On a night where the Bruins fired volley after volley of vulcanized rubber at veteran netminder Antti Raanta (with little to show for it), Vincent Trocheck found a particularly cruel way to twist the knife.
Whatever slim hope that flickered for the Bruins was extinguished when the Canes pivot lit the lamp with just 3:01 remaining in regulation — giving Carolina a 4-1 lead against a Bruins club that has now only scored a whopping two goals against them in four head-to-head matchups this season.
Not exactly favorable odds for a late-game rally.
But it wasn’t just the finality of a Game 1 loss that Trocheck’s tally ensured. Rather, it was the manner in which he executed his coup de grace — lofting up a sharp backhand offering that bounced off of Linus Ullmark’s shoulder and into twine for a brutal short-side goal.
The Prius (Vincent Trocheck) makes it a three-goal game with 3:01 left in the third. #NHLBruins
— Blake Thorne (@_BlakeThorne) May 3, 2022
4-1 #LetsGoCanes: pic.twitter.com/jsAezHy24H
It was an unfortunate ending to Ullmark’s first taste of postseason action, with the veteran netminder capping the night with a .833 save percentage (20 saves on 24 shots) in Boston’s 5-1 defeat on Monday night. Far from a winning formula, especially for a netminder who had plenty of momentum on his side going into the playoffs after posting a .945 save percentage over his final 12 appearances in March and April.
But when it came time to dole out blame for Boston’s disheartening result at PNC Arena, Bruce Cassidy had little to direct at his goaltender.
“You need the saves at the end when you’re not scoring. Let’s call it what it is,” Cassidy said. “The 2-on-1s is a great play by them — they executed it. Again, you don't want to be in that position. So it's a great shot. The last goal, would it have mattered? A short side — he's going to tell you it's not a great goal to give up, but by then it's 4-1, so we're not going to put anything on Ullmark.
“Whatever goalie is in there for us, you’ve got to fight to find pucks. It was the same at the other end early on. Raanta was fighting to find pucks, there were some rebounds there, we didn’t capitalize.”
Before the dust had even settled on Monday’s final result, there was a sentiment brewing online (and I’m sure on the airwaves, eventually) that a goalie switch was a necessary tweak for Game 2 on Wednesday night.
The Bruins have already been candid about rolling with a tandem in net between Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, after all.
And while Cassidy didn’t outright declare to he was sticking with Ullmark for the time being, it sure doesn’t seem like Boston’s bench boss is ready for such a drastic lineup augmentation after 60 minutes of action against Carolina.
"We'll let you know tomorrow," Cassidy said of any shuffles in net. "As I said, I'm not faulting our goaltender for this. We had some opportunities. We need to finish as well, like they did.”
Did Ullmark steal the game for Boston? Nope. But he also did very little to lose you that game, with Trocheck’s seeing-eye goal coming in what was essentially garbage time.
Rather, this game was lost down the other end of the ice — with a number of franchise cogs deserving far more blame when it comes to Boston’s playoff-opening dud.
For as encouraging as Boston’s underlying numbers were when it came to puck possession and overall shot totals (30-19 edge in shots on goal at 5v5 play), the B’s once again opted for quantity over quality — with Boston failing to make Carolina pay when second-chance opportunities did manage to sprout up down low.
(Yes, Boston held that 30-19 edge in shots on goal during 5v5 play, but the Hurricanes were even with the B’s when it came to high-danger scoring chances with 11 — off of just 19 shots. Talk about making your chances count.)
“For us, we always seem to outshoot teams," Taylor Hall noted. "But what can kind of get away from us is getting people to the net and really making use of all those shots and creating second chances. So that's going to be a focus for us.”
If the Bruins want to adhere to a blueprint when it comes to shot selection and the steps needed to bury chances in the postseason, they don’t have to look very far. Yes, Trocheck’s goal was a laugher, and that nifty 2-on-1 tally from Teuvo Teravainen in the third period put Boston on the ropes.
But Carolina first swung momentum in its favor in the closing minutes of the second period off of simple, hard-nosed hockey — with Seth Jarvis tipping a puck past Ullmark off a wrist shot from Jaccob Slavin at 16:28 in the second, while Nino Niederreiter doubled that lead 2:10 later off of a shot that sailed past a sea of skaters crowded in the low slot.
Nin🎯 pic.twitter.com/fx9FvFIPDT
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) May 3, 2022
If there’s any sort of silver lining for the B’s to take away from a game in which a 0-0 deadlock through 35 minutes devolved into a four-goal loss, it’s the fact that some of these flaws can be corrected without needing to drastically overhaul the lineup.
For Boston, it’s more a matter of scheme, strategy and will — rather than personnel. Because as we’ve noted before, Boston has the pieces in place to deploy a lethal top-six unit and an effective power-play grouping night in and night out.
But when your top forwards are being stubborn with the puck and playing right into Carolina’s hands by skating into a wall of bodies at the blue line (instead of simply flipping the puck in and going to work down low), you’re making things pretty easy on a Carolina team that’s already pretty adept at negating power plays.
"We can't rely on our power play against the No. 1 PK, but it does have to give us some juice. … The third (power play) was disappointing,” Cassidy noted. “Our entries, when we did get in, we mishandled some pucks or didn't execute once we got it back. So it's been a challenge for us, the last month, on the power play.
“Those guys have to take a little more ownership of it. Those are our top guys, so hopefully, they'll be better at it Wednesday because we do have to get some life from it. Just because they're the best PK doesn't mean we can't score on it. We've done it in years past in the playoffs. It certainly can be a weapon if we get it going.”
Simply put, the Bruins are going to need a whole lot more from franchise stalwarts like Patrice Bergeron (-2, an uncharacteristic 40% on faceoffs), Brad Marchand (-3, just one shot on goal) and David Pastrnak moving forward — both at even-strength action and on the power play — if they want to put this loss in the rearview mirror and steal home ice back from the Canes in Game 2.
Adjustments will be a given. Tweaks should be expected.
But a switch in net? Not after one game — a game in which Boston’s big guns were mostly firing blanks.
"Familiar situation for us at the start of the playoffs last year,” Hall noted. “We lost Game 1 and we were able to come back and rectify some of the stuff that we wanted to and that's our goal coming into Game 2. …It's a long series and I think it's pretty easy to pinpoint what we need to do better in Game 2 and we're a pretty good team at making adjustments.”
Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick, HockeyViz and JFreshHockey.