Game Day Thread – Playoff Round 1, Game 5: Pancakes “@” Bruins

The Bruins are “hosting” the Carolina Pancakes today, for game 5 of the playoff series. Puck drop has been delayed until 420 PM EDT (insert pot joke here) because of an overtime in the Tampa/Columbus game.

Welcome to the actual playoffs.

The first game was delayed first by COVID and again by a quadruple-overtime QUINTUPLE-OVERTIME game on the same ice between the Bolts & the Blue Jackets, so the game naturally had to go to double overtime before the Bruins would pop in the winning goal.
WOOO-HOOO!!!! A playoff win!

Then in the 2nd game of the — now a back-to-back — forward David Pastrnak was listed as “unfit to play”, and was sitting in the stands with a COVID mask. It is likely he pulled an abdominal muscle. This pulled Karson Kuhlman into the lineup, and flipped Anders Bjork into the top line and David Krejci onto the first powerplay unit. The latter worked out ok, with Krejci scoring on the power play.
Unfortunately, the Bruins could not maintain the lead, going down by 1. They got pinned in the defensive zone for much of the 2nd half of the game, and lost, 2-3.

Then Tuukka Rask opted out of the playoff bubble, leaving the team in the lurch! Nevertheless, the Bruins (with Jaro Halak in net and Dan Vladar on bench door duty) were the stronger team in game 3

In game 4, the Bruins came out of the gate with vigor, dominating puck possession and a lot of zone time, but the Pancakes put up a good defense, so not too many shots found their way to James Reimer. On the first Hurricane shot on net, Jaro Halak whiffed, and let in a goal. The same scenario played out in period 2, and the Bruins found themselves in an 0-2 deficit heading into the 3rd period. They appeared to be headed towards ignomius defeat, when Jake DeBrusk beclowned the Carolina ‘tender, who went way out of his crease to handle a puck, putting the Bruins on the board. The Bruins rallied fter this, putting up 4 points in a 6 minute span. The Canes would go empty net in the last two minutes of the period, but were only able to reclaim 1 goal, with the Bruins winning 4-3.

The Bruins lead the series, 3-1, making today’s game a potential elimination match.

What will be the lines today?
David Pastrnak was skating but he is a game time decision.
In his absence coach Cassidy tried putting Anders Bjork in his spot, but was disappointed and swapped Charlie Coyle into that role. I am posting the resulting game 4 lineup – which would be the expected lines if Pasta does not play.

Bruins Forward Lines
Brad Marchand	Patrice Bergeron	Charlie Coyle
Jake DeBrusk	David Krejci	Ondřej Kaše
Sean Kuraly	Jack Studnicka	Anders Bjork
Joakim Nordstrom	Par Lindholm	Chris Wagner
Bruins Defensive pairs
Zdeno Chara	Charlie McAvoy
Torey Krug	Brandon Carlo
Matt Grzelcyk	Connor Clifton
Bruins Goaltending
#41 Jaroslav Halak	(#81 Dan Vladar)

Carolina Hurricanes lines – Andrei Svechnikov got dumped awkwardly onto the ice during game 3 after some pushing & shoving with Zdeno Chara. (Honestly, it was borderline slewfooty). He and Joel Edmundson are both listed as unfit to play.

H/T Michael Smith
Forwards:
——————-
Jordan Martinook — Sebastian Aho — Teuvo Teravainen
Ryan Dzingel — Vincent Trochek — Justin Williams
Warren Foegele — Jordan Staal — Brock McGinn
Nino Niederiter — Morgan Geekie — Martin Nekas

Defense:
——————-
Jaccob Slavin — Dougie Hamilton
Brady Skjei — Sami Vatanen
Jake Gardiner — Hayden Fleury

Goaltending:
————-
James Reimer
(Petr Mrazek)