Bruins

Why Bruins’ Charlie McAvoy isn’t fretting over a home loss to Hurricanes

"That's how a seven-game series works."

Charlie McAvoy and the Bruins couldn't hold off the Hurricanes on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

April 10, 2024

The Bruins saw their four-game win streak come to a close on Tuesday night at TD Garden, with Boston unable to withstand the Hurricanes en route to a 4-1 loss.

It was a frustrating result, considering the strong returns that the Bruins put together over the last few weeks against several playoff foes. It also represented a missed opportunity in the standings for Boston.

The best avenue for Boston when it comes to avoiding a first-round matchup with the Tampa Bay Lightning lies in leapfrogging the top-seeded Rangers in the Eastern Conference.

The Rangers fell to the Islanders on Tuesday, but Boston was unable to make up any ground due to Tuesday’s loss against Carolina. Boston (107 points) now sits three points behind the Rangers (110 points) with just three games to go in the regular season.

Even with Tuesday’s result, Charlie McAvoy opted to focus more on the positives that the Bruins have been able to unearth over this recent stretch of games.

Jim Montgomery noted postgame that he was impressed with Boston’s first period, where his players dropped several Hurricanes with some thunderous hits.

Bruins delivering some heavy hits against the Hurricanes so far tonight. pic.twitter.com/ggkUXcM9x0
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) April 9, 2024

“I feel good. This is just one game tonight. It’s hard. It’s hard to win in this league. It is a grind overall,” McAvoy said. “But I think we’ve (showed) how we can play. Tonight, we just didn’t do enough of it. But I think we’ve been working towards our game.

“Every team is gonna have lulls. We happen to have that tonight. They played better than us, and well enough to win. But overall, I think we’ve been building and we’ve been working [well].”

Some of the hallmarks of this recent win streak for Boston fell to the wayside against Carolina.

With Boston unable to execute clean passes against the Hurricanes’ forechecking pressure, the Bruins struggled to generate sustained offensive-zone pressure — landing just 10 total shots on goal during the first two periods of play.

“We really had no transitional offense,” Montgomery said. “Again, I give them credit, they checked, and that’s what we’re going to see in the playoffs. We had a good stretch here, and we’ve been playing well. We got a couple of days off. We’ll reset, and we’ll come back to work on Pittsburgh.”

When the Bruins managed to generate a bit more traction in the third period (13 shots on goal), the team unraveled off of a few back-breaking tallies from Carolina.

Jeremy Swayman was unable to build off of a strong win over the Hurricanes last Thursday (28 saves on 29 shots), with the netminder coughing up four goals on 26 shots during Tuesday’s loss.

Getting Swayman on track might stand as Boston’s most pressing objective before the end of the regular season. Since returning from the All-Star break in late January, Swayman is 9-6-1 with a .900 save percentage.

But even with Tuesday’s setback, McAvoy opted to view the loss within the context of a best-of-seven series — noting that the Bruins will have to trudge through those peaks and valleys as soon as next weekend.

“Just to put it into context, right — like, we just played these guys four days ago,” McAvoy said of the Hurricanes. “So that’s playoff hockey. We beat them and then we lost to them. Like, that’s how a seven-game series works. So if there’s anything to learn about this, or to use, sort of in context, it’s that this is playoff hockey.

“It was the same thing with Florida except it was like a week apart [between games]. But we’re going to see these teams again, and it’s who’s going to adapt and who’s going to be able to elevate from the beginning of a series to the end of a series.”