One afternoon this past December, a child clad in a Canada toque and an Esso-branded hockey jersey stepped onto a carpeted patch of ice in Bonnyville, Alberta to conduct the first ceremonial faceoff of the World Junior A Challenge.

Vasili Podkolzin, Russia's captain at the under-20 showcase, glided over to meet the boy and to greet Cade Townend, his leadership counterpart from the Canada East team. Russia was the visiting team in the tournament opener, and as Podkolzin and Townend bent forward for the draw, convention dictated that Podkolzin should let the Canadian win possession.

Indifferent to this unspoken accord, Podkolzin pulled the puck toward himself before tapping it to Townend, who arched his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and gave his head a slight shake.

The stakes could not have been lower, yet this much was clear: Podkolzin didn't intend to be one-upped.

"This kid doesn't want anyone to get the better of him," said NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr, who saw the scene unfold from the stands.

Analysts and Podkolzin's coaches say the 6-foot-1, 190-pound right-winger from Moscow, who will turn 18 on the Monday following the NHL draft, is a relentless competitor who can create scoring chances from nothing.

In the game action following the ceremonial faceoff flap, Marr watched the Canadian team try to punish Podkolzin physically. Energized by the attention, Podkolzin scored twice in a two-minute span to key a 5-3 win.

"It's the old story: Don't poke the bear," Marr said. "It just motivated him, and he went out and dominated."

As the draft nears, though, Podkolzin finds himself in a very different situation from that day in Bonnyville: one he can't personally control, and one that embodies the volatility of this year's selection process.

Calling him a projected high pick is the safest characterization ahead of the first round on June 21, given that practically anything could happen after Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko are the first two names off the board.

Podkolzin's drive, quickness, and intelligence could convince a team to nab him as high as third. But it wouldn't come as a shock if he slipped out of the top 10, undone by concerns about his point production and the two years that remain on his KHL contract with SKA St. Petersburg.

Speaking via a translator at the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo earlier in June, Podkolzin said his sole hope for the draft is for his name to be called in the first round: "Whatever that number is, that'll be the number."

Podkolzin had an eventful 2018-19 season. He played at three levels in the Russian domestic system - junior, minor pro, and sparingly with SKA's powerhouse KHL team - and in several international tournaments, including the world juniors and last summer's under-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. At the latter, his 11 points tied him atop the scoring leaderboard with Canada's Alexis Lafreniere, who is currently the consensus top prospect for the 2020 NHL draft.

The flipside of Podkolzin's star turn at the Hlinka tournament, where he netted a hat trick in the bronze-medal game as Russia beat the United States 5-4, was his frustrating performance at the under-18 world championship in April. He captained Russia to the silver medal, but he didn't manage to score until the final and only recorded four points across seven games.

*Tied for tournament lead

Prospect rankings compiled by scouting services and media outlets reflect varying, and evolving, perceptions of Podkolzin's stock. They generally place him anywhere from third to 12th, often with the caveat that the so-called "Russian factor" - the risk that he, like any of his countrymen, could opt to stay home to play in the KHL for numerous seasons - could deter clubs with a pick in that range from selecting him.

At the combine, Podkolzin acknowledged that his KHL contract could scare off some teams. But he also said he hopes to come to North America in time for the 2021-22 season after his deal with SKA expires.

"If NHL teams want to be stupid, they'll put a lot of weight into (Podkolzin's KHL deal)," Craig Button, TSN director of scouting, said in an interview before the combine.

"If you want to scout based on a passport or a tape measure, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, because there isn't this bounty of good players all around the world. The Russian players want to play in the NHL just as much as the Canadian players."

After slotting Podkolzin fifth in the first iteration of his 2019 draft rankings last summer and elevating him to third following the world juniors, Button eventually downgraded him to ninth in the class last week. Still, he admiringly calls Podkolzin a "bulldog" who cares dearly about the outcome of every puck battle and finds a way to contribute either offensively or defensively in every game he plays.

Here's one spectacular example Button cited to extol Podkolzin's impact: the tying goal he scored against Sweden late in the Hlinka Gretzky Cup semifinal.

Marr said Podkolzin has the capacity to command a viewer's attention on any given shift.

"It becomes pretty obvious that he's the best player on the team by the time you get through the first period every game," said Marr, who had a hand in NHL Central Scouting's decision to rate Podkolzin the second-best international skater in the draft (after Kakko).

"Scouts love it when you don't have to look for a player," Marr said. "There's a lot of times that you go to a game and have to look for a first-rounder, because it's not happening. You never have to look for this guy."

Effusive as he is in praising the young winger's competitiveness, Button notes that Podkolzin is prone to forcing plays that aren't there. He also thinks Podkolzin is a good but not great skater, a shortcoming that could keep him from racking up points at an elite rate in the NHL.

Instead, he foresees Podkolzin assuming a valuable complementary role, like the Chicago Blackhawks' Dylan Strome - a top-six forward with the ability to score 60-70 points per season.

"Vasili is not going to be Nathan MacKinnon. He's not going to be that level of player. He's not going to be Mitch Marner," Button said. "But he can be the player who can play with those guys."

Podkolzin's first opportunity to skate alongside high-end pros came when he made his KHL debut with SKA last November. After idling on the bench well into the third period of a blowout win against HC Avtomobilist, the head coach sent him out for a shift with two of SKA's leading scorers: Nikita Gusev, who left Russia in April to sign with the Vegas Golden Knights, and former Detroit Red Wings legend Pavel Datsyuk.

Podkolzin - who told the KHL's website at the time that his legs were shaking as he left the bench - wound up taking 14 shifts across three games with SKA this season, averaging 3:30 of ice time per contest. Between those call-ups and his international obligations, he only got to play 14 games with SKA-Neva, the franchise's farm team, and 12 with SKA-1946, its major junior affiliate.

Shuttling between three domestic teams was made easier by the fact they're all based in St. Petersburg, Podkolzin said at the NHL combine. However, he had to adjust to a different role in each lineup and admitted to getting "a little fatigued" toward the end of the season, which may help explain why he struggled to generate results offensively at the under-18 worlds.

Jumping from level to level did give Podkolzin the chance to impress a lot of coaches. With his potential leap to North America two years away, they are among the people best suited to break down his game.

Vladimir Filatov was Russia's bench boss at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, the World Junior A Challenge, and the under-18 worlds. He said in an email that Podkolzin is a smart player, a skilled puck-handler, and a potent and willing shooter - and, more importantly, "the heart and the leader" of his squad.

"Leadership is one of his strongest qualities," Filatov wrote via a translator. "He is an example for his teammates and deserves to be captain."

Alexander Savchenkov, Podkolzin's junior coach, said in his own translated email that Podkolzin is a natural leader who is unafraid to dish out and accept constructive criticism. After a subpar debut game with SKA-1946, he recalled, Podkolzin went to the coaches' room to apologize to Savchenkov and to discuss what he needed to improve.

Broadly, Savchenkov said, Podkolzin could stand to be a little more patient on the ice: "He wants it all at once, he wants to be everywhere during the game - but he needs to be in his place." Yet the coach figures it won't be long before he's ready to play full-time in a top pro league.

