The Hurricanes have scored five goals against the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference Final, one with the man-advantage. Boston leads the best-of-7 series 3-0 and can advance to the Stanley Cup Final with a victory in Game 4 at PNC Arena on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, SN, TVAS).
The power-play inefficiency, one that coach Rod Brind'Amour calls the Achilles' heel, is nothing new for the Hurricanes. Carolina has scored on five of 50 opportunities in the Stanley Cup Playoffs (10.0 percent) but survived a seven-game series against the Washington Capitals in the first round and swept the New York Islanders in the second round. In the regular season, the power play was 17.8 percent, 20th in the NHL.
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But it has been a killer in the conference final. The Hurricanes are 1-for-12 with forward Sebastian Aho scoring on the first opportunity of the series in a 5-2 loss in Game 1. They are 0-for-11 since, those struggles blunting the precious little momentum they have been able to generate.
In a 2-1 loss in Game 3, the Hurricanes had five power plays, including a 5-on-3 that morphed into a 4-on-3 midway through the first period when the score was 0-0. But they mustered little against the Bruins' penalty killers, forward Joakim Nordstrom and defensemen Zdeno Chara and Brandon Carlo.
"We actually had some pretty good looks," Brind'Amour said Wednesday. "The 4-on-3 was not good, and we looked at that again today. That might be a little mental. Sometimes, I think you just go play and forget what we are trying to do. It's a tough situation."
When the first period ended, the Hurricanes had 20 shots on goal to the Bruins' six, but Boston scored twice in the second period to take control of the game, including Brad Marchand's power-play goal at 6:28 that proved to be the game-winner. Boston is 5-for-12 with the man-advantage in the series.