How the Canes Passed the Time During the Game 1 Delay

TORONTO - As the Carolina Hurricanes made their way to the visiting team dressing room at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday evening, they passed by carts of hockey bags belonging to the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets being wheeled in the opposite direction.
That was a welcome sign.
Around the same time two nights prior, the Lightning and Blue Jackets were prepping to hit the ice for overtime. Hockey bags were no where to be found, and the changeover process was on hold.
The Hurricanes and Boston Bruins, both of whom had arrived at the arena just before 6 p.m., were scheduled to warm up at 7:31 p.m. The puck was set to drop in Game 1 at 8:10 p.m.
That was, at least, until the fourth-longest game in National Hockey League history played out.

This was the "what if one game goes into multiple overtimes" scenario the NHL had miraculously avoided during the Cup Qualifiers, when three games a day were being staged on a single sheet of ice. It didn't take long into the First Round for the schedule to be thrown into chaos.
From the time the team bus arrived to the time it departed, the Canes spent around three hours in limbo.
Here's how it played out from the inside.
"I don't really know what to do," Ryan Dzingel muttered as he wandered around the kitchen in the Toronto Raptors' dressing room, one of the four being used in rotation during this postseason tournament.
It was the intermission between the second and third overtime. The Canes' pregame routine, by this point, had been thrown out of whack.
Hockey players, after all, are notorious creatures of habit, whose pregame routines are structured often down to the second of the pregame clock.

That 66-minute countdown, with warm-ups set to start with 16 minutes left on the clock, had yet to begin - and no one knew when it would. A timing sheet, which spells out what happens when prior to the game, sat on the kitchen counter and, at that point, could have doubled as a napkin.
Players refueled as needed. Bagels, oranges, bananas, oatmeal. Second and third cups of coffee. Biosteel shakes. Red Bull. After the third overtime, the Canes had to order more bagels and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
"Now I've seen it all," was a common refrain.
The training staff worked to keep players loose. The dressing room was quiet, for the most part. Jerseys and equipment hung in stalls, waiting.
James Reimer grabbed his goalie stick and a roll of tape, flicking it around the otherwise empty room. Sami Vatanen hopped in to play goaltender, snagging the tape with his left "glove" hand.

During overtime intermissions, players checked their phones in the changing room. When the game resumed, the team scattered to find the nearest television feed. The equipment staff looked on from the corner. Head coach Rod Brind'Amour poked his head out near the glass at one point, too. Some players huddled around a small screen in the training room. Others had remained on the 300-level of the building since playing pregame two-touch.
In the weight room attached to the Raptors' gym on the 300-level of the arena, Joel Edmundson laid on the floor, his feet propped up on a medicine ball.
Teammates were huddled around, some sitting and some standing, all eyes were glued to the fourth overtime between the Lightning and Blue Jackets.
It was 8:30 p.m., 20 minutes past the scheduled faceoff time for Game 1 of the First Round series between the Canes and Bruins.
There were many questions - What happens now? When will the game begin? Will the game be moved to Wednesday? - and not many answers.

Sebastian Aho walked into the weight room with the latest rumor: If neither team scored before the end of the fourth overtime, Game 1 between the Canes and Bruins would be moved to Wednesday morning.
"Is that true?" reverberated throughout the room.
The horn sounded to signal the end of the fourth overtime, and the Canes scurried downstairs to the Raptors' dressing room.
It was about a quarter until 9 when Brind'Amour gathered his team.
"I told you we'd have to adapt," he said, delivering the news of the 11 a.m. Wednesday faceoff.
As the officials walked back out to the ice for the fifth overtime, the Canes and Bruins, showered and dressed in the clothes they arrived in a few hours earlier, were filing out back to their team buses.
The Canes had been raring to play, even if the puck would have been dropped after 11 p.m. and the game would have lasted into the early morning hours of Wednesday.
Alas, they'd have to return about 12 hours later for a do-over.
It's a short bus ride from Scotiabank Arena to the Fairmont Royal York hotel, a quick drive around the block. A "postgame" meal, originally set for around 11 p.m., was waiting for the Canes a couple hours earlier.
The bus pulled in through the fence surrounding the downtown portion of the Toronto bubble, and as the Canes arrived in the meal room, Brayden Point scored at the 10:27 mark of the fifth overtime to deliver the Lightning a 3-2 win, some six-plus hours after the game began.
Now we had seen it all.