"Perhaps in the nearest future," Savchenkov said. "Everything is in his hands."

- With files from theScore's John Matisz

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The club that swept the Tampa Bay Lightning is out. So is the team that beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in four games. So, will it be the Boston Bruins or the Carolina Hurricanes representing the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup Final?

It hasn't been an easy playoff run for the Bruins. The Toronto Maple Leafs forced them to Game 7 in the first round and the Columbus Blue Jackets were hardly pushovers after entering Round 2 with the luxury of some added rest. Adversity has afforded the Bruins the opportunity to prove their mettle: They've gone down in a series on four occasions already, but won the next game each time.

The Hurricanes, meanwhile, are rounding into form at the ideal moment. They haven't lost since the Washington Capitals pummeled them 6-0 in Game 5 of the first round; six straight victories against the Caps and the New York Islanders should have them brimming with confidence entering the franchise's first trip to the conference finals in a decade.

All told, the stage appears to be set for a stellar matchup. Let's break it down ahead of Game 1 on Thursday night.

Forwards

Bruins: Boston has gotten offense from a multitude of sources. Seven Bruins forwards have scored at least twice at five-on-five in the postseason, and none of them are named Patrice Bergeron, who has done most of his sniping (four of five goals) on the power play.

David Pastrnak has vacillated between Boston's second line and his usual perch on Bergeron's right wing, but no matter where he plays, he's found the net (team-high six goals). David Krejci leads the Bruins with nine points at even strength, while Brad Marchand has paced the club with 13 points amid his spats with Columbus defenseman Scott Harrington and Sportsnet reporter Kyle Bukauskas.

One player whose fortune is probably due to improve is Jake DeBrusk, who has scored only twice on 40 shots (a 5 percent success rate) after potting 27 goals on a 17.3 shooting percentage during the regular season.

Hurricanes: Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, and Jordan Staal are all producing like stars - together they've scored 14 of Carolina's 34 goals - and rookie winger Warren Foegele has thrived in third-line minutes with five goals and nine points of his own.

Like Boston, Carolina is hoping to get more out of a typically dependable second-liner whose woeful shooting rate has him stuck in a slump. Nino Niederreiter has scored just once on 23 shots (4.3 percent) despite creating 15 quality scoring chances, which is second on the team behind Teravainen.

Micheal Ferland, Carolina's fourth-leading scorer this season, is expected to return from the upper-body injury he sustained in the first round, and rookie Andrei Svechnikov, who's healthy again after Alex Ovechkin concussed him in a fight, should finally get the chance to showcase his considerable skill over a full series.

Edge: Bruins. Both teams have star power and depth, but Marchand, Bergeron, and Pastrnak are peerless when they're clicking. They all finished in the top 10 in points per game this year and are capable of winning Boston a game or two practically on their own during any series.

Defensemen

Bruins: With a back end that blends size, skill, youth, and experience, Boston - a perennially strong Corsi team, just like Carolina - can rely on its defense to move the puck and help drive the offense. Zdeno Chara and Brandon Carlo log tough minutes, Torey Krug and Matt Grzelcyk each have four points on the power play, and Charlie McAvoy has evolved into a No. 1 defenseman at just 21 years old.

A sample of McAvoy's stats against Columbus - he played 25:36 per game and contributed three assists, and Boston had 57.39 percent of scoring chances when he was on the ice at five-on-five - demonstrates how much he'll be missed in Game 1 as he serves a suspension for shouldering Blue Jackets forward Josh Anderson in the head.

Hurricanes: Jaccob Slavin has emerged as a star in his fourth NHL season and first taste of the playoffs. Playing a team-high 26:36 per game, his 11 points (all of them assists) tie him with St. Louis blue-liner Alex Pietrangelo for third most among defensemen in the postseason, trailing only San Jose's Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson.

Every Canes defenseman has been a positive Corsi player in the playoffs. Dougie Hamilton has scored three goals, two of which came on the power play, and Justin Faulk has looked impressive in his 25:54 of average ice time.

Haydn Fleury, Carolina's No. 6 blue-liner, embodies one minor concern. With Trevor van Riemsdyk sidelined after shoulder surgery, Canes head coach Rod Brind'Amour has been willing to play Fleury only around seven minutes per game, fewer than every other defenseman in the playoffs. Can the rest of the unit continue to handle the increased load?

Edge: Hurricanes. Slavin could easily distinguish himself as the top defenseman in the series even after McAvoy returns from his banishment.

Goaltenders

Bruins: It would be more than fair to consider Tuukka Rask the best netminder left in the playoffs. He's authored a remarkable turnaround from what, by his standards, was a so-so regular season.

Shorthanded goals were his Achilles' heel this year, but he's let in only one through 13 games while posting a .944 save percentage at even strength (and .938 across all situations). Goals saved above average (GSAA), a metric that melds average save percentage across the league with the number of shots a goalie faces, rates Rask leaps and bounds higher than the rest of his class: His playoff GSAA figure is 8.09, with Dallas' Ben Bishop next at 6.14.

Hurricanes: Rask's Carolina counterparts, Petr Mrazek and Curtis McElhinney, have combined to post a combined 0.6 GSAA, but that number is skewed by Mrazek's poor showing against the Capitals in Round 1. Mrazek had allowed just one goal (a power-play tally) to the Islanders when he hurt his lower body in Game 2 and relinquished the crease to McElhinney, who turned aside 71 of the 75 shots fired his way during the rest of the series.

It's still unclear if Mrazek will be healthy enough to dress for Game 1. Even if he does, Brind'Amour might opt to let McElhinney try to prolong his hot streak. Twenty-two of the Islanders' shots against McElhinney were quality chances and he saved all but one - a mark that could be seen as either extremely promising or sure to regress.

Edge: Bruins. Setting aside the question of whether Mrazek or McElhinney gets the nod to start, neither has shown he can consistently perform at the level Rask has achieved in the past month.

Special teams

Bruins: Marchand and Bergeron haven't played like world-beaters at even strength, but they've been lethal on the power play with a combined five goals (four from Bergeron). Boston has scored 10 power-play markers on 35 tries (an NHL-best 28.6 percent) and killed 31 of 37 penalties (83.8 percent).

Hurricanes: The bad news is that Carolina's penalty kill is operating at a feeble 75 percent (nine goals allowed). The worse news is the Hurricanes' power play has scored all of four goals on 38 opportunities (10.5 percent), including a seven-game goalless drought they finally snapped in Game 4 against the Islanders.

Edge: Bruins. The numbers don't lie, and they should be a major worry for Brind'Amour and Co.

X-Factors

Bruins: First-line scoring. Marchand, Bergeron, and Pastrnak could make matters simple and hasten the arrival of Carolina's offseason by producing to their potential.

Hurricanes: Goaltending. It's a big if, but if either Mrazek or McElhinney can outperform Rask, the conference title could be Carolina's for the taking.

Prediction

Bruins in six. What a story it would be if this "bunch of jerks" surge all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. They'll keep the series close and could even send it back to Boston tied at two games apiece, but it seems smarter to bank on Marchand, Bergeron, Pastrnak, and Rask uniting to lead the Bruins to their third final in nine years.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It's fair to wonder how differently Game 4 might have gone for the Blue Jackets in a parallel universe, one in which the NHL saw fit to suspend Brad Marchand for punching an unsuspecting Columbus defenseman in the back of the head.

