The Tampa Bay Lightning took down the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff playoff series on Wednesday night… in five overtimes.
Well, the game was in the NHL’s Toronto bubble, and the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes were supposed to follow for Game 1 of their series at Scotiabank Arena at 8 p.m. ET. When Lightning-Blue Jackets went an hour past that time (they eventually concluded at 9:22 p.m. ET), the NHL decided to just postpone the Bruins-Hurricanes game for 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning. NBCSN will televise the game.
With the five-overtime game and the need to prepare the ice (potentially for a couple hours after how much of a mess the ice may have been after a five-overtime game), Bruins-Hurricanes would’ve gone deep into the night/morning. So, it was the right call for everybody involved for the NHL to just postpone the game until Wednesday morning.