Bedard: Bruins' power play advantage obscures fact that Hurricanes are no joke

If you just looked at the final scoreboard — you know, the one that said Bruins 5, Hurricanes 2 — you might as well start scouting the Western Conference Finals between the Sharks and Blues to find out which other speed bump stands in the way of another duckboat parade through downtown.

Because the Artists Formerly Known As The Whalers, the Carolina Hurricanes, will be lucky to make it past four or five games against the Bruins ... right?

Not so fast.

Unless you're new to hockey or only tune in for deep Bruins playoff runs, you know the Hurricanes gave the Bruins all they could handle for nearly all of Game 1. And that this has the look of a series that could go on for a while — if the Hurricanes can stay out of the penalty box.

Just ask one of Thursday night's heroes, Marcus Johansson, who posted a goal and an assist.

"I think they’re really tough to play against," he said. "They’re all over you; they don’t give you much time and I think we didn’t quite get to our game. When we came out in the third period, I think we played better, we played faster, and we were stronger."

In other words, the Bruins had to elevate their game to another level to push past those Hurricanes. That takes a lot of energy. And it takes a lot of will to sustain that for possibly another six games.

Everyone had their fun and games with the Hurricanes leading up to Game 1. A lot of southern jokes. Some Brass Bonanza references. Some got to poke fun at Bruins reject Dougie Hamilton.

But when the puck was dropped, and especially for the 30 minutes that spanned the second half of the first period and nearly all of the second stanza, the Hurricanes were no joke. In fact, they dominated play.

And since Bruce Cassidy revealed himself to be a big analytics nerd — he said "the analytics will dictate" whether or not Brandon Carlo and Torey Krug held their own against Carolina's top line centered by continued Bruins killer Sebastian Aho — we might as well see what the numbers have to say. The result: Carolina carried the play.

Just look at this chart, which tracked the Corsi (tracks shots and indicates puck possession) differential during the game.



As for the game as a whole, the numbers looked well on the Hurricanes.



"I thought we were better in the first than we were in the second to be honest," said Bruins winger Chris Wagner. "We were getting chances really early and then we backed off, they woke up and started playing harder. We came in here and talked about how we didn’t want to waste one at home and we successfully didn’t do that in the third.

"The shot total, I don’t know if it says it all really because they shoot from everywhere, but they’re good at it and that creates scrambles around the net. They’re also hard around the net too."

Now that we've gotten a look at the Hurricanes up close — and not in sweeping the Islanders — you can see why they edged the defending champion Capitals in seven games, and had won six-straight postseason matchups entering this series. They almost made it seven.

"They are skilled and fast and big," said Connor Clifton. "You've got to know who’s out there obviously. A couple of the lines are really shifty and good and make plays so you have to take away time and space and manage the puck well and, for the most part, we did that."

The Hurricanes' top three lines were big, fast, and very active. And their top defensive pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Hamilton was the real deal. If Hamilton didn't lose his mind with two penalties in the third (one was a joke of a call), you could make the argument that the former Bruins' first-round pick was Carolina's best player. Not that Hamilton agreed with the calls.

"Well, I just watched both of them, so I didn’t agree with either, so not much else to say," Hamilton said. "For sure, it stings. Obviously, we know we can be better obviously, but it stings when you lose like that, for sure. ... We know how good they are, obviously, a lot of talent on there, and we can’t take penalties. That’s the biggest thing, and tonight we did, and it bit us in the butt."

Penalty killing takes a lot out of a team. To have to kill three in such a short span ... let's just say the Hurricanes want that back.

"They scored a couple PP goals, and that was kind of it," said Aho. "We didn’t get to our game after that. Before that, it was right there for us."

You could make the argument that if the Bruins didn't receive three power plays in the first five minutes of the third period (Hurricanes had five penalties overall to Boston's three), the result could have been very different.

That wouldn't be giving the Bruins enough credit. At times they got pass-happy with the puck and passed up golden opportunities, but the numbers also show that the Bruins had more high-danger opportunities, which resulted in more expected goals.

In other words, the Hurricanes may have had more volume, but the Bruins had the quality. Now they get Charlie McAvoy back. And they still have Tuukka Rask in a zone (29 saves).

Both teams will adjust after Game 1. The Hurricanes dropped the first two games in Washington — while logging 24 penalty minutes to the Capitals' 16 — but came back to win the series. Part of Carolina's formula was reversing the penalty numbers (Carolina 41 minutes, Washington 53 after Game 2).

If that happens again in this series, we might very well see a lot of play like we saw for the first two periods.

"Everyone knows that those penalties kind of cost us the game, but it’s fine," said Aho. "We’ve just got to stay out of the box and keep playing our game."