Granted, Tuukka Rask was brilliant, and the Jackets' only goal on 40 shots was the direct result of an egregious officiating error. But the Bruins' 4-1 win made clear that in a series where each goalie — Rask and Sergei Bobrovsky — has starred, their greatest advantage is the capability of their best forwards to take over at a moment's notice.

With Marchand let off unscathed, Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy reunited him, Patrice Bergeron, and David Pastrnak on Thursday after deploying that trio sparingly at even strength in Games 1, 2, and 3. Neither Marchand nor Bergeron had registered a point in this series alongside fill-in linemate Danton Heinen, and it didn't take them long at all to atone for that shortfall.

By combining to score three goals, two of which rippled the twine behind Bobrovsky before the game was eight minutes old, Marchand, Bergeron, and Pastrnak finally mustered a sufficient response to Artemi Panarin, Matt Duchene, and Cam Atkinson, whose cumulative offensive production — four goals and five assists entering the night — had helped power Columbus to a 2-1 series lead.

Each of those goals developed through tidy combination play. On the first, Pastrnak buried a cross-ice pass from Charlie McAvoy from the left faceoff circle as Marchand and Bergeron occupied attention on the weak side. Marchand set up Bergeron for his first power-play tally; Bergeron's second came courtesy of a rebound Pastrnak created with a lethal one-timer.

Keep your stars together and let them go to work. It's a simple formula that can work wonders, especially when the goalie behind them is operating on a higher plane. Eleven of the 40 shots Rask faced were high-danger, and he turned each and every one of them aside, upping his save percentage in the series to a sparkling .942 (and .952 at even-strength).

In one way, Game 4 lent credence to the thought that Rask's improved play in the postseason shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Though his .912 save percentage in the regular season was a career low, he was a .925 netminder at even strength, a number worthy of a great deal more respect.

The area where Rask faltered was on shorthanded opportunities the Bruins' aggressive power play tended to concede. After allowing a league-high 12 goals this season when his team had a man advantage, he reversed that trend in Game 4 by stonewalling the Blue Jackets on five shorthanded scoring chances, including a crucial blocker save on Boone Jenner's penalty shot in the first period.

Bobrovsky has been no slouch himself, recording a .933 save percentage (.951 at even-strength) to this point in the series. He'll be an early Conn Smythe Trophy candidate if the Jackets wind up advancing to the third round.

Now that these series are deadlocked after four games, it's interesting to contrast Boston-Columbus with the St. Louis Blues' ongoing showdown with the Dallas Stars. That matchup features two goaltenders — Jordan Binnington and Ben Bishop — who were expected to excel after looking unbeatable for much of the season.

Instead, each of them has been pedestrian, while Rask and Bobrovsky duel out east. If the Carolina Hurricanes finish off the New York Islanders sometime in the next week, their opponent in the Eastern Conference Final will likely be the team whose goalie doesn't regress first.

What else is worth watching for in Game 5 and beyond? The special-teams battle may finally be tilting in the Bruins' favor. Their power play was the NHL's third-strongest this season, but after clicking on seven of 16 opportunities in Round 1 against the Toronto Maple Leafs, it had managed just one goal in its first 10 tries against Columbus.

Credit the Jackets on that front: their penalty kill was tops in the league this year. It took Bergeron's resounding entrance into the series to solve Bobrovsky and that fearsome unit. Such is the benefit of having great offensive players.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The night the San Jose Sharks shot seven pucks past Michael DiPietro, his phone wouldn't stop pinging with messages of consolation.

The Vancouver Canucks prospect got lit up in his surprise NHL debut at age 19. Without a healthy backup goalie available, he was stranded in the crease for all 60 minutes of what became a 7-2 loss.

"You don't see many of those in the Ontario Hockey League," Sportsnet color commentator John Garrett said on the Canucks' TV broadcast after Evander Kane scored San Jose's fourth goal on a nasty top-shelf wrister.

DiPietro's family and friends were sad and sorry about the barrage to which he'd been subjected. His perspective, though, was radically different.

"I played one of the best teams in the NHL, a veteran lineup, and I had a ton of fun doing it," DiPietro says now. "It was a dream come true, and the teammates in Vancouver were absolutely phenomenal with me, keeping my spirits up and cheering me on.

"I let in seven goals, but looking back on it, those seven goals I can learn from."

It's unlikely that any player in hockey has experienced as wild a season as DiPietro, the Canucks' possible netminder of the future. In late December and early January, he endeared himself to Canada by allowing a mere five goals on 103 shots at the world junior championship in Vancouver. One of those goals, however, was an inconceivably fluky ricochet off an opponent's skate in a 2-1 quarterfinal loss to Finland.

Canucks fans were reintroduced to DiPietro on Feb. 4, when the team, beset by goalie injuries, summoned him from the OHL's Ottawa 67s to back up Jacob Markstrom. The Windsor, Ontario, native would watch and learn from the bench for a couple of weeks as Thatcher Demko nursed a sprained knee.

That was the plan - at least until Feb. 11, when Markstrom's back began to spasm and DiPietro was forced to face Kane, Tomas Hertl, Timo Meier, and Joe Pavelski, a quartet of 30-goal scorers who all beat him at least once that night.

Those experiences against Finland and San Jose might have tanked most other teenagers' play, but few prospects seem to be wired like DiPietro, the OHL's goalie of the year in 2017-18. A 6-footer, he's long been knocked for being short for the position, but he's always felt mature for his age. He says he thrives on pressure - "Call me crazy, call me whatever, but that's just something I love to do" - and considers his battle and his drive to be the twin attributes that define his game.

"I'll do whatever it takes to stop a puck," he says.

That mentality has translated into consistently positive results for his whole junior career, which itself has been anything but typical. In 2016-17, DiPietro backstopped his hometown Windsor Spitfires to a Memorial Cup championship - before he ever won an OHL playoff series. (Windsor lost in the first round and spent the next 44 days practicing before playing in the national tournament as hosts.) The Canucks drafted him 64th overall in 2017.

The rebuilding Spitfires traded DiPietro to the ascendant 67s shortly before he left for the world juniors this past December, which brings us to the final phase of his one-of-a-kind season. By winning 12 consecutive games to open the OHL playoffs - sweeping three Eastern Conference opponents in the process - DiPietro and Ottawa are within striking distance of a Memorial Cup trip of their own.

"In the playoffs, right now, I think we're seeing what he's really all about," says 67s head coach Andre Tourigny, whose team will face the Western Conference champion Guelph Storm in the OHL's best-of-seven final starting Thursday.

"He's making key saves, keeping us in the game all the time. The more the game is on the line, the better he is."

Facing an average of 28 shots per game, DiPietro has recorded a .913 save percentage in these playoffs. In the high-scoring OHL, that slots him third among goalies whose team advanced past the first round. In Game 4 of the second round, his 58 saves powered Ottawa to a 3-2 triple-overtime win that eliminated the Sudbury Wolves. Their starter, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, tended goal for Finland when that team won gold at the world juniors and was picked 10 spots ahead of DiPietro in the 2017 draft.

