BOSTON — The frustrated TD Garden crowd started a chant of “We Want Playoffs” early in the third period of Tuesday night’s game.
Their Bruins, threatening to miss the playoffs for the second straight season, were trailing Carolina 1-0 in a game important only to Boston.
The chant produced almost instant results, with Loui Eriksson tying the game, but the Hurricanes still managed to pull out a 2-1 victory in a shootout.
Rookie defenseman Noah Hanifin, a local product who played at Boston College, beat Tuukka Rask with the only goal of a five-round shootout to give the Hurricanes the win, raising their record over the last 16 games to 7-3-6.
With the point, the Bruins pulled into a tie with the idle Detroit Red Wings for third place in the Atlantic Division, but the Red Wings, who visit Boston on Thursday night, have a game in hand. The Bruins also pulled even with the idle Philadelphia Flyers in the chase for the second wild card, but the Flyers, who host Detroit on Wednesday, have two games in hand on Boston, which hosts the Ottawa Senators in Saturday’s regular season finale.
Veteran goaltender Cam Ward, just 14-35 with a .636 save percentage all-time in shootouts, was a perfect 5-for-5 in the shootout and made 35 saves in the 65 minutes of regulation and overtime.
Defenseman Jaccob Slavin scored his first goal since Dec. 8 to give the ‘Canes a 1-0 lead late in the first period.
Rask, falling to 20-25 lifetime in shootouts, made 27 saves in the game.
Carolina, playing its ninth overtime period in its last 15 games, was playing its first game since being eliminated from the playoffs.
Bruins defenseman and captain Zdeno Chara saved the regulation tie with 1:40 remaining. Rask made a save on Brett Pesce but the puck trickled through and was lying near the goal line when Chara got to it ahead of Carolina’s Elias Lindholm and cleared the puck out of danger.
Rask had made a huge save on Jeff Skinner with 11:39 left in the third.
Rask, who came in with an .836 save percentage over his last three outings, made some excellent saves to keep the game scoreless but should have had the shot that went in — Slavin flipping a puck from the left point that found its way in with 1:06 left in the first period.
The Bruins came out better in the second but still couldn’t get the puck past Ward, who came in just 13-15-3 against Boston in his career. Carolina re-captured its territorial edge in the second half of the period.
Eriksson, guilty of four penalties for eight minutes on the year, took two in the second period, his second coming with 28.9 seconds left in the period, leaving Carolina on the power play heading into the third — a period the Bruins desperately needed to win.
The power play just ended when Eriksson came out of the penalty box when a mix-up at the Carolina bench on a line change, with Hanifin going off. That allowed Eriksson to pick up a loose puck and walk in alone on Ward. He faked the goaltender to the ice and tucked the puck in for his 29th of the season, matching the second-highest goal total of his career (he had 36 in 2008-09).
Sabres 3, Devils 1
Chad Johnson made 18 saves to lead the Buffalo Sabres to a 3-1 win over the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center Tuesday night in Newark, N.J.
Ryan O’Reilly, Johan Larsson and Jack Eichel scored for Buffalo, which improved to 34-35-11. The Sabres have won three straight, and have two games remaining this season.
Despite the loss, New Jersey (37-35-8) took the season series from Buffalo. The Devils won two of the three games the Eastern Conference rivals played this season.
Cory Schneider made 15 saves and Jacob Josefson scored New Jersey’s lone goal. The Devils have lost three straight and four out of their last five.
O’Reilly opened the scoring with 5:48 left in the second period with a power-play goal from the right circle. With Kyle Palmieri serving a two-minute minor for hooking, O’Reilly slammed a feed from Eichel over Schneider’s glove for his 21st goal of the season.
It took all of 12 seconds of the third period for Larsson to increase Buffalo’s lead to 2-0 with an unassisted goal.
Josefson’s power-play goal at 14:31 of the period brought the Devils to within 2-1. The goal was similar to O’Reilly’s game-opening strike, as Josefson one-timed a feed from the right circle past Johnson for his fourth goal of the season, and his first since Feb. 4 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Eichel’s empty-netter with 47.4 left ended the scoring. The goal was the culmination of a sequence in which the No. 2 overall pick in last June’s draft forced a turnover at the blue line, before having to hold off Mike Sislo while putting the puck into the empty net.
For the game, New Jersey outshot Buffalo 19-18 and out-attempted the Sabres 42-32. Buffalo finished the game 1-for-4 on the power play, while the Devils were 1-for-6.