Carolina Hurricanes Lose Double Overtime Thriller to The Boston Bruins

The Carolina Hurricanes lost to the Bruins in double-overtime

The Carolina Hurricanes dropped a controversial double-overtime early morning match-up against the Boston Bruins surrendering a 1-0 lead in the series.

This game was not by far the best game played by Carolina. It has to have been the worst performance by this team. Understandable considering they weren’t at 100% with both Justin Williams and Sami Vatanen declared “unfit to play” only hours before a puck drop that was delayed 15 hours thanks to a five-overtime game between Tampa and Columbus last night.

Add on a team that hasn’t played in just about a full week after stomping the Rangers, with a freshly returned Dougie Hamilton to the lineup and I just might excuse the results of a game that happened to drag into a second extra frame.

But with perhaps a bit more effort and perhaps some consistent officiating (we will get to that in a bit) this Carolina Hurricanes team could have extended their winning streak that extends back to March (if you don’t count the exhibition game against Washington) to seven games.

As it stands, the Carolina Hurricanes are going to need at least five games to move on to the next round. That means building upon the good takeaways from this game that allowed them to stay in it, avoiding the bad takeaways and perhaps learning from them, and praying to the hockey gods that the ugly takeaways do not rear their heads once again.

The Good

The Carolina Hurricanes had plenty of good moments to build upon.

Not everything in this game was terrible. If it was, this would have ended in regulation. Instead, we got to see some excellent players step up and show a tenacity that has become the central identity of the team.

Consider the three goal-scorers; Joel Edmundson, Brock McGinn, and Haydn Fleury. Not exactly the usual suspects night in and night out. But when the best players seemed rusty and not in the game, these three helped step up in various situations and keep Carolina in the game.

Let’s start with the ice-breaker goal scored by Edmundson:

This play starts with Dougie Hamilton who feeds it to Warren Foegele who has the insight to hold the offensive zone and wait for numbers. Aho receives the puck and drops it to his kin in the form of Teuvo Teravainen or further drops it to Edmundson. Eddy has the vision then to see Tuukka Rask slide out of position and he just rockets it into the net for the first goal.

My favorite score of the night, however, belongs to Brock McGinn:

The vision on the penalty kill by McGinn here is absolutely incredible. He sees the puck well, takes it down the ice and uses his speed and shows off some stick handling to dunk it beautifully past Rask for the second of the night erasing a lead handed to Boston by the boys in black and white (I promise we will get to them).

That showed the tenacity and survival of this team to fight another period. But none showed it better than Haydn Fleury with his first NHL playoff goal in his career:

Fleury doesn’t get this puck without some serious forechecking, and down by a goal halfway through the third, he also has the same intuition that Rask was out of position and just rockets this thing at the net and over the shoulder of Rask who never saw the puck coming.

These amazing things need to continue moving forward if this team wants to beat the Bruins over the next few games. But they also need to eliminate the bad takeaways from the game.

The Ugly

The Carolina Hurricanes would love for these things to just stop happening.

The officiating. Yes, we are going to talk about it now. Because as bad as the Carolina Hurricanes were defensively in this game, the officiating was way, way worse.

Look every game has some missed calls. Every game has some calls that with some further review should have been overturned. Two minutes in the box doesn’t change much over the longer course of things. So for the most part, complaining about the officiating doesn’t seem like something to waste your breath with.

Today was a different story. In the second period, the Bruins launch a rebound up in the air and try to knock it down with their hand. Petr Mrazek games down with the glove to secure the puck, coming out of his net to do so. However, the puck is then passed from under his glove by another Bruin to Charlie Coyle who launches it into an empty net with Mrazek on the ice.

Mrazek jumps up and demands the goal be overturned because he had the puck under his glove. Rod Brind’amour challenges for a Missed Game Stoppage.

What gets lost in the conversation is that somehow the challenge is made that the missed call was a hand-pass and not the fact that Mrazek had the puck and it was forced away, because that would be goaltender interference apparently. Here is how the goal came out to be.

So we are tracking, they upheld the call on the, which was no whistle to stop the game for a handpass because Petr Mrazek had control of the puck with his glove. Not his stick, his glove. So Charlie Coyle’s goal becomes unassisted. But how did Coyle get the puck? The officials who looked at the footage several times have no clue. Must have been magic.

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Reality is that that goal should have been overturned for goalie interference. Mrazek had the puck and was impeded from doing his job when a stick game under his glove and swiped it away from him. That was obvious in the replay footage and the rules should be flexible enough for the officiating to say that while the challenge was unsuccessful, the goal is overturned on new evidence.

Instead, we have this charade of officiating that decided to hold it to just what Rod had challenged even though a failed challenge here is another violation there. This should have been no-goal and the Bruins should have been penalized for goaltender interference. Carolina should have been awarded a powerplay instead of going on the kill.

Would it have changed the outcome of the game? Perhaps. Maybe not. But that isn’t the point. The point is for the officiating to be consistent and control the game. Otherwise, this is a circus and the refs are simply the clowns there for entertainment instead of keeping order. Rod Brind’amour had this to say about the results when asked by the News and Observer:

“This is why the league’s a joke, in my opinion, on these things. That one is a crime scene.” “They came to me, and I said, ‘If he has possession of it then it’s goalie interference. If he doesn’t have possession then it’s a hand pass. It’s one of the two. I don’t know what you’re calling on the ice.” “All he has to do is tell me. ‘We’re calling it nonpossession (by Mrazek),’ then we’re challenging a glove-hand pass. If it’s possession, then goaltender interference. I said, ‘Tell me the call on the ice.’ They wouldn’t do it when I say, ‘What is the call?’ So I had to flip a coin.” “I said, ‘What was the call on the ice?’ and he said, ‘You’ve got to call one or the other.’ It should be so easy. If they said the goalie had it, then it’s an easy call. They wouldn’t tell you. It makes no sense. I know we weren’t the better team, but if that goal doesn’t go in, do we win that game? I don’t know.”

These are strong words by Rod who joins John Tortorella as coaches who have called out bad officiating this season. Torts got fined by the league, and one might expect the same to happen to Rod. Regardless of the outcome, we all feel his anger.

Question for CC Readers: Did the officiating make the right call?