It has been a long time since the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes have seen each other.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll meet for the final time in the regular season Tuesday night in Raleigh, N.C.<\/p>\n
The Bruins and Hurricanes haven\u2019t met since splitting a pair of November games in Boston, with the hosts winning 2-1 on Nov. 1 and the visitors prevailing 3-1 on Nov. 17.<\/p>\n
With one more point, the Hurricanes (49-22-6, 104 points) can clinch the Metropolitan Division for the first time since the 2022-23 season. They have won four of their last six games.<\/p>\n
The Bruins (43-26-9, 95 points) have lost three games in a row, including Sunday\u2019s 2-1 overtime setback at Philadelphia. They\u2019re still in good shape in terms of the playoff race, but they have work to do to secure a postseason spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was a huge point for us,\u201d Boston coach Marco Sturm said. \u201cI\u2019ll definitely take that one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boston is 0-2-1 on a road trip that ends in Raleigh. The Bruins have scored a total of three goals in those games.<\/p>\n
Pavel Zacha scored the only goal for the Bruins on Sunday. Sturm said he\u2019s a bit concerned about the total shot attempts after Boston was credited with 19 shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to find ways,\u201d he said. \u201cWe still pass up opportunities. I don\u2019t know, for some reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zacha said the Bruins need to be able to adjust.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think now we\u2019re looking now a lot for quality of shots instead of quantity,\u201d Zacha said. \u201cSometimes when it\u2019s not going our way, I think we have to kind of switch our mindset. Going to the net, shooting more pucks, we talk about it, we just don\u2019t do it in the games yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
A day off Monday has been sorely needed for the Bruins, who will have three more days off following Tuesday\u2019s games. Sturm said the players need to be ready to take advantage of the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the time to show up,\u201d Sturm said.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes lost 6-3 at Ottawa on Sunday. Carolina has played five straight games against playoff-bound or playoff-contending teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good test for what we\u2019re going to see,\u201d Hurricanes forward Taylor Hall said. \u201c(These teams) have that desperation, and we\u2019re going to have to match that in a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carolina captain Jordan Staal didn\u2019t play Sunday because of undisclosed reasons, so his availability will be notable in advance of Tuesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Despite a rather dismal performance to end the weekend, the Hurricanes have continued to receive regular production from the line of Logan Stankoven, Jackson Blake and Hall, who notched his 300th career goal Sunday. Stankoven\u2019s 38 points match his total from last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat line\u2019s been (a) bright spot all year, really,\u201d Carolina coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said. \u201cThey\u2019ve never really come off it. They\u2019ve been pretty solid, and (Hall) was good again. Hallsy gave us a goal, too, at the end, not giving up. But we can\u2019t win with just one line. We need to have other contributors.\u201d<\/p>\n
First-year Hurricanes forward Nikolaj Ehlers has reached 65 points for his highest single-season total in his 11-year NHL career.<\/p>\n
Based on Carolina\u2019s recent rotation, it should be goalie Brandon Bussi\u2019s turn in the nets for the Hurricanes. He didn\u2019t play in either previous game vs. Boston<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been a long time since the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes have seen each other. They\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5107],"tags":[194,29,5176,5,195,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-544420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-hurricanes","8":"tag-carolina","9":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","10":"tag-carolinahurricanes","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hurricanes","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}