What skills have enabled DiPietro to become a junior star since the Canucks selected him? Different observers point to different strengths. Tourigny praises DiPietro's reaction time, lateral quickness, and competitiveness. DiPietro's agent, Darren Ferris, lauds his client's technical ability, his character, and his insatiable desire to excel and to win.

DiPietro's drive helped convince Hockey Canada head scout Brad McEwen to invite him to the country's two most recent world-junior selection camps. His assessment: DiPietro doesn't get rattled and finds a way to make saves on broken plays, a trait that compensates for his relative lack of size.

DiPietro was a late cut from Canada's 2018 world junior team. (Philadelphia Flyers rookie Carter Hart wound up leading the team to gold, supplemented by Dallas Stars prospect Colton Point.) But he handled his release graciously, and by the time DiPietro left the Canadians' pre-tournament headquarters, McEwen was already confident he'd want him to start the following year.

"If there's anybody that can handle adversity, it's Michael," says Ferris, whose DHG Sports Agency also represents Taylor Hall, Mitch Marner, and several other NHLers.

"It's going to be an easy transition for him (to professional hockey). His next steps, the path he has to take, I think, will probably be a lot more accommodating for him because of his maturity. He handles everything just like a pro."

When DiPietro was 5, his mother, Rebecca, died of cancer. He says now that he had to grow up quickly and that his father, Vic, raised him to eschew excuses and instilled in him the belief that he could handle any challenge.

A few years later, Vic married Assunta Fenty, whose son Mark used to be a goalie. At one of Mark's games about a decade ago, DiPietro - a young defenseman at the time - was watching raptly from the stands when his older stepbrother stoned an opponent on a breakaway.

In that moment, DiPietro knew he wanted to switch positions.

"He likes to be the guy everyone looks to: 'Listen - I got your back,'" Vic DiPietro says. And as a goalie who isn't 6-foot-5, Vic continued, he's also come to enjoy proving doubters wrong.

"Not in an arrogant way, of course," Vic says. "Just (by) going to work."

On the evening of Feb. 11, Vic and Assunta were sitting at their dinner table in Amherstburg, near Windsor, when Michael told them that Canucks coach Travis Green had tabbed him to start that night against the Sharks. There was no way to foresee this turn of events, so they were limited to watching his first NHL game on TV.

After the final buzzer, Michael, his dad, and his agent all concluded that the blowout constituted an opportunity for growth. The Sharks scored on five of their nine high-danger shots on goal - "He was taking shots no goalie should be taking, in my opinion," Ferris says - and demonstrated to him just how fast NHL action can move.

"For a young kid to step in and take that kind of workload right off the bat, it's kind of difficult," Ferris says. "I think it'll benefit him in the long run."

Barring another emergency recall, it might be a few years before DiPietro's parents get to witness his second NHL appearance. The Canucks have Markstrom signed through next year, and Demko, who is 23 years old, has two seasons left on his entry-level contract. In April, Vancouver nabbed 22-year-old NCAA star Jake Kielly in free agency after a superlative season at Clarkson University.

Like Demko, most netminders begin their pro careers with extensive seasoning in the minors. Hart, who started 30 games for the Flyers from late December onward, was the only goalie younger than age 22 to log significant time in the NHL this season. Come fall, it seems likely that DiPietro will share a crease with Kielly on the Utica Comets, Vancouver's American Hockey League affiliate.

For now, his focus is the OHL final, and the last, pivotal month of a whirlwind campaign. This "crazy" season has taught him about the need for a player to be adaptable, he says. It also has crystallized the vision he has for his future.

"Once you have a taste (of the NHL), that's all you want," DiPietro says. "That's something I'm going to (use to) push myself this summer: to make sure I surprise a few people at camp, and, hopefully, do my thing and make sure I have a good transition to pro hockey.

"I want to be the best I can possibly be. At the end of the day, I don't want anybody feeling sorry for me."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Before this week, Curtis McElhinney had appeared in all of two playoff games in his 11 years as an NHL goaltender, and one of those took place a decade ago.

Still, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that in this zany Carolina Hurricanes postseason run, McElhinney - like so many of his teammates - has delivered when pressed into action.

Ever since the injured Petr Mrazek ceded his crease to McElhinney midway through Game 2 against the New York Islanders, Carolina's backup has stopped 45 of the 47 shots he's faced. That includes 28 saves on Wednesday, when the 35-year-old McElhinney became the oldest goalie in league history to make his first playoff start and his surging club moved within a win of the Eastern Conference Final.

Reserve netminders aren't supposed to look impregnable, especially against an opponent that advanced to the second round via a sweep. But Mrazek and McElhinney have combined to yield just three goals in three games - all Hurricanes victories - and the Isles appear bound to suffer the same fate they just imposed on the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Canes' performance in their 5-2 win in Game 3 was well in line with the ethos that has gotten them this far. Through 10 postseason games - and particularly in their past eight, of which they've won seven - it seems like Carolina's always had a "next man" ready to rise to the occasion.

Five Hurricanes have scored at least three goals in these playoffs, and three others have tallied a game-winner. The team didn't stumble when forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Micheal Ferland, and Jordan Martinook all went down in the first round with various injuries. The same goes for life without Mrazek, Saku Maenalanen, and Trevor van Riemsdyk, all of whom were hurt in Game 2 against New York.

And how emphatically did Carolina put the "bunch" in Bunch of Jerks on Wednesday? Every single Hurricanes skater finished Game 3 with positive shot-attempt and scoring-chance ratios at even strength, signifying that New York had a lesser chance of scoring for practically the entire game.

The Hurricanes' dominance was especially pronounced in the third period, which began tied 2-2 and ended with the Islanders robbed of all but the faintest hope of coming back in this series.

In that final frame, Carolina had eight scoring chances to New York's three, including a 5-0 edge in quality chances. Even after Justin Williams scored to put the Hurricanes ahead 3-2 with 9:45 remaining - assisted by Sebastian Aho's midair interception of Robin Lehner's attempted clearance around the boards - they continued to control the run of play despite the Isles having an incentive to push aggressively for a tying goal.

Given how well his team played, McElhinney's effort didn't have to be Herculean, but he did make a tremendous toe save on Nick Leddy when Jordan Eberle sprung the defenseman for a breakaway in the second period, and made another with his glove when Eberle tried to pot the rebound. That was plenty on a night when the Isles generated only six quality scoring chances, far fewer than the 10.5 they averaged in the first two games.

It's hard to fathom any way New York could mount a miracle comeback. Any such blueprint would probably start with Lehner playing lights-out - his .915 save percentage at even strength in this series is significantly below his .934 regular-season mark - but at some point, they'd actually have to score. It's easier to forgive Brock Nelson for tapping McElhinney's head when you consider it came after his team's first and only goal at five-on-five through three games.

When the Islanders are inevitably eliminated, they'll rue not capitalizing on opportunities to win Games 1 and 2, in which they could have legitimately claimed to be the better team.

However, the Hurricanes fully earned their Game 3 victory, even as their power play failed to score for the seventh straight contest. Pretty much everything else is playing out in their favor - McElhinney being the latest embodiment of that trend.

