An eleven-day layoff proved costly for Carolina as defensive collapses and costly turnovers gifted Montreal a dominant Game 1 victory, reviving fears of a conference final curse.
The Carolina Hurricanes had as good of a start as they could ask for in the opening game of the Eastern Conference Final.
The Lenovo Center was rocking, they got a few really good looks on the opening shift and then on their second shift, just 33 seconds into the game, they found the back of the net with Seth Jarvis rifling one home.
Then everything proceeded to unravel en route to a 6-2 loss in Game 1 to the Montreal Canadiens.
Carolina proceeded to surrender a response goal after the opening one just 27 seconds later as blown coverage left Cole Caufield all alone in front and that became the tale of the tape for the remainder of the period.
"That's just not good enough by us, by our line, to get one and then just give it up right away," Jarvis said. "It's a quick flip in momentum and something we want to really never do."
Montreal would score three more goals in the opening 12 minutes of the game thanks to a combination of turnovers, bad pinches and out of sync coverage by the Hurricanes, who just looked absolutely lost.
It wasn't that the Canadiens did anything special or unexpected either, they just capitalized on a sloppy team.
"We lost the game from the start," said Jordan Staal. "Obviously giving them that many freebies, any team is going to make you pay, especially at this time of year. There wasn't enough respect for them. They played a great game. They were ready to roll and we weren't."
And that was what the Hurricanes were worried might happen given the sheer amount of time off they had to deal with.
Carolina had a record 11 days off between games between sweeping the Philadelphia Flyers on May 9 and the drop of the puck for Game 1 of the ECF on May 21.
Montreal, on the other hand, rolled right into this round after going the distance in both their first round and second round series.
Jaccob Slavin had one of his worst games of the year especially, being a -4 on the night, the worst ever marker in his playoff career.
"Personally, I think I handed them the game," Slavin said.
And if that doesn't show you how rough it was, I don't know what will.
"Yeah, he had a tough one," Brind'Amour said. "I’ve never seen that. Eight years. So, it happens. Again, they have that ability that if you give them a little room, then it's over. And that's what happened tonight. He'll bounce back."
Carolina did at least find some footing in the second period and started to stack positive shifts throughout the game, eventually leading to Eric Robinson getting the Canes another goal, scoring his first of the postseason on a partial breakaway, but it was just too little too late for the team.
Montreal was happy to hang back and when the Hurricanes pushed for offense, they were able to counterattack at will.
The Hurricanes have to hope that they've at least shaken off all the rust for Game 2. If not, there just might be some truth to the whole ECF Curse thing.
"We've been through this before," Brind'Amour said. "It's a tough night. It's tough at this time of year to have those. We don't have a lot of those at all like that, and we're going to have to bounce back, clearly, and I have all the faith in the world that we will."
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