Outplayed and outmuscled, Hurricanes need to find their edge on the Bruins.
Turns out the Boston Bruins’ championship window is still open, even without Tuukka Rask.
Looks like the Carolina Hurricanes’ championship window might not be open yet, even if they’re getting closer.
It’s all too clear through three games of this first-round series that the Bruins are the better team. That was true in the regular season. That remains true in the postseason.
Things don’t always work out that way in the playoffs, but it takes some other intervening force to make the expected balance of power veer into the unknown, whether that’s injuries or matchups or style or leadership or special teams or one unstoppable line or one unbeatable goaltender.
This series is hardly lopsided, just 2-1 with each game within a goal in the final minute, but it’s all trending the wrong way for Carolina. The Hurricanes may have exorcised the demons of last year’s sweep in their Game 2 win, but the present is proving to be an equally sticky proposition.
There isn’t an element of this series where the Bruins don’t have the edge over the Hurricanes, save one: age. But the Hurricanes haven’t even looked like the fresher team in this series and will now have to play on for the foreseeable future, however long that is, without their brightest young star.
If the Hurricanes are going to turn this series around, and there’s certainly still time even without Andrei Svechnikov, they’re going to have to find some new dimension to their game, and it isn’t as simple as better goaltending, which is often the answer. As good as Petr Mrazek has been, James Reimer has been even better in his two starts. Hoping he becomes absolutely impenetrable may be their only shot.
Mrazek more or less did that against the Washington Capitals a year ago, holding off Alex Ovechkin and company long enough for a young team to find its footing, but what the Hurricanes really had over the Capitals, even in the games they lost, was energy and enthusiasm, against a team still mentally weary from a long (and successful) playoff run a year earlier. They wanted it more.
There hasn’t been enough of that against the Bruins, even in their Game 2 win. The Hurricanes were at their best and still had to scrap and scrape and claw for everything on the ice that night, and even then it came down to a single goal (and some crazy late scrambling from Reimer). In Game 3, once the Bruins pushed, they tumbled.
“We didn’t respond to adversity with urgency,” Hurricanes defenseman Hadyn Fleury said. “I didn’t think our urgency was where it needed to be in the second period. We had a really good first and as soon as they scored the goal, it took the wind out of our sails. We didn’t have that urgent push we needed.”
The Hurricanes haven’t been able to get an edge on the power play, they’re not more skilled, they’re not bigger or tougher, they’re getting beaten to the front of both nets and they can’t count on getting a fair shake from the officials, who keep missing by-the-book, no-crap, must-call penalties on the Bruins, never mind the numbers racket that is the NHL goal review process.
The Bruins have dictated play, dominated the ice, kept the Hurricanes from getting to their forechecking game. How have they done it? Superior talent. Superior strength. Superior depth. Superior effort. Superior snidery.
The Bruins lost their Vezina Trophy finalist goalie for good and the NHL’s co-leading goal-scorer for two games (and counting) and haven’t missed a step, while Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour acknowledged after Saturday’s 3-1 loss in Game 3 that the Hurricanes “need everyone on board.”
That should at worst be a midseason lament, never an April-slash-August lament. Maybe the Hurricanes can get away with that against an inferior opponent like the New York Rangers, who wouldn’t even have been a playoff team in a normal, 16-team postseason, but it’s not going to work against the best team in the NHL.
“That team’s too good,” Brind’Amour said. “If you give them an inch, they’re taking a mile.”
If the Hurricanes are going to turn this series around, they’re going to have to dip deep into their bag of tricks and deep into their souls. They have to find something new to break through the Bruins, some advantage they can leverage into breaking open this series and turning the tide. They haven’t gotten there yet.