Dallas flexes scoring depth

Stars head coach Jim Montgomery's successful decision to tweak his top two lines ahead of Game 4 on Wednesday accentuated the reason his team has kept pace with the St. Louis Blues: Dallas is getting secondary scoring.

Rather than forging ahead with Tyler Seguin centering Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov - the trio that netted 89 of the Stars' 209 goals this season - Montgomery shifted Seguin to the second line and promoted flourishing Finnish 22-year-old Roope Hintz in his place.

The shakeup worked out happily for everyone involved, as Dallas won 4-2 on the strength of three terrific joint efforts from the members of those two lines: Seguin won a puck battle to feed new linemate Jason Dickinson for a tap-in; Dickinson, Mats Zuccarello, and Seguin all made key plays to set up a John Klingberg goal; and Hintz scored to reward Radulov and Benn for two consecutive pretty passes.

Hintz now has five goals in these playoffs, tied with Radulov for the team lead. Seguin, Dickinson, and Zuccarello have all scored three times, while Benn has contributed two goals and seven assists.

Their combined production has fortified Dallas' offensive punch in a series where Vezina Trophy finalist Ben Bishop - he of the .945 save percentage against the Nashville Predators in Round 1 - has looked shockingly beatable (.906 save percentage through four games).

Even in a 2-2 series, it's remarkable how little separates these teams. The Stars and Blues have each scored nine goals at even strength, while Dallas has a modest edge in total scoring chances at 123-119.

Like Bishop, St. Louis netminder Jordan Binnington has fared worse than expected (.904 save percentage) after his sterling second half of the regular season, mainly thanks to Dallas' aforementioned top-six forward group.

Does either goalie have a shutdown showing in him? In what's now a best-of-three matchup, it could make all the difference.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

At this stage of the playoffs, the Carolina Hurricanes have all the reasons in the world to fret about their chances of progressing past the second round.

Already down three of their top nine forwards due to injury, the 'Canes lost three more players - including starting goalie Petr Mrazek - to assorted ailments in Game 2; Mrazek's counterpart, New York Islanders starter Robin Lehner, has turned aside 47 of the 50 shots he's faced through two games; Carolina's power play, now 0-for-7 in the series, scarcely looks capable of generating a scoring opportunity, much less a goal.

And yet the Storm Surge is alive and well as this Eastern Conference semifinal shifts to Raleigh for Game 3 and 4. The Hurricanes have carved out a reputation for themselves as the postseason's most resilient team, and have taken a 2-0 series lead by the thinnest of margins due to the Islanders' inability to produce at even strength.

Resilience ranks among the best explanations of how the Hurricanes managed to win 2-1 Sunday after their offense barely tested Lehner through 40 minutes. Any of the Isles' 13 high-danger scoring chances at even strength (Carolina had five) could have knotted the series. Instead, they'll hit the road with no margin of error remaining.

Here are three takeaways from Game 2 that will set the tone for the remainder of the series.

Islanders need to score - for Lehner, more than anyone else

Lehner's Game 2 stat line was nothing special - 16 saves on 18 shots - but New York's Vezina Trophy finalist has kept his squad in each of their past two losses with a sparkling .940 overall save percentage. Sunday marked the first game since the Islanders' playoff opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins that Lehner allowed more than one goal.

His effort should be enough for any NHL lineup to succeed, even one that scored fewer goals than every playoff team but the Dallas Stars this season. But a litany of missed chances (along with a disallowed goal) kept New York off the scoreboard at five-on-five for the second straight game.

Though the posts and crossbars Josh Bailey, Jordan Eberle, and Ryan Pulock struck at various points in the final 10 minutes were particularly painful, the Isles' inability to finish plagued them from puck drop. Driving toward an open net five minutes in, Anthony Beauvillier whiffed on a tap-in; on the two-on-one rush that directly preceded Mrazek's exit with a lower-body injury, Eberle and Casey Cizikas were unable to connect for a shot.

Meanwhile, the Hurricanes have capitalized on key opportunities. In Game 1, Jordan Staal scored in overtime by beating Isles defenseman Devon Toews to a rebound off a shot that missed the net. On one of the Hurricanes' few open-ice rushes Sunday, Warren Foegele collected a banked pass from Lucas Wallmark and wired a wrister past Lehner for Carolina's first goal. Less than a minute later, Nino Niederreiter tipped in the game-winner.

The Islanders are probably due for better luck in the next couple of games, but at this point, time is of the essence.

Injuries haven't caught up with Carolina … yet

After going down 2-0 to the Washington Capitals in the first round, the Hurricanes have now won six of their past seven games despite injuries to forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Micheal Ferland, Jordan Martinook, Saku Maenalanen (who left in the third period with a hand injury and will be sidelined 10-to-14 days), goaltender Mrazek, and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk (who hurt his shoulder 25 seconds into Game 2 and is out indefinitely).

If Svechnikov (concussion) and Martinook (leg) return soon, it would be a boon to Carolina's offense, which has operated on a by-committee basis through nine playoff games. Seven 'Canes have scored multiple goals, led by Foegele's five, while defenseman Jaccob Slavin has a team-high 10 assists.

Can they withstand these latest blows? One argument in the Hurricanes' favor is the way they've responded to adversity. Carolina dug itself out of a two-game deficit and overcame a 6-0 loss in Round 1. Before Niederreiter scored on Sunday, the Hurricanes hadn't led for any amount of time since Game 6 against the Caps, aside from their overtime goals.

As for the Mrazek injury, Carolina might not be that much worse off with Curtis McElhinney in net. To be fair, that isn't a ringing endorsement of McElhinney, but an acknowledgment that their stats from this season were similarly mediocre (.914 save percentage in 40 games for Mrazek; .912 in 33 games for McElhinney). Mrazek posted a 31-save shutout against the Isles in Game 1, but his .899 save percentage against Washington was poor.

Hurricanes' power play looks broken

Ranked 20th in the NHL, Carolina's power play was pretty drab this year. But they could sure use more in this stage of the playoffs, especially on an afternoon when their offense looked lifeless for extended stretches.

The Hurricanes' time on the man advantage actually did them more harm than good in Game 2. They went 0-for-3 and didn't put a single puck on net during a five-on-three that lasted 1:25 in the second period. The tail end of that particular power play produced the odd-man rush where Cizikas could've scored and Mrazek appeared to hurt himself.

Foegele and Niederreiter finally solved Lehner at five-on-five in the third period, but the Hurricanes certainly didn't make it easy on themselves. (Nor have they for most of the playoffs: Game 3 vs. Washington was the last time they scored on the power play.)

The gap between now and Game 3 on Wednesday will be the first time the Hurricanes have consecutive days off in nearly two weeks. Rest won't be the only order of business they attend to.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Carolina Hurricanes evened their series, the St. Louis Blues mounted a frantic comeback, and the San Jose Sharks warded off elimination on a busy Thursday in the NHL playoffs. Here are some key takeaways from each game.

Wild night for Foegele, spunky Hurricanes

From the first rush of the game to the third-period shove from behind that caused Alex Ovechkin to fume, Carolina's fourth matchup with Washington became the Warren Foegele show.

