Perhaps no Game 1 went according to script more than Carolina’s 2-1 win over the Islanders on Monday night.

The entire build-up to the series was centered around both teams being experts in tightly contested, low-scoring games and that’s exactly what we got.

The Hurricanes capitalized on two power plays, while the Isles went 0-for-4 on the man advantage and were not clinical with their scoring chances. 

There was very little room to operate on the ice and both goaltenders played well, so it’s no wonder that this Over/Under is tanking looks likely to close at 5.

Carolina closed as a -175 favorite in Game 1 and, at the time of writing, is sitting at that same exact spot for Wednesday’s Game 2.

(7 p.m. ET. ESPN2)

Although the Hurricanes can feel confident in saying they were deserving winners on Monday night, there were some things to like about how the Isles grew into the game.

After going down 1-0 early on a power play goal from Sebastian Aho, the Islanders found their legs towards the end of the first period and the contest played out much more evenly from that point on.

Carolina, as you’d expect, finished with 20 more shot attempts at 5-on-5 than the Isles, but the high-danger scoring chances were just 11-10 in the Canes’ favor and the Islanders were the only team to score at even strength.

But those are just silver linings in a loss and in the postseason, nothing really matters except who skates out of the building with the win.

And on Monday night that was the Hurricanes. 

But even though they were effective and dictated play for the most part in Game 1, it’s very hard to lay this kind of juice with Carolina in a matchup against an elite goaltender like Ilya Sorokin.

The Hurricanes really struggled to get going offensively down the stretch after losing Andrei Svechnikov and the performance on Monday night won’t quell those fears. 

We expected these games to be rock fights with very thin margins and that’s exactly how it played out in Game 1, so the value still remains with the Islanders despite the loss Monday night. 

Islanders (+145, BetMGM)