ShareThisThere was no debate about this one. It was a sucker punch, and the Carolina Hurricanes were the suckers. They took it right on the chin.
By giving up two goals in the first five minutes, the Hurricanes gave the Boston Bruins life Tuesday night, and after the 4-2 loss, they have given the Bruins new life in this series while putting themselves on the verge of elimination.
After all the shenanigans at the end of Game 5, Tuesday wasn't about fisticuffs or message-sending or suspensions. It was about hockey, and the Bruins wanted it more at the start, and now it's winner-take-all on Thursday.
"You expect to have that emotion," Hurricanes forward Tuomo Ruutu said. "These are big games, as big as the seventh. We were all right, but it's not enough in the playoffs. It's tough to say."
You wonder why the Hurricanes weren't ready to seize the day Tuesday. A second chance to knock the Bruins out of the playoffs and move on to the conference finals wasn't enough? Apparently, the Hurricanes needed a two-goal wake-up call first.
It was too late. The plane has departed. The train has left the station. The Hurricanes have given away the initiative and again are the underdogs.
Up 3-1 in the series, the Hurricanes should never have let it come to this. They had a chance to take care of business Sunday in Boston but came out like they left their skates in Raleigh. They were outplayed at the beginning Tuesday and let another chance slip away.
Maybe this is the way the Hurricanes want it. Maybe they just can't stand prosperity. Maybe that's what it takes to bring out their best.
"This team has been resilient all year," Hurricanes captain Rod Brind'Amour said. "It's the type of thing where when we have to win, we seem to find a way. Obviously, the next game is one of those games."
Or maybe it will catch up with them this time and they kick themselves over their failure to put the Bruins away, because the dynamic of this series has changed. The Hurricanes aren't the aggressor any more. They're on their heels.
Now we're seeing the Bruins who dominated the Hurricanes in the regular season. We're seeing the real goalie Tim Thomas, who was a nominee for the Vezina Trophy. And we'll see a Game 7 in what is sure to be a madhouse in Boston.
"I think from the time that we fell behind 3-1 in the series, our goal was to create a Game 7," Boston coach Claude Julien said. "We're there now."
As well as the Hurricanes played in Games 2, 3 and 4 -- and they played extremely well -- they weren't doing it against the best the Bruins had to offer. (They didn't see it in Game 1, but the Hurricanes played so poorly it didn't matter.)
The past two games, the Bruins have looked like the Bruins. It's long past time for the Hurricanes to start looking like the Hurricanes again, the team that squeezed enough breaks out of seven games to beat the Devils and baffled the Bruins with quickness to take a 3-1 series lead.
"I don't think we've played well enough," Ruutu said. "Give them credit. They deserved both of those wins. But the seventh game, I don't think it matters what happened in the sixth game or the first game or the second game. It's a whole new game, and we'll have to be ready for that."
It was clear this wasn't the Hurricanes' night when Anton Babchuk went down to the ice defending an early two-on-one and not only failed to block the pass but took out goalie Cam Ward in the process to guarantee the Bruins a goal, a play so bad you would laugh if it weren't so untimely.
The Hurricanes chipped away at what became a three-goal lead at the second intermission, and maybe if they had scored on one of their third-period power plays, they could have produced another unlikely finish.
Instead, the conference finals aren't the only thing looming in front of them. The end of their season has muscled its way into the picture, same as the Bruins.
(Contact Luke DeCock at luke.decock@newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