An unlikely headline-grabber, even on a Hurricanes team that lacks star power, Foegele opened the game flying and scored just 17 seconds into the contest after Washington's Matt Niskanen was caught up ice.

But the 23-year-old rookie winger could face suspension for the check he delivered to T.J. Oshie late in the third period. Capitals coach Todd Reirden said postgame that Oshie will be out for the foreseeable future.

Carolina has been one of the NHL's healthiest teams this season, but they've already proven capable of compensating for the absence of some key contributors. The Hurricanes were down Micheal Ferland and Andrei Svechnikov in Game 4, while fellow middle-six winger Jordan Martinook played only 4:39 after twisting his right leg in the first period.

Losing Foegele would be another blow as the series shifts to D.C. on Saturday, but the Capitals will face an even greater test with Oshie out. Reirden elevated him to Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom's line in Game 4, hoping to spark Washington's sputtering attack. But the trio struggled at even strength against Carolina's top defensive pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Dougie Hamilton, and second line of Foegele, Jordan Staal, and Justin Williams.

No matter who does or doesn't play on Saturday, one of the Capitals' chief objectives should be to reverse their newfound offensive malaise. Washington scored eight goals at home in Games 1 and 2 - five of which came at even strength - but they only mustered one goal in Carolina, and that was on the power play.

Jets stars no-show, Blues big guns do their part

As TSN and NBC commentator Gord Miller noted in the wake of Winnipeg's latest third-period meltdown, this series has followed anything but a logical progression.

In the spirit of this topsy-turviness, consider this stat from the Blues' madcap 3-2 comeback win in Game 5: Of the 10 high-quality scoring chances the Jets generated on the night, eight came courtesy of their bottom two lines. Not coincidentally, those are the units that out-muscled the Blues for two goals in the first period.

But for all the praise heaped on goalscorers Adam Lowry and Kevin Hayes along with their respective linemates, St. Louis was in position to steal a victory with 15 seconds left because Winnipeg's best players weren't nearly good enough. Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, and Kyle Connor, the Jets' No. 1 line, were severely outgunned at 5-on-5 by Oskar Sundqvist, Brayden Schenn, and Jaden Schwartz, whose efforts to drive possession paid off when each of them featured prominently in the final two goals.

Ahead of puck drop, it seemed like the Blues' best chance to buck their two-game losing skid would be to hope for a David Pastrnak-like breakout performance from their stars. Schenn, Ryan O'Reilly, and Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis' usual first line, combined for just one goal at even strength (plus two on the power play) through four games. Jordan Binnington, a revelation in net since he wrested the starting role from Jake Allen in January, came into Thursday with a decidedly average .902 playoff save percentage.

Pastrnak's two-goal performance against Toronto on Wednesday might have been louder on its own, but Schenn's two points, O'Reilly's power-play goal to get his team on the board, Tarasenko's multiple scoring chances on the power play, and Binnington's 29 saves constituted an admirable response under pressure.

In a close game, the late results they got made the Blues deserving winners, controversy surrounding Sundqvist's drive to the net on the tying goal be damned. All they have to do now is remember how to win at home.

Vegas' top line finally falters

Early in Game 5 between Vegas and San Jose, NBC producers cued up a graphic to detail the exploits of Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny, and Mark Stone, who form what is ostensibly the Golden Knights' second line. Those players scored a combined 28 points through the first four games of the playoffs, more than any forward trio since Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Esa Tikkanen tallied 30 points in the same number of games for the 1987 Edmonton Oilers.

But Thursday was an entirely different story. In their strongest defensive showing since the postseason's opening slate of games, the Sharks finally kept Vegas' leading bigwigs in check, holding them scoreless in a 5-2 win that prolonged Joe Thornton's career for at least one more monumental road trip.

Stone, Pacioretty, and Stastny still top the individual playoff scoring leaderboard in that order, so San Jose shouldn't derive too much hope from their off night. After all, it was their impression of prime Gretzky and Co. that led Vegas to outscore the Sharks 13-3 over the eight periods of action directly preceding Game 5.

Still, the Sharks have reason for cautious optimism as they set their sights on staving off elimination again on Sunday. Unceremoniously yanked from the net in Games 2 and 4, Martin Jones rebounded with a 30-save effort and only allowed two power-play goals. His pad save on Reilly Smith, Vegas' best forward on the night, with fewer than eight minutes left in the third period forestalled a possible catastrophe with his club clinging to a one-goal lead.

Equally encouraging were the contributions the Sharks got from their stars. Tomas Hertl, who emerged as a point-a-game scorer this season, came within a pinged crossbar of a hat trick. San Jose's top line of Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, and Timo Meier potted two goals and teamed with Brent Burns and Marc-Andre Vlasic, who returned from a two-game absence, to hound the Stastny line at 5v5 for much of the night.

Smith and Jonathan Marchessault's power-play markers kept the score close until the waning minutes. Vegas now has a playoff-high eight goals with the man advantage (on a playoff-high 24 opportunities), which, along with the Stastny line's overall prowess, emphasizes that the series is still the Golden Knights' to lose. The onus is on Jones and the defensemen in front of him to come out with the same steeliness on the road in Game 6.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Carolina Hurricanes evened their series, the St. Louis Blues mounted a frantic comeback, and the San Jose Sharks warded off elimination on a busy Thursday in the NHL playoffs. Here are some key takeaways from each game.

Wild night for Foegele, spunky Hurricanes

From the first rush of the game to the third-period shove from behind that caused Alex Ovechkin to fume, Carolina's fourth matchup with Washington became the Warren Foegele show.

An unlikely headline-grabber, even on a Hurricanes team that lacks star power, Foegele opened the game flying and scored just 17 seconds into the contest after Washington's Matt Niskanen was caught up ice.

But the 23-year-old rookie winger could face suspension for the check he delivered to T.J. Oshie late in the third period. Capitals coach Todd Reirden said postgame that Oshie will be out for the foreseeable future.

Carolina has been one of the NHL's healthiest teams this season, but they've already proven capable of compensating for the absence of some key contributors. The Hurricanes were down Micheal Ferland and Andrei Svechnikov in Game 4, while fellow middle-six winger Jordan Martinook played only 4:39 after twisting his right leg in the first period.

Losing Foegele would be another blow as the series shifts to D.C. on Saturday, but the Capitals will face an even greater test with Oshie out. Reirden elevated him to Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom's line in Game 4, hoping to spark Washington's sputtering attack. But the trio struggled at even strength against Carolina's top defensive pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Dougie Hamilton, and second line of Foegele, Jordan Staal, and Justin Williams.

No matter who does or doesn't play on Saturday, one of the Capitals' chief objectives should be to reverse their newfound offensive malaise. Washington scored eight goals at home in Games 1 and 2 - five of which came at even strength - but they only mustered one goal in Carolina, and that was on the power play.

Jets stars no-show, Blues big guns do their part

As TSN and NBC commentator Gord Miller noted in the wake of Winnipeg's latest third-period meltdown, this series has followed anything but a logical progression.

In the spirit of this topsy-turviness, consider this stat from the Blues' madcap 3-2 comeback win in Game 5: Of the 10 high-quality scoring chances the Jets generated on the night, eight came courtesy of their bottom two lines. Not coincidentally, those are the units that out-muscled the Blues for two goals in the first period.

