Entering Tuesday night's matchup against the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, the Boston Bruins were looking to extend their point streak to nine games. It was a matchup between two of the top teams early in the season in the Eastern Conference, but in the end, it exposed just how much of a gap there is between the two teams.
Carolina broke a 1-1 tie with a Sebastian Aho goal for a 2-1 victory, but in the overall big picture, it was a telling game that ended with the correct result. However, despite being dominated for a good part of the game, second-year Bruins head coach Marco Sturm wasn't as upset as Boston fans might have thought he'd be.
“Overall, I didn’t mind our game. I think we had a good jump right away from that start. The goal right away helped, too, a little bit. But there are just small little things, small little details. Puck management, they just did it a little bit better than us,” Sturm said, per NESN. “When you go through a playoff series like they did and won it on the end, they know how to do it. We’re just not there yet, and hopefully we learn and got something out of it today.”
Bruins are a log way away from competing with the defending champs
If there is one thing to take away from the game, it is that the Bruins are good, but a long way away from competing with the big dogs on a big stage. The Hurricanes deployed their system and caused Boston all kinds of problems. The Black and Gold opened the scoring early on a Pavel Zacha power-play goal, and that was all they could get past the Hurricanes.
Matthew Poitras might not sleep for a couple of days. Right before Aho's game-winning goal, Poitras collected a loose puck in the defensive zone and worked his way around a Hurricanes defenseman and goalie, Pyotr Kochetkov, and his backhand shot toward an empty net hit the post. He couldn't do it again if he tried.
It was one of those nights. Down the other end, Carolina doubled the shots on Jeremy Swayman than the Bruins had on Kochetkov, 30-15. If it wasn't for Swayman, it could have been 10-1 when the final horn sounded. Instead, Boston had a pair of late-game power plays where they failed to score, and the Hurricanes held on for a one-goal win.
It's on to St. Louis to play the Blues on Thursday night, and hopefully the Black and Gold will take what they learned and fix things against former coach Jim Montgomery and the Blues.
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