Hurricanes aren’t just winning, they’re also beating the Bruins at their own game
Anything can happen in Boston, and often has, but it’s equally possible we’ll be able to look back at this series and pinpoint the moment the Carolina Hurricanes surpassed the Bruins on their way up the great pyramid of hockey as their one-time nemesis plummeted the other direction.
You can already see how that might indeed be the case, and you don’t even have to look that hard.
Or any farther than one moment in the second period Wednesday, when Boston defenseman Hampus Lindholm turned the corner around his own net, pivoting up ice to his right, unaware that Andrei Svechnikov had been lining him up since the moment Lindholm collected Brandon Carlo’s unwise pass.
Svechikov hit Lindholm square in the chest, as devastating an impact as it was within the rules, the violence in a violent game, so hard that Lindholm’s stick broke off in his hand, leaving him clutching the stump of the handle as he crashed to the ice.
That crushing blow, as much as any of the Hurricanes’ five goals in Game 2 or five goals in Game 1, may have altered the power dynamic between these incipient rivals for good. Time will tell. There is, as the saying goes, a lot of hockey left.
But on a night when the Bruins knocked Antti Raanta out of the game and the Hurricanes rode a rookie goalie with a better grasp of mayhem than English to a 5-2 win and 2-0 series lead, the Bruins were relegated to trying to win the game after the whistles because they can no longer keep up between them.
“We’re not going to get pushed around, I guarantee you that,” Hurricanes defenseman Tony DeAngelo said. “But I thought we did a good job of being disciplined after the whistles. We were staying out of the stuff they were trying to pull us into and we were getting power plays instead.”
It was real fin de siecle, fall of Rome stuff, the crumbling of a once-proud dynasty into decadence and self-ruin. There was a time when the Bruins thought they could skate around the Hurricanes, and they were probably right. There was a time when the Bruins thought they could push the Hurricanes around — and they were actually right. That time, and it appears their time, has passed.
The Hurricanes aren’t just winning their way. They’re beating the Bruins at their own game at the same time. If the Bruins didn’t know it before Wednesday they certainly knew it by the time Svechnikov hit Lindholm. Svechnikov expressed remorse while acknowledging that’s a role he has to play.
“Obviously I like the physical side of the game, but I feel bad for that guy,” Svechnikov said. “It was a pretty hard hit and you know, I was in that spot where I kind of have to hit it and I had time there, but he didn’t see me. I have to do that but I feel bad and sorry for him.”
“He’s not doing well,” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said of Lindholm.
If Cassidy didn’t like the Svechnikov hit, the Hurricanes had a laundry list of their own concerns. Just when you expected Brad Marchand or Erik Haula to be the focus of the Hurricanes’ ire — let alone the unrestrained venom of their fans — a new target for umbrage stepped forward, or more accurately, into the picture when David Pastrnak collided with Raanta midway through the first period.
Trying to dodge Raanta’s clearing attempt, Pastrnak ran into him instead, tripping over his left leg and catching Raanta in the face with his glove, bloodying his mouth and knocking Raanta out of the game for rookie Pyotr Kochetkov in his postseason debut — and, 30 saves later, his first postseason win.
Not that Kochetkov went unscathed. When Marchand gave him a light cross-check, Kochetkov turned around and slashed Marchand, who then slashed the goalie back. While Cassidy called Pastrnak’s collision with Raanta a “freak play,” noting the Bruins were on the power play at the time, both plays fit in a trend of contact with Carolina goalies by the Bruins on Wednesday, and whether intentional or not, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour thought it was the former.
“Well, what do you think?” Brind’Amour said. “You can’t get any more obvious.”
Nevertheless, the fact remains with Frederik Andersen out and Raanta’s status now uncertain, the Hurricanes’ hopes in this series may rest on a pair of rookies — Kochetkov and Jack LaFontaine — with a total of three NHL starts to their credit (and one was an abject disaster).
The good news for the Hurricanes is that Kochetkov has been an ace in all four of his games, arriving late but just in time, and it’s hard to imagine the 18 skaters in front of him playing much better, much harder or much tougher.
“That’s the best part about our group, is how we’ve responded and how we’ve played hard,” Brind’Amour said. “There’s lots of room to get better, which is good, a good sign. We need to be better in certain areas. It’s just one step. We’ve got a long way to go here.”
They’ve done it at home. Now they’ll have to do it in a Boston bear pit baying for blood, the only way to find out whether the tide really and truly has turned.
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This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 5:48 AM with the headline "Hurricanes aren’t just winning, they’re also beating the Bruins at their own game."