But for all the praise heaped on goalscorers Adam Lowry and Kevin Hayes along with their respective linemates, St. Louis was in position to steal a victory with 15 seconds left because Winnipeg's best players weren't nearly good enough. Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, and Kyle Connor, the Jets' No. 1 line, were severely outgunned at 5-on-5 by Oskar Sundqvist, Brayden Schenn, and Jaden Schwartz, whose efforts to drive possession paid off when each of them featured prominently in the final two goals.

Ahead of puck drop, it seemed like the Blues' best chance to buck their two-game losing skid would be to hope for a David Pastrnak-like breakout performance from their stars. Schenn, Ryan O'Reilly, and Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis' usual first line, combined for just one goal at even strength (plus two on the power play) through four games. Jordan Binnington, a revelation in net since he wrested the starting role from Jake Allen in January, came into Thursday with a decidedly average .902 playoff save percentage.

Pastrnak's two-goal performance against Toronto on Wednesday might have been louder on its own, but Schenn's two points, O'Reilly's power-play goal to get his team on the board, Tarasenko's multiple scoring chances on the power play, and Binnington's 29 saves constituted an admirable response under pressure.

In a close game, the late results they got made the Blues deserving winners, controversy surrounding Sundqvist's drive to the net on the tying goal be damned. All they have to do now is remember how to win at home.

Vegas' top line finally falters

Early in Game 5 between Vegas and San Jose, NBC producers cued up a graphic to detail the exploits of Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny, and Mark Stone, who form what is ostensibly the Golden Knights' second line. Those players scored a combined 28 points through the first four games of the playoffs, more than any forward trio since Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Esa Tikkanen tallied 30 points in the same number of games for the 1987 Edmonton Oilers.

But Thursday was an entirely different story. In their strongest defensive showing since the postseason's opening slate of games, the Sharks finally kept Vegas' leading bigwigs in check, holding them scoreless in a 5-2 win that prolonged Joe Thornton's career for at least one more monumental road trip.

Stone, Pacioretty, and Stastny still top the individual playoff scoring leaderboard in that order, so San Jose shouldn't derive too much hope from their off night. After all, it was their impression of prime Gretzky and Co. that led Vegas to outscore the Sharks 13-3 over the eight periods of action directly preceding Game 5.

Still, the Sharks have reason for cautious optimism as they set their sights on staving off elimination again on Sunday. Unceremoniously yanked from the net in Games 2 and 4, Martin Jones rebounded with a 30-save effort and only allowed two power-play goals. His pad save on Reilly Smith, Vegas' best forward on the night, with fewer than eight minutes left in the third period forestalled a possible catastrophe with his club clinging to a one-goal lead.

Equally encouraging were the contributions the Sharks got from their stars. Tomas Hertl, who emerged as a point-a-game scorer this season, came within a pinged crossbar of a hat trick. San Jose's top line of Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, and Timo Meier potted two goals and teamed with Brent Burns and Marc-Andre Vlasic, who returned from a two-game absence, to hound the Stastny line at 5v5 for much of the night.

Smith and Jonathan Marchessault's power-play markers kept the score close until the waning minutes. Vegas now has a playoff-high eight goals with the man advantage (on a playoff-high 24 opportunities), which, along with the Stastny line's overall prowess, emphasizes that the series is still the Golden Knights' to lose. The onus is on Jones and the defensemen in front of him to come out with the same steeliness on the road in Game 6.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

No moment emphasized the magnitude of Game 4 in Toronto on Wednesday night quite like the point when, a few minutes in, a TV camera panned high above the ice and settled on Drake. The local rapper deigned to support his hometown Maple Leafs in person - despite not appearing courtside, as is his custom, at either of his beloved Raptors' first home playoff games.

Facing the prospect of a 3-1 series deficit, the importance of the occasion moved Boston Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy to make a drastic change. Move David Pastrnak down a rung in the lineup, his thinking went, and maybe each member of hockey's most dangerous line could shake his respective quiet start to the series.

In a sense, Cassidy's gambit worked beautifully. The Bruins won an enthralling 6-4 showdown with Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Patrice Bergeron playing but two shifts together at even-strength.

Still, Boston now has a curious decision to make as the series returns to TD Garden for Game 5. Cassidy could let this result speak for itself and leave Danton Heinen in Pastrnak's usual spot on Bergeron's right wing. Or he could reunite his No. 1 line in accordance with another argument: that the fleeting sequences in which the Bruins' stars skated together are what powered Boston to victory on a night the opponent dominated the run of play.

Three minutes into the second period, shortly after Auston Matthews scored to erase Boston's early lead, Cassidy deployed Pastrnak with Marchand and Bergeron on a faceoff for the first time at even strength. The shift culminated in Pastrnak tipping home his first goal of the playoffs on a slick feed from Marchand, whom Bergeron had sprung on a two-on-one with a timely chip out of the defensive zone.

Fewer than two minutes later, with Matthews banished to the box for a roughing penalty, Pastrnak slipped unabated into the slot - all four Leaf defenders were caught puck-watching on one side of the ice - and fired a one-timer past Frederik Andersen on another pretty Marchand pass.

"(Pastrnak is) a guy we rely on to score and create offense," Cassidy said after the game. "Scorers, when they don't score, can get antsy. I'm not saying David was there, but we wanted to keep him from going there."

The Bruins nearly unraveled in the frantic last 10 minutes of the third period - the seemingly inevitable product of allowing 47 Toronto scoring chances to their 26 - but those flashes of synchronized brilliance were almost enough on their own to put Boston ahead for good.

And even though Zdeno Chara's clinching goal officially went down without an assist, it, too, was keyed by contributions from the big guns. Marchand lifted Zach Hyman's stick on an end-around to let the puck slide to Chara at the point, and Bergeron blocked Andersen's view of the ensuing shot with a textbook screen.

After getting slammed at even-strength in Boston's losses in Games 1 and 3, Chara and defense partner Charlie McAvoy joined Bergeron, Marchand, and Heinen as the only Bruins to generate a scoring-chance margin at or above 50 percent. Together they outshone Toronto's top five-man unit of John Tavares, Mitch Marner, Hyman, Jake Muzzin, and Nikita Zaitsev - the source of the Bergeron line's shared headache in the matchups that preceded Wednesday's puck drop.

For the Bruins, the dispiriting subtext of this information is that, to a man, each of their other lines and pairings got caved in. Morgan Rielly excelled in extended action against Boston's new second line of Pastrnak, David Krejci, and Jake DeBrusk. Toronto's third forward trio was overwhelmingly good, though none of William Nylander, Patrick Marleau, and Connor Brown found the back of the net.

"We did a lot of good things tonight. We generated a lot of chances, got a lot of pucks to the net," Tavares said postgame. "We just probably made too many mistakes at certain points in the game."

Beyond the play of Pastrnak and his usual running mates, the Bruins will head home buoyed by a couple of other encouraging trends. Their power-play clicked at 25.9 percent - the third-highest rate in the league - during the regular season; Pastrnak's second goal in Game 4, combined with McAvoy's first of the series, upped Boston's first-round success rate with the man advantage to a sparkling 5-for-11. Toronto's power play is 3-for-10 overall.

