"Miscommunication obviously," said coach Claude Julien. "Our two Ds came back and both committed to the guy behind the net. Obviously there was a breakdown there. Just one of the breakdowns among many we had tonight."
Then with 27.1 seconds remaining in regulation, Chara was on the ice when Staal sealed the 3-0 Carolina victory with an empty-net goal.
The Bruins had been undefeated in the postseason. But the Hurricanes swaggered out of a sold-out TD Banknorth Garden last night (there were boobirds among the bunch late in the third period) proving that Chara (minus-3 in 24:37 of ice time) and the Bruins are human after all. Game 3 is Wednesday night at the RBC Center, with the series now guaranteed to return to Boston for Game 5 Sunday.
"We're not in the second round against a team that doesn't deserve to be here," said Julien. "This is a team as good as we are. They earned their way here. We can't just look at the last series and say, 'We were 4-0 against Montreal. It's going to be 4-0 against Carolina.' We knew this was going to be a tough series. Right now, we're facing a little bit of adversity. We're going into their building with the series tied at one."
The Bruins can point to a rotten second period as their demise. The energized Hurricanes, sloppy in just about every phase of the game in the opening match (turnovers in open ice, poor puck management, failure to control Boston's counterattacks), gained their first lead in the series at 2:30 of the second period. With traffic in front of the net, Corvo blistered a slap shot from the point that Tim Thomas didn't see until the puck was buzzing past his head.
The Bruins could have tied the match when defenseman Joni Pitkanen was sent off for elbowing at 6:24. Instead, LaRose intercepted Chara's pass and broke off for a scoring chance. Thomas turned aside LaRose's close-range bid. But with Chara and Wideman marking LaRose and no back pressure in sight, the puck went out to an open Cullen.
