RALEIGH — For the fourth time since 2019, the Carolina Hurricanes are down 1-0 in the Eastern Conference Final. So there’s some familiarity with their current predicament.
What is unfamiliar for the Canes and their fans is the way they played in Thursday’s Game 1 against the Montreal Canadiens at home. Montreal scored four first-period goals and found open space all over the ice in its 6-2 win over Carolina, which was playing its first game in 12 days.
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“One team looked like an Eastern Conference Final team and one didn’t,” Carolina forward Taylor Hall said Friday morning. “We know we have a lot more to give.”
The Hurricanes hardly resembled the team they’ve been for eight successful seasons under coach Rod Brind’Amour or the team that entered the series 8-0 in the postseason. The Hurricanes lamented not playing their game, one that stresses opponents with relentless forechecking and suffocating defense. Instead, Montreal had five breakaways and capitalized on numerous defensive breakdowns.
“We didn’t get to our game,” defenseman Sean Walker said,
Said Hall: “We have to play our game and our identity and let that come through for 60 minutes.”
For a stretch in the second period in Game 1, and already down 4-1, Carolina looked much more like itself. But it will take much more than brief stretches against the Canadiens. The Hurricanes scored the only goal of the period in the second.
“The second period was how we play,” Hall said. “We call it the stress game where we’re playing in the other team’s end. They’re icing pucks, their sticks are breaking, there’s multiple guys on the ice. They’re just doing whatever they can to save goals, and we get momentum off that. Our crowd feeds off it. It’s the way we play. … When we got to it there for a bit, you could see they were on their heels.”
For most of the night it was Carolina on its heels, allowing odd-man rushes and struggling to cope with Montreal’s speed and offensive skill.
The question hovering over a team that’s now 1-13 in Eastern Conference Final games under Brind’Amour is whether they can get to their game fast enough – or at all. Carolina is 0-8 at home in the Eastern Conference Final in four appearances since 2019.
Montreal is 7-2 on the road in the playoffs.
Game 2 is Saturday night in Raleigh. The Hurricanes didn’t practice Friday with Brind’Amour saying that isn’t what his team needed.
“We understand we have to be better than that,” Brind’Amour said. “We’re not sugar coating that game. They were much better than us. Did we have a lot to do with that? Yes. I’m real confident we’ll be better.”
