BOSTON — It’s going to take seven.
The Boston Bruins lived to play another day Thursday, topping the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-2, in Game 6 of their Stanley Cup playoff series to force a seventh and deciding game.
Neither team has a win away from home and Game 7 will be played Saturday at PNC Arena in Raleigh. But, as Canes defenseman Ian Cole said Thursday morning, a Game 7 can be a fickle thing — a “coin flip,” Cole called it.
It wasn’t hard to assess the Bruins victory this night at TD Garden. Boston won the special teams play, once defusing a Canes’ 5-on-3 power play. One of their best players, the ever dangerous Brad Marchand, delivered the biggest goal of the game.
Charlie Coyle scored a power-play goal and added an assist while Marchand assisted on Coyle’s score for a two-point game.
Andrei Svechnikov scored twice for the Canes, the second a power-play goal after the Bruins had rolled to a 5-1 lead.
For the third time at TD Garden in the series, the Bruins had the better of the goaltending play. Jeremy Swayman stymied the Hurricanes for the most part while the Canes’ Antti Raanta was vulnerable.
Svechnikov beat Swayman with a short-side shot at 3:24 of the third, pulling the Canes within 2-1. But it was soon a two-goal game again.
Defenseman Charlie McAvoy found Erik Haula open in the slot and Haula delivered for a 3-1 lead. When defenseman Derek Forbort scored on a shot from the slot, it was 4-1, and Curtis Lazar added an empty-net goal.
The Bruins’ penalty killers were critical to the victory. Carolina couldn’t convert 54 seconds of a 5-on-3 advantage, overpassing or hesitating when shots were there.
Seth Jarvis had a shot hit the crossbar and Nino Niederreiter hit a post — two near-misses that could have changed the game’s momentum — but the Canes’ power failure overall was telling.
Raanta, rock solid in the Canes’ Game 5 win Tuesday, didn’t have a memorable 33rd birthday. He’ll likely get a chance to help the Canes win the series Saturday.
Coyle’s power-play goal, which gave the Bruins a 2-0 lead, came off a bounce the Canes couldn’t seem to get Thursday. David Pastrnak’s shot was blocked by Cole but the puck landed near Coyle in the low slot for the quick shot and score.
Haula’s goal was probably galling for the Canes. Carolina traded the center to the Florida Panthers in 2020 in the Vincent Trocheck deal, and Haula relished the goal Thursday.
