‘Hungry’ Hurricanes sweep away bad memories in another big win over the Boston Bruins
The Boston Bruins, playing shorthanded, must have decided that roughhouse hockey was their best chance Thursday against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Bruins were missing their captain, Patrice Bergeron, out with a head injury. They were without winger Brad Marchand, suspended six games by the NHL for losing his cool and striking Pittsburgh goalie Tristan Jarry.
So, rough it was. Physical. Bodies were flying. Fists were flying.
But the Canes have proven they’re not a team that can be pushed around— and certainly not by the Bruins. The Canes took Boston’s best shots while taking a 6-0 victory at TD Garden to complete a season sweep of the three-game series.
“It seems this team, wherever the game goes, whatever way, it seems like we’re pretty much capable of playing that way,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “I don’t think it caught us by surprise. They’re missing their two top guys, tough guys to have out of your lineup.”
The Bruins, led by Bergeron and Marchand, were the team that dispatched the Canes from the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2019 and 2020. The Bruins were bigger, tougher, better. They had goalie Tuukka Rask, who retired Wednesday, playing at his brilliant best those two years.
“They beat us a couple of times and that for sure made us a little more hungry to beat these guys,” Canes winger Teuvo Teravainen said Thursday.
The Canes (32-10-3) outscored the Bruins 16-1 this season. Goalie Frederik Andersen beat them three times and shut them out twice, making 34 saves Thursday including some big ones early as the Canes had to kill off a few penalties.
Governor Cooper chimes in
The Canes’ dominance over the Bruins this season caught the eye of North Carolina’s top elected official, as well. A short time after Carolina polished off its victory, Gov. Roy Cooper took to Twitter, simultaneously gloating about Thursday’s win while referencing Marchand’s social media attack on the Canes and their “small market” existence. That kerfuffle all started when the Canes’ Vincent Trocheck was compared to Marchand, and offhandedly asked if that meant he was “a rat.”
Not hearing an answer, he added, “Yeah, that’s fair.”
Marchand, in an Instagram post, then took a shot at Trocheck, saying, “This is like comparing a Lambo to a Prius.” He also posted a side-by-side comparison of his career statistics with Trocheck’s from hockeyDB.com.
And then the Canes won the game, 7-1.
The Canes’ social media team had a lot of fun with that, posting the score and noting the “L” for the Bruins stood for Lamborghini. The Canes posted a video clip of Trocheck knocking Marchand down with a clean hit at the Carolina blue line, tweeting: “Never seen a Prius total a Lambo before.”
Thursday night, Cooper joined in the fun. He Tweeted:
“Another impressive win by our @Canes against the @NHL Bruins tonight. Wouldn’t have mattered if the Lamborghini Marchand @Bmarch63 had played. His cheap shots last night will give him a lot more time to post pretentious, misleading smaller hockey market tripe anyway.”
Handling the Bruins’ tough stuff
And the physical challenge? When Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy put a hard open-ice hit on the Canes’ Sebastian Aho in the first period, he soon had Canes defenseman Tony DeAngelo in his face, dropping the gloves, swinging away.
McAvoy, a big guy who can handle himself, had two inches and 25 pounds on DeAngelo. But he had to grab DeAngelo and give him a fling to stop the fight after DeAngelo got off a flurry of punches and seemed willing to continue throwing them.
“Tony steps up for everybody,” Brind’Amour said. “I mean, everybody. I’ve got to give him a lot of credit. He’s done nothing but great things since he got here and guys love him.”
Asked if DeAngelo reminded him of Canes assistant coach Tim Gleason, who dropped the gloves more than a few times when he played for Carolina, Brind’Amour quickly replied, “Gleas is one of those guys who loves him.”
Aho, by the way, was fine after the McAvoy hit. He said he saw it coming at the last second and “put on the brakes” to lessen the impact. He then scored twice, and has 21 for the season.
Adding team grit
DeAngelo, in his first season with Carolina, has added an element of toughness that has been missing to a degree the past few years. The Canes traded for forward Micheal Ferland, a tough guy, but concussions soon sidelined him. Forward Brock McGinn would drop and throw at times but left after last season.
But with players such as DeAngelo and Vincent Trocheck, this Canes team has enough snarl. Even defenseman Jaccob Slavin, the NHL’s Lady Byng Trophy winner last season for his “gentlemanly” play, has laid out a few opponents with punishing hits.
Jordan Staal’s line plays a heavy game and did again Thursday. Wingers Nino Niederreiter and Jesper Fast were strong on the forecheck and Fast set up defenseman Brett Pesce for a goal.
And Staal scored. The Canes captain redirected a Brady Skjei shot in the third period for his first goal since Oct. 29, ending a goal-less streak of 35 games.
Trocheck and Andrei Svechnikov also scored, and Teravainen tied his career high with three assists in his return to the lineup from injury, as the Canes’ blend of speed, skill and team toughness was too much for the Bruins to answer. The Canes were better.
“We tried to outphysical them,” McAvoy said.
And?
“It got away from us,” he said.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 6:30 AM with the headline "‘Hungry’ Hurricanes sweep away bad memories in another big win over the Boston Bruins."
