Tuukka Rask Was Hard to Solve
Goaltending will take a team a long way in the post-season and Tuukka Rask is proving that theory. Rask was phenomenal with 35 saves and led his team to victory. He has stopped 85 of 90 shots in this series to display his dominance in net. The win moves the Bruins to within one win of heading to the Stanley Cup Final.
First Period Marred by Penalties With Tuukka Rask Dominating
Justin Williams commented that he was not going to lose control in Game 3 vs the Boston Bruins.
Right.
The initial 20 minutes contained no less than 10 two-minute penalties. Six by Boston and four by the home team Hurricanes. The story behind that is that Williams had three minor penalties to ruin his vow of behaving himself. Luckily for him, the Carolina Hurricanes didn’t fall behind due to Williams’ lack of discipline.
Two of the penalties could have been prevented when he grabbed Tory Krug‘s stick. The two of them continued a period-long feud by going after each other. Williams followed that up at the 18:27 mark when he sat again for elbowing.
The Hurricanes completely dominated the play driving 20 shots on Tuukka Rask. They had a 4-on-3 for about a minute then and a 5-on-3, yet they failed to score. Dougie Hamilton had three shots on goal during that span of time but nothing got by Rask.
The Bruins only managed six shots on Curtis McElhinney who replaced Petr Mrazek in between the pipes in hopes of stopping the powerful Bruins.
Second Period Scoring
The middle frame turned out to be the goal scoring period. The Bruins after surviving the first-period onslaught drew first blood when Chris Wagner tallied his second goal of the playoffs at 1:21 on an easy tap-in. Then, the Hurricanes worst nightmare Brad Marchand made it 2-0 on a power-play goal thanks to a high sticking penalty of Micheal Ferland. Marchand used a skillful backhand which got deflected off of Calvin de Haan‘s glove and by McElhinney.
The fact that Marchand scored may have been disheartening for the Canes. The Bruins are 4-0 when Marchand scores. They were 21-1 under those circumstances during the regular season.
But, the Hurricanes cut the lead in half when at the 13:28 mark Calvin de Haan chose an excellent time to grab his first goal of the playoffs. It came off of a faceoff on the left circle and it seemed like a shot Rask should have easily handled, yet it got through his five-hole to put life back into the Carolina club’s hopes of not going down 0-3 in the series.
Third Period Drama With Tuukka Rask
At 14:27 Matt Grzelcyk interference call gave the Canes the golden chance to tie it and almost got there if it weren’t for some outstanding goaltending by Rask. One shot, in particular, was noteworthy as Teuvo Teravainen deflected a power play shot towards Rask only to have the hot goalie stop it with his midsection.
The Bruins thought they had regained their two-goal lead when at 15:44 they had a goal called back when it was ruled goaltender interference. The Bruins challenged the call only to lose their timeout. As one of the TV commentators commented that there are plenty of TV timeouts so losing their official timeout may not have been too severe.
Unconscious.@tuukkarask | #NHLBruins pic.twitter.com/4O1PTl9GgL
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) May 15, 2019
With two minutes remaining, the Canes pulled their netminder to gain the extra attacker. Some heavy pressure ensued but the Boston club prevailed. The combination of Marchand’s winning goal and Rask’s steadfast netminding were too much for the Hurricanes to sustain.
Bruins are up 3-0 and the Hurricanes are trying to determine how to stop them.
