Canadiens fall short in series-tying loss to Hurricanes

It just wasn’t a good enough one to beat a Carolina Hurricanes team that was an NHL-best 22-7-0 this season when coming off a loss. 

The Hurricanes hadn’t yet had to rebound through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, though. Their full-throttle steamrolling of the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers in eight games gave the hockey world a taste of just how good they are at their best, and after a night on which they were far from it to start the Eastern Conference Final, they rebounded as expected — with a win.

What was the difference in this one versus the 6-2 Game 1 loss the Canadiens handed the Hurricanes?

“I think it was mostly them,” said Canadiens defenceman Alex Carrier. “I think they played a great game. They were hard on pucks. They didn’t give us much time and space with the puck…”

And the Canadiens didn’t manage to break from that pressure quite as often in order to do the things that made them so dangerous with the puck in Game 1. They spent nearly 30 of the first 60 minutes chasing it around their own end in Game 2, according to SportLogiq. And even if they only gave up 24 shots and two goals to that point, they didn’t have enough energy or precision to take advantage of successfully exiting their zone in control of the puck 75 per cent of the time.

When Oliver Kapanen became the fourth Canadiens player to fail to get the puck deep into Carolina’s zone in overtime, Nikolaj Ehlers raced down the right wing, took a pass from Mark Jankowski and shot the puck past goaltender Jakub Dobes for the goal that made it 3-2 Hurricanes and tied the series 1-1.

Andrei Svechnikov predicted they’d do it.

On Saturday morning, referencing a strong second period in Game 1, the Russian winger said to reporters at Lenovo Center, “We were dominating them, and that’s what we’re going to do tonight.”

The Hurricanes followed suit. Immediately.

Eric Robinson scored his second of the series on Carolina’s first shot on net, 2:33 into the first period. 

After Josh Anderson tied it on Montreal’s first shot of the game, which came 11:11 in, the Hurricanes regained control and didn’t relinquish it before Ehlers gave them a 2-1 lead 17:03 into the second period.

Anderson’s second tying goal, in the 13^th minute of the third, gave the Canadiens momentum they were chasing all night.

But they didn’t hang onto it long enough.

On the whole, the game felt like a good example of how the resilient Canadiens could take a haymaker and stay on their feet.

They just didn’t find a way to counterpunch as much as they needed to.

“I felt we could’ve created space a little better and had a bit more time to execute,” said Mike Matheson.

“I thought we didn’t possess it through the neutral zone as well,” said Nick Suzuki.

“We missed a bit of execution that didn’t permit our defencemen to join the wave,” added Martin St. Louis. “Our lack of execution kept us from attacking as much.”

And yet the Canadiens were in this game the whole way.

“Overall, it was a battle out there. I thought we competed,” said St. Louis. “It’s a fine line between winning and losing.”

The Hurricanes found a way to straddle it better, as they expected they would.

As a group, they were much more connected on their patented five-man forecheck. They disrupted much more of Montreal’s flow up the ice, particularly in the neutral zone. And they limited the Canadiens to 12 shots on net, blocked another 19, and made Frederik Andersen’s job much easier than it was in Game 1.

Individually, Andersen wasn’t the only one to bounce back. Jaccob Slavin, the ever-steady defensive conscience of his team, rebounded from an uncharacteristically bad performance that left him minus-4 and blaming himself for the loss on Thursday. He notched an assist and finished plus-3 over 29 of the best shifts anyone played on Saturday night. 

And Jordan Staal’s line, with Jordan Martinook and Ehlers, did a number on Suzuki’s with Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky, who were dominant in Game 1 away from that hard matchup.

Those three were relatively muted offensively in Game 2, as were the Canadiens as a whole.

“We’ve just got to adjust a bit more,” said Carrier.

The speed at which he and the Canadiens executed on Thursday was lacking Saturday. As was the poise with which they made their plays. And while the Hurricanes could take the lion’s share of the credit for that, Carrier and his teammates owned some of it too. 

Still, they defended hard and absorbed all that Carolina pressure to hold the Hurricanes to only nine slot shots. 

By the end of regulation, the Canadiens had generated seven of their own and out-chanced Carolina off the rush 6-2. SportLogiq had them at a 45 per cent win probability, despite the heavy territorial advantage for the Hurricanes.

It’s why when Matheson was asked if the loss was at all confidence-rattling for his team, he responded, “No.”

“I still feel like we did a lot of good things,” Matheson added.

The Canadiens just didn’t do enough of them to win.