Everyone knew that this Stanley Cup tournament with 24 teams would be different from what any of us had ever experienced in hockey.
But on the first day of the playoffs, things were even more amazing than expected.
As the first game of the day at Scotiabank Arena between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets, which began at 3:09 p.m., went into a fifth overtime and went on for another six hours, Game 1 was for the Hurricanes Bruins and Carolina, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., were postponed until 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Brayden Point eventually won it for Tampa in the fifth OT, but by then the decision to postpone had already been made.
Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy believes the league made the right decision to drop out. And the bubble setup offers the league some flexibility to adjust if things don’t go according to script.
“It’s apparently strange to wait so long and then find out that you may or may not want to play, then you start thinking ‘Well, is it productive to play at 10 o’clock at night?'” Cassidy said. to think about the safety of the players, the ice conditions, a number of things.That said, what are the options not to play? (Wednesday) there are two plans already from tomorrow at 3 and 8. It comes at least from you hands. As a coach you only think about how you will prepare your players who have been sitting for so long. That is difficult to answer because you do not normally go through that, especially the goal tenders. They are enrolled all day, so it would have been on Tuukka (Rask) and (Petr) Mrazek. “
Cassidy and his coaches got one of the bunker suites in Scotiabank Arena that come under the lower floor and across the hall from the locker rooms, and he and his staff watched the game Tampa-Columbus – the 4th-longest game in the history – when they tried to stay out of the way of the participants coming and going in what sounds like a nicely infested area with four teams nearby.
Cassidy started getting updates on contingency plans after the first or second overtime before the plug was finally pulled when the Jackets and Bolts could not decide a winner in the fourth overtime. As much as he thought it was the right decision, it was not easy to decompress after preparation.
“It’s hard because we want to play,” Cassidy said. ‘From the round robin we feel this is what we were ready for the whole season to be honest. This did not just happen last week. This started in October as we prepared to build our game to another playoff run. We put that out openly. We called the unfinished business. So now we’ve done the prep 10 work the last 10 days plus the two weeks at Warrior. We were ready to go. It’s 16 teams over and it’s the best of seven, your traditional playoffs. Disappointingly, we did not get to play (Tuesday), but as the night draws to a close, players begin to think: ‘Shall we play? Did this really happen? ‘So 11am (Wednesday), we’ll have the same emotion there. I truly believe that. And I think Carolina will be the same. ”
Now the Bs will play on back-to-back days, with the morning affair on Wednesday and another 8pm start on Thursday night. Games 5 and 6 were scheduled for consecutive nights and Cassidy was already thinking about using Jaroslav Halak somewhere in that situation. Now Halak was able to make an earlier appearance in this series.
“We’ll leave the game first,” Cassidy said. “The good news about back-to-back is that there is a day and a half. Not quite, but it’s an 11 hour game and an 8 hour game, so there’s some more rest than typical, no travel involved. It may depend on Tuukka’s workload. We’ll discuss it with him. We are very comfortable with both goaltenders. ”
