TORONTO – Patrice Bergeron scored the winning goal at the start of extra time, and the Boston Bruins beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-3 on Wednesday in the first game of their first-round series that was postponed from 3 p.m. to a rare start late in the morning.
The game is scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday night began the next morning at 11 a.m. after the Columbus Blue Jackets-Tampa Bay Lightning series opened with five overtime. Playing each and every Eastern Conference game at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena had this perspective for games that would have interrupted the calendar for a long time.
The first Hurricanes-Bruins game was not the same marathon, with Bergeron scoring 1:13 in overtime. But there was a lot of theater, from Carolina’s wonderful scratches to a debatable lens and a video review.
“We talked about finishing this before the fifth extra time,” Bergeron said.
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Much has been replaced since those groups clashed in the 2019 Eastern Conference finals, but Boston continued to dominate more than a year after sweeping Carolina. The Bruins temporarily recovered from losing all-in-all’s all-to-all all games and passed the Hurricanes their first loss since hockey returned.
Joel Edmundson, who was not with the Hurricanes last year and joined them in a St. Louis Blues industry after winning the Stanley Cup, opened the scoring at 13:02 in the first term.
The way Boston tied familiar, with his fearsome first row of Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak scoring their first goal in their fourth game since the NHL reboot. Bergeron won a layoff to Marchand, who gave it to Pastrnak for the league’s most sensible scorer at 17:45 of the first.
“We’re from one game to another. We have to keep doing that, keep doing the little things to help our team,” Bergeron said.
The Bruins took their first lead in their fourth game when Charlie Coyle scored 4:38 in the second. But goalkeeper Petr Mrazek, furious, and coach Rod Brind’Amour challenged a failed pass through Boston’s Brett Ritchie over the idea of the Hurricanes.
Officials at the Nhl and the stage room judged that Mrazek, who was looking for the canopy, canceled the hand pass. On the ice, no whistle was thrown for Mrazek to freeze the game, so Coyle pushed him and the brand allowed.
Carolina criminalized for the failed challenge, but Boston’s lead lasted only 11 seconds before Brock McGinn scored at a numerical disadvantage.
David Krejci overcame the Bruins within 59 seconds of the third, and that advantage lasted less than nine minutes before the Hurricanes’ defense, Haydn Fluery, beat Tuukka Rask from the distance with a shot right on the blue line.
But this game is far from the same as Columbus-Tampa Bay, especially since the Hurricanes and Bruins were able to play at night and had to regroup in the morning.
“It’s strange, ” said Marchand, “but he goes hand in hand with all this.
The league’s policy of revealing injuries is also a component of all of this, allowing Carolina to hide the wonderful absences of extreme Justin Williams and defense Sami Vatanen when they hadn’t played for 8 days. Instead, Williams looked nervously from the stands.
NOTE: Mrazek stopped 36 of the shots he faced. Array.. Rask made 25 saves. Array.. Carolina D Dougie Hamilton played for the first time since fracturing her left leg in January.