BOSTON — What? You mean the Bruins weren’t going to roll to 16 straight wins on their merry way to the Stanley Cup?
You mean to say that they might actually have to sweat it out a little?
It would seem so, after the Bs suffered their first playoff loss, and first setback of any kind since Apr. 11.
So that was the sound of booing directed at the Bruins after Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 2 of their best of seven Eastern Conference set.
One had almost forgotten what catcalls sounded like, just as the Bs had forgotten how bitter the taste of losing was.
“The playoffs are about learning the lessons of the past,” said defenseman Andrew Ference. “To see how we’ll react to this.”
The Bs will have to react a little better on Wednesday, when the scene shifts to Raleigh, N.C., and a building full of towel waving (if not necessarily hockey savvy) Caniacs.
The swagger that set in after a four-game sweep of Montreal, and a convincing, 4-1 Game 1 win over the Canes last Friday will have long disappeared.
In fact it already had.
“That (the past) doesn’t really matter,” said goalie Tim Thomas, whose personal 11-game winning streak was collateral damage coming out of Game 2. “It’s what you do now. It’s game by game. Now we get to practice that ”˜not too high, not too low part.’
“We’ve been practicing that ”˜not too high’ part. Now we have to practice that ”˜not too low’ part.”
The Hurricanes did plenty of learning from the hard lessons Boston visited upon them on Friday.
The results were glaringly apparent.
“As we got going,” said top line center Eric Staal, “we started to frustrate them. We started picking off their passes and going the other way on them. We stayed patient, and stayed comfortable with where we were at.”
The Bruins dodged a big bullet in the waning seconds of the second period, after an apparent goal by Chad Larose was waved off.
The play developed when Carolina’s Dennis Seidenberg stepped out of the penalty box and fed the loose puck to Larose speeding over the blue line.
Larose let his shot fly, and after Thomas gave up the rebound followed with another attempt that appeared to trickle over the goal line.
Although the goal judge lit his red lamp, he was overruled by referee Dan O’Halloran.
The play was reviewed and after what seemed to be an interminable look by the NHL “war room” in Toronto, the goal was disallowed.
“I thought it trickled across (the length of) the line,” said Thomas. “I thought if they went strictly by an overhead camera, that it would be no goal. If you went by another camera, there was a chance you might see air, but the puck wasn’t completely across the red line.”
That call kept Boston’s deficit to a more manageable two goals heading into the third period.
Even though they’d been handed a break, the Bruins failed to capitalize on it, even though their performance in the final stanza was much better than the previous two.
“If we played all three periods like we played the third,” said Boston coach Claude Julien, “there’s no doubt it would have been a different game. But this is playoff hockey. We’re not in the second round against a team that doesn’t deserve to be here. They’re as good as we are. They earned their way here. We knew it was going to be a tough series, and right now, we’re facing a little bit of adversity.”
With the series now squared at one win apiece, it will now go at least five games.
Game 5 will be played, here, on Sunday night, set for a 7:30 p.m. faceoff.
— Contact Dan Hickling at 282-1535 ext. 318 or dhickling@gwi.net.
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