Bruins defeat Hurricanes in 2OT in Game 1 of Eastern First Round

Patrice Bergeron scored at 1:13 of the second overtime to give the Boston Bruins a 4-3 win against the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Wednesday.

"We've seen that goal a lot of times," Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. "It's to [Bergeron] in the middle where he chips it to [ David Pastrnak] and [he] is the one zipping it. But that is the beauty of that line, is they can all make the plays and they can all finish."

Pastrnak, Charlie Coyle and David Krejci scored, and Tuukka Rask made 25 saves for the Bruins, the No. 4 seed in the East.

WATCH: [All Bruins vs. Hurricanes highlights]

Joel Edmundson, Brock McGinn and Haydn Fleury scored, and Petr Mrazek made 36 saves for the Hurricanes, the No. 5 seed. Carolina was swept by Boston in the 2019 Eastern Conference Final.

Game 2 is in Toronto, the hub city in the East, on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, SN, TVAS, NESN, FS-CR). Teams that win Game 1 are 478-219 (68.6 percent) winning a best-of-7 NHL playoff series.

"Anytime you lose in the playoffs, especially in overtime, it's obviously a stinger," Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "When you lose a game like that, you definitely don't want to marinate on it too long, so we got a chance to come back and play right away. I think that's good, especially, like I said, we've been sitting for so long. We'll try to shore up a couple of things and then just get back at it."

Carolina had not played since Aug. 4, when it finished a three-game sweep of the New York Rangers in the Qualifiers.

Bergeron scored his fourth postseason overtime goal, breaking a Boston record he shared with Mel Hill and Terry O'Reilly. The top line of Bergeron, Pastrnak and Brad Marchand scored six points (two goals, four assists) after getting one assist (Bergeron) during the three-game round-robin in the Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

"We're a confident group, confident line," Bergeron said. "I think we got better as we went on in the round-robin. Obviously you want more, you want to keep getting better and taking the next step, especially we thought that tonight was a really important game, starting round one, so we had to put whatever was behind us in the past and get some rhythm going.

"When things are going well, at times you get complacent and you don't work on things you need to work on. Obviously, you want things to go well all the time, that's a perfect scenario. We're able to look at video and look at the areas that we can get better at. I thought as a team we did that throughout the round-robin and now it's behind us."

The game was rescheduled from 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday after the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets played the fourth-longest game in NHL history, a 3-2 five-overtime win by the Lightning in their first-round opener at Scotiabank Arena.

"You don't expect that and things change, you've got to adjust," Coyle said. "That's kind of our mindset anyways coming into this whole thing with all the new changes and the new normal going on. You've got to adjust to things. That was kind of our mindset. We had to play this morning. Then go home, get a good night's sleep, get some food in you, and come back and be ready to play for this morning. That's kind of how we went about it."

Fleury tied it 3-3 at 9:49 of the third period with a shot from the point that beat a screened Rask. Krejci gave Boston a 3-2 lead at 59 seconds.

The Bruins took a 2-1 lead when Coyle got a loose puck and scored at 4:38 of the second period. The goal was upheld by video review when it was determined Mrazek controlled the puck prior to the goal, which nullified a potential hand pass.

McGinn scored on a shorthanded breakaway for a 2-2 tie at 4:59 after intercepting a cross-ice pass from Pastrnak. The Bruins were 0-for-4 on the power play and are 0-for-13 in four postseason games.

Edmundson gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 13:02 of the first period when his shot from the point squeezed between the arm and body of Rask. Sebastian Aho had the secondary assist to give him a point in four consecutive games (nine points; three goals, six assists) to tie Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid for the playoff scoring lead.

Pastrnak tied it 1-1 at 17:45 when he one-timed a pass from Marchand after a face-off win by Bergeron.

"Playoff momentum changes pretty quickly," Krejci said. "Like they always say, never too high, never too low, correct some mistakes, look at some positives, improve on those and move on."

Hurricanes defenseman Dougie Hamilton was minus-2 and played 26:48 in his first game since Jan. 16. Carolina forward Justin Williams and defenseman Sami Vatanen were ruled as unfit to play but each could be ready for Game 2, Brind'Amour said.

NHL.com staff writer Amalie Benjamin contributed to this report