If Hurricanes truly have taken a step forward, Bruins a perfect playoff bellwether
Of course it had to be Boston, just like there was a time when it always had to be New Jersey — the Devils making springtime visits to North Carolina the way furniture buyers return to High Point. Hockey is a wild and weird and random game sometimes, but there are also these moments when history and rivalries seem to exert some weird cosmic gravity that keeps pulling teams back together.
It just as easily could have been the Tampa Bay Lightning, and certainly there was a sense of inevitability there as well after the way things went last year. But there’s so much more baggage with the Bruins, it just feels right and just and proper that now that the Carolina Hurricanes are a regular playoff participant, they should be able to measure themselves against a regular playoff opponent.
What’s different about this time around, Part III or Part IV or Part V or Part VII, depending on how deep your sense of historical perspective runs, is that just as the Hurricanes took a great leap forward this season, there’s no doubt the Bruins are dramatically different from the team that ended the Hurricanes’ playoff runs both longer (in 2019) and shorter (in 2020) in recent years.
While the top line and the culture and the mentality are as strong as ever with the Bruins, there are fewer willing bodies even if the spirit is no less weak. Top players Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pasternak are as dangerous as ever, and the Hurricanes can assure disaster if they choose to observe the action from the penalty box, but Tuukka Rask and Zdeno Chara and David Krejci are gone, among others, and the Bruins are a skeleton of what they once were, albeit one still capable of posting triple-digit points in the Eastern Conference.
This may indeed be the last gasp of their impressive run, and it would be fitting if the Hurricanes, smacked around twice by the Bruins on their way up, were the ones to knock them down once and for all.
There were already signs of that in the regular season. Normally, a statement like that would be followed by one like, “to the extent that matters,” but in this case it really does. Their first meeting, an authoritative shutout victory that saw them bounce Bruins around like bowling pins, felt like a message sent and a message received.
At the least, it was the keystone of the strong start that set the tone for the 76 games still to follow. At the most, they turned the tables on the Bruins and their bullying. The Hurricanes never flinched in the face of the Bruins physically or mentally — or verbally, in the case of the automotive smack talk between Marchand and Vincent Trocheck. The Hurricanes had all the answers, on and off the ice.
And they should: There’s nothing about the Bruins, at this point, that should be unfamiliar or intimidating. The Hurricanes are stronger, deeper and more experienced than this group has ever been entering a playoff series, especially with Sebastian Aho now firmly established as a postseason stalwart. Even whatever weird ex-spouse dynamic was going on with Dougie Hamilton and the Bruins is no longer an issue.
Either opponent, Boston or Tampa, would have been a test. The Hurricanes should look at the Bruins as the perfect one. All of these dragons are going to have to be slain at some point for the Hurricanes to go farther than they have the past three years, and facing the Bruins right off the hop carries with it all that additional motivation and familiarity and history that makes playoff hockey great and creates the opportunity for good teams to prove they have become great.
The Bruins taught the Hurricanes two lessons when it mattered. The Hurricanes finally hit back this regular season, when it did not.
Now, it does again.
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This story was originally published May 2, 2022 at 5:46 AM with the headline "If Hurricanes truly have taken a step forward, Bruins a perfect playoff bellwether."
