes. They proved in Game 1, just by virtue of their total shots, they can get in there. Now, they have to find better ways to cash in those chances.
It will means screens, tips, and better retrievals of the few rebounds that Raanta makes available. They need to be quicker, smarter, more calculated and efficient with their chances.
“They’re like us,” noted coach Bruce Cassidy, encouraged by some of what he saw from his club. “Not many plays are going into the slot uncontested. We got Hall’s goal because we won the battle below the goal line [Charlie Mcavoy and Erik Haula digging back there]. So we have to choose when to get pucks in there . . . when to funnel them, some action like that.”