Asleep At The Wheel: Rusty Hurricanes Drop Their First Game Of Postseason In Sloppy Loss

The Carolina Hurricanes had as good of a start as they could ask for in the opening game of the Eastern Conference Final. The Lenovo Center was rocking, they got a few really good looks on the opening shift and then on their second shift, just 33 seconds into the game, they found the back of the net with Seth Jarvis rifling one home. Then everything proceeded to unravel en route to a 6-2 loss in Game 1 to the Montreal Canadiens.

Carolina proceeded to surrender a response goal after the opening one just 27 seconds later as blown coverage left Cole Caufield all alone in front and that became the tale of the tape for the remainder of the period. Montreal would score three more goals in the opening 12 minutes of the game thanks to a combination of turnovers, bad pinches and out of sync coverage by the Hurricanes, who just looked absolutely lost. It wasn't that the Canadiens did anything special or unexpected either, they just capitalized on a sloppy team.

And that was what the Hurricanes were worried might happen given the sheer amount of time off they had to deal with. Carolina had a record 11 days off between games between sweeping the Philadelphia Flyers on May 9 and the drop of the puck for Game 1 of the ECF on May 21. Montreal, on the other hand, rolled right into this round after going the distance in both their first round and second round series.

Jaccob Slavin had one of his worst games of the year especially, being a -4 on the night, the worst ever marker in his playoff career. If that doesn't show you how rough it was, I don't know what will. Carolina did at least find some footing in the second period and started to stack positive shifts throughout the game, eventually leading to Eric Robinson getting the Canes another goal, scoring his first of the postseason on a partial breakaway, but it was just too little too late for the team.