Brind'Amour, Canes Expect Game 2 Bounce Back

RALEIGH, N.C. - After running amok through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final was a wake-up call of sorts for the Carolina Hurricanes.

Having held both the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers to two or fewer goals in all eight games, it took the Montreal Canadiens just 8:11 to surpass that total.

A jarring turn of events after Seth Jarvis opened the scoring inside the opening minute, a counterpunch just 27 seconds later was the first alarm. Three more goals before the first intermission had the Lenovo Center bewildered.

"I think it was just a lack of awareness and just us not being ready to go right from the puck drop," Jarvis explained frankly post-game.

Perhaps even more stunning than the actual score was how Montreal went about their attack. In the blink of an eye, they transitioned from evading Carolina's patented forecheck to working through the neutral zone with speed and creating a dangerous chance.

From odd-man rushes to clean looks all alone on Frederik Andersen, the opportunities were something hardly seen afforded by Carolina all season long.

"Anytime you give up five breakaways in a game, there's something going on," Jarvis continued. "It's just tightening it up. You can't give a team like that, any team really, a team with that much offensive skill that many chances and expect not to get burned. When you start out like that, it's going to be tough to climb back."

There were glimpses of Carolina looking like themselves over the remaining 40 minutes, but glimpses aren't enough to translate to victories at this time of year. As cliché as it is, to win, you have to play the way you want - or need - to play for a full 60 minutes.

"You have to play to (your identity). I'd like to see how the result is when you play your game. That was not what we did last night," Rod Brind'Amour offered. "If you're playing your game and it looks like that, you need to make a lot of adjustments."

Utilizing Friday to look back at the tape, the team will take their lessons learned and try to move on before having a better showing on Saturday (7 p.m.; TNT, truTV, HBO MAX).

"The whole flush-it thing in the playoffs is pretty hard. I think it's that way for a reason. We need to understand what happened yesterday and why it happened," Taylor Hall said. "This morning, we went over a lot of stuff. I think when we wake up tomorrow, it's about Game 2, but today, it's still about realizing what happened and correcting that. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can still do that and have a positive mindset, still smile and laugh with your friends, but understand tomorrow has to be a different story."

Faced with adversity in different ways over the course of their now close to 100 games as a unit this season, the more experienced bunch of the two will lean on some of their prior challenges as they aim to correct last night's mistakes.

"We're a group that knows how we need to play, even though we didn't do that yesterday," Nikolaj Ehlers told reporters. "Like I said earlier in the playoffs, some adversity is good. You need that. Now we need to bounce back tomorrow, and I fully believe we'll be ready to do that."

Armed with some long-tenured veterans in their room and the understanding of not meeting their own requirements, the belief is high that the Game 1 showing was more of an outlier than a preview of what's to come.

"I think we've been relentless all year. We've faced adversity throughout the year, and we've always been able to bounce back," Jalen Chatfield said. "We have a lot of good leadership in here... We know what we're capable of. We're going to play to our standard next game."

Messaging consistent throughout, the head coach anticipates seeing more of what led his unit to a 53-win season and a successful first two rounds when they get back to action tomorrow night.

"I think you know we understand we have got to be better than that. We're not sugarcoating that game; they were much better than us. Did we have a lot to do with that? Yes," Rod Brind'Amour said. "I'm really confident we'll be better."