RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes faced the question on the first day of their unexpected, historically long mid-playoff break, and they faced it on the second. They faced it on the third and the seventh and the 11th. They faced it framed seriously and as an are-you-bored-yet joke.For 33 seconds of their series against the Montreal Canadiens, the Hurricanes seemed like they outran the narrative — maybe a 12-day break didn’t come with rust guaranteed. The following 11 minutes, though, were a 180-degree spin, and the answer seemed to change.After Seth Jarvis staked Carolina to a 1-0 lead, Montreal started stacking chances on chances. Four of them made it past goaltender Frederik Andersen, putting Carolina well on its way to something they hadn’t experienced since last year’s Eastern Conference final against the Florida Panthers: life after a postseason loss. The final score was 6-2, and outside of a too-brief, second-period flurry by the Hurricanes, it rarely felt that close.That’s what made Carolina’s assessment of exactly what went wrong at least a bit surprising. They didn’t have a ready-made excuse; they had a ready-made explanation — and still, they took a different route. After the loss, three players and one coach spoke. None blamed the layoff. All, quite specifically, blamed things other than the layoff.When you strip away the labels, though — whatever euphemism you want to use, whatever synonym you can dig up — their words matched their play. This was a team that, after nearly two weeks out of the postseason pressure cooker, had briefly lost its bearings and paid dearly.No Hurricane embodied that idea better than defenseman Jaccob Slavin, a genius of positional hockey, of The Little Things, of attention to detail. He wasn’t just on the ice for Montreal’s first three goals; he actively helped cause them. This is not a player that regularly loses puck battles or puck-carriers. For 11 minutes of Game 1, he rarely could find them.