Tuukka Rask, meanwhile, should have saved the Matthews wrister that tied the score 2-2, but he made some other crucial stops, including a point-blank denial when Brown found himself alone at the side of the crease with Toronto down 4-2 in the second period. Rask now has a .942 save percentage at even strength for the series, just below Andersen's .943.

The slimness of the margin separating these goalies and their teams, combined with the scarcity of time to make adjustments in the playoffs, is what prompted Cassidy to split up his scuffling stars. Whether Pastrnak returns to the first line on Friday or not, it's clear that Game 5 will loom just as large as the spectacle that attracted Drake.

"I think when we're able to separate those guys a little bit, you're able to see more opportunities for them, and overall, I think they can just play with anyone," McAvoy said. "They're great players. They can adapt to whoever is on their wings.

"And we need them. We need them. It was nice to see them all play a hand - a big hand - in tonight's game."

— With files from theScore's John Matisz

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He's on Twitter @nickmfaris.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

A couple of weeks ago, journalist Zach Schonbrun was browsing the internet and happened across an article about an unusual 3-point-shooting demonstration in Tokyo. Toyota engineers, he read, had built a human-shaped robot that stands 6-foot-10, equipped their creation with pliable knees, elbows, and wrists, and programmed it to aim basketballs at a hoop with knockdown precision.

In front of an Associated Press reporter, the robot canned 5-of-8 attempts from behind the arc - a lesser success rate than usual, its makers said. Later, one publication noted in a headline that the machine is a better long-range gunner than Stephen Curry, the offensive maestro who's shot threes at a 43.6 percent clip throughout his NBA career.

"Steph Curry's going to be long retired before any robot's taking his job," Schonbrun thought to himself.

Schonbrun found the comparison especially ludicrous because, as he puts it, most robots aren't as deft as the average 5-year-old child - if you're in search of a laugh, he suggests watching YouTube compilations of automatons trying to open a door - while Curry and few other people on Earth represent the pinnacle of human motion. No novice basketball fan would look at Curry and see a two-time MVP, but the nimbleness with which he moves on the court, handles the ball, and lets it fly from deep has made him exactly that.

At 6-foot-3, Curry is smaller than the Toyota robot and many of his opponents, but it's still easy to see how his physical attributes allow him to dominate on the court. We can perceive the elusiveness that earns him a modicum of space from a defender and understand the strength that enables him to hoist effortless, accurate jumpers from close to half court.

But to Schonbrun, this focus on Curry's body is misguided. In his book "The Performance Cortex," which was released in paperback form last week, he contends that the true key to the point guard's greatness - and to the Golden State Warriors' hopes of winning a fourth championship in five seasons - can largely be traced to another factor.

"His skill has a lot more to do with his brain than it does with his fast-twitch muscles," Schonbrun told theScore.

Curry's brain and those of his peers on the highest plane of professional sports are the central objects of fascination in Schonbrun's book. A former contributing writer for The New York Times, he set out a few years ago to explore the ways that neural activity controls the movements of elite athletes - and, as such, how those athletes perform in competition.

In one important passage, Schonbrun writes that top performers "have an inimitable talent for making the right decisions at the right time." Sidney Crosby, he notes, is able to sling a pinpoint pass across the ice when he senses an opening that no one else in the arena has glimpsed; his brain discerns the opportunity and prompts him to take advantage. The same goes for Curry with the ball in his hands. Crucially, this logic doesn't apply to robots that stroke threes but are otherwise incapable of movement.

Schonbrun himself long viewed sports as a purely physical exercise, never appreciating that signals originating in the brain are what make athletic magnificence possible. That changed when a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist, John Krakauer, told him that his perspective was akin to crediting someone's proficiency in a foreign language to their dexterous tongue.

"I'm no longer focused, necessarily, on how fast (athletes are) running or how high they're jumping," Schonbrun said. "I'm really thinking about the milliseconds it takes for them to make decisions - and make the right ones, most of the time."

This notion can be employed across sports. Take the NFL combine, which in Schonbrun's estimation is a wasteful venture where talent evaluators tell prospects to run in a straight line, leap as high as they can, and execute other quick-twitch acts that won't really identify the best game-day competitors.

He floats an alternative method of assessing, say, quarterbacks: Use neuroimaging technology to track the reads they make in the frantic few seconds after a snap.

"Having an understanding of who's making those decisions more accurately and who's making them better before the ball is even being released, certainly, I think, would be valuable information," he said.

Much of Schonbrun's book is predicated on neuroscience's relevance to baseball, and specifically to the interaction that underpins each of its games: the milliseconds that elapse between the time the ball leaves a pitcher's grasp and the moment it arrives at the plate. When he stares down a 95-mph fastball, a batter has about two-tenths of a second to process the offering and to choose to swing or lay off. If he chooses to swing, he'll have another two-tenths for his brain to send that instruction down the spinal cord and out through his musculature.

That severe time crunch means batting is more about prediction than reaction. Expert hitters can project the appeal of a pitch as it's being released. Jason Sherwin and Jordan Muraskin, two neuroscientists whom Schonbrun profiles at length in the book, have used brain-scanning equipment to show that the best hitters are often those whose neurons make accurate decisions fractionally faster.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, a story of three famous strikeouts helps reveal the brain's paramount contribution to batting. At a 2004 exhibition, legendary softball pitcher Jennie Finch made quick work of MLB All-Stars Albert Pujols, Mike Piazza, and Brian Giles by throwing underhand from 43 feet away, the standard distance in women's softball.

As Schonbrun writes, the speed of Finch's pitches mirrored that of a 95-mph fastball thrown from a major-league mound distance of 60 feet, 6 inches, but the unfamiliar angle of her delivery stripped the hitters of the predictive capacity that propelled them to stardom. They didn't know what to expect, and their physical gifts weren't enough to compensate.

In a number of ways, the aims and possibilities of neuroscience are at odds with the realities of pro sports. Analytics mavens abound in MLB front offices, but a few years ago, when Sherwin and Muraskin tried to convince teams that neural data could help them evaluate hitters, they found that some executives were suspicious of their scientific expertise. Even if a team acknowledges the utility of such data, it might determine the fate of a player's career based on a sample an academic would think too small. Players might not want their employer to study their brain.

Despite these hindrances, Schonbrun believes neuroscience is gradually starting to take hold. He sees it every time a franchise hires a sports scientist who's studied the brain, including a few in recent years in MLB.

"It's silliness to ignore it," he said, "and to continue to go make terrible decisions based off of combine scores and sprints."

For now, one of the main lessons in "The Performance Cortex" can be summarized by a piece of celebrated internet content. In the above video from 2014, a 2-year-old girl solves a Rubik's Cube in 70 seconds. It came up in a conversation Schonbrun once had with Krakauer, and it's worth contemplating anytime Curry pulls up from 30 feet.

Typically, no kid would be considered intelligent at such a young age. But her accomplishment sure seems like a sign of genius.

"Perhaps, then, Krakauer argues, we should be evaluating intelligence simply based upon extraordinary things we can do with our brains," Schonbrun writes.

"Becoming an all-time great professional basketball player would be one of those things."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He’s on Twitter @nickmfaris.

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