Carolina’s Jordan Martinook has his shot blocked by Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark in the second period of Monday night’s playoff game in Raleigh, N.C. Ullmark will start Game 2 for Boston Wednesday night. Karl B DeBlaker/Associated Press
The bad news from the Bruins’ 5-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes Monday night was self-evident. The end result was yet another loss to a hungry, surging team that has now established the fact that it has Boston’s number.
The good news?
There is indeed a silver lining if you want to look hard enough for it. For the first time in four games against the Canes, the Bruins were able to control play for some decent stretches throughout the game. They could have, and probably should have taken the first lead in the game when they pounced on the Canes in the first 10 minutes. And even when they fell behind 2-0, they controlled play early in the third period and came within inches of tying it up on a Taylor Hall shot before Matt Grzelcyk’s unsuccessful pinch led to Teuvo Teravainen’s two-on-one goal that put the Canes back in charge.
But the Bruins could make their lives a lot easier if they could land the figurative first punch. In four games, they have not held the lead against Carolina this year. And the Canes are not a team you want to be chasing. They feast on desperation, as their plus-45 third period goal differential indicates.
“We’ve got to finish early (on Wednesday),” said Coach Bruce Cassidy after a fairly extensive practice at PNC Arena on Tuesday. “In a perfect world, we finish early. Let’s get a lead. See how that goes for us. We haven’t had a lead against this hockey club. Finish one of those ones early. How do we do that? Bear down a little bit more, make sure we hit the net when we do have chances when we have guys going there. Don’t be off-net. I thought there was some rebounds (Monday) night. (Goalie Antti Raanta) probably hadn’t seen a lot of action and that’s what happens when they don’t play for a while. They lose a bit of their rebound control and maybe their puck play. Let’s make sure we take advantage of that.”
Carolina Coach Rod Brind’Amour was rejecting a lot of the happy talk surrounding the Canes’ opening win. He knows Raanta helped his team dodge a big bullet early on, even if it looked like Raanta was barely hanging on at times.
“The first 10 minutes was not pretty,” said Brind’Amour. “But how did we get through it? The goalie made the saves. That’s the difference-maker, always, in hockey. Your goalie can make your game look really good for you and vice versa. He was good, he was on it and we were able to at least kind of get going. It would have been a different story if we’re chasing the game. It’s much different.”
CASSIDY WILL go with the same lineup for Game 2, including returning Linus Ullmark to the net. But he is making one tweak, flipping Matt Grzelcyk up to play with Charlie McAvoy and having Hampus Lindholm play with Brandon Carlo. Part of that strategy, as Cassidy explained, is to get more playing time out of Lindholm. He played 22:52 on Monday.
“I just thought Griz and Carlo had a bit of a challenging night,” said Cassidy. “We’ve talked about using Lindholm with Carlo at times as well. It also allows you in-game to put Lindholm and McAvoy together maybe after (Derek) Forbort and (Connor) Clifton have gone over, so you can still keep them as a pair. When they’re always together, they’re together and that’s it. So it might up Lindy’s minutes a little bit in certain situations, it’s that time of year. He looks healthy. So there’s a little bit of that involved. He can still go back to the other pairing…Griz has played a lot of hockey with McAvoy, they’re a good pair, so no concerns there for me for that chemistry.”
When Lindholm was with McAvoy, the upside was that it freed up one of them to join the attack, usually McAvoy. On the Bruins’ lone goal on Monday, McAvoy was behind the Carolina net and won a battle that led to Hall’s goal. With the new pairs, it puts a “one-man breakout” on both pairs. We’ll find out which approach is the better one.
When the Bruins obtained Lindholm, the plan was to try him with both McAvoy and Carlo. But because Lindholm got injured and missed seven games, they haven’t played that much together.
“We haven’t had many games or shifts together, but just watching him from the bench and just over the past couple of years, he’s a guy that I have a lot of respect for in his game,” said Carlo. “I feel I’m pretty familiar with how he plays the game from watching him. The biggest thing for us will be communication and just using our big bodies and our long sticks to keep things to the outside and go from there and continue to build chemistry.”
THE THIRD line of Trent Frederic, Charlie Coyle and Craig Smith got better as Game 1 went on, but they struggled mightily in the early going, especially Frederic in trying to break out pucks, But for a while now, the unit has not had the same oomph that it had when it was first put together.
“We just have to be hard on the puck and win our battles,” said Coyle. “I think a little tighter support all over the ice, especially breaking out. They do a good job of being over and initiating right away. There’s not a lot of time and space, so we have to support better, just talk and play down there. I think we have lot play with it more in their zone and make them work and wear them down that way. That’s our game. That’s how we get into the game and when we start feeling good, playing off the shot and we’ll see what happens. We were inches off on a couple of chances and opportunities early on. We convert on those and it could be a completely different story, but it’s not and that’s where we are now.”…
CASSIDY ON his decision to go back with Ullmark as opposed to rookie Jeremy Swayman: “He had a great run here coming into the playoffs and we’re not going to judge him on one game. First playoff game, there’s a bunch of different things that go into that. But at the end of the day, he’s going back in and hopefully he’s the better goaltender. That’s how it works this time of year.”
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