First off, I hope that former UMD Bulldog Mason Raymond is okay. Raymond was transported to the hospital after being on the recieving end of a rough, hard, Johnny Boychuk check.
The Boston Bruins have evened their series with the Vancouver Canucks, winning by a score of 5-2 victory tonight in Boston. The Boston Bruins outscored the Vancouver Canucks 17-3 in three games in the TD North Garden. On the flip side, the Canucks won all three games in Vancouver 1-0, 3-2 and 1-0... That being said, the Vancouver Canucks have only lead for 32.32 through 6 games during the Stanley Cup Finals. The Bruins also scored two more power play goals tonight.
The Boston Bruins won tonight for just third time in 20 games when facing playoff elimination in a Game 6 while improving to 4-10 in finals elimination games. Ironically the Bruins have won two game sevens in this years Stanley Cup Playoffs. No team has ever won three game sevens in the same Stanley Cup playoffs...
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThis article is also worth a look. I would imagine it’s not as accurate as the author claims, I know a lot of fans from the Western Conference hate the Vancouver Canucks, if you don’t believe me just ask Wild and Blackhawks fans, add to the fact that a lot of hockey fans hate the on ice antics of the Vancouver Canucks.
Of course you want the Cup. Everyone wants the Cup.
They want it in Buffalo, where snake-bitten fans have seen their dreams crushed for decades. They want it in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where two different franchises have struggled in vain to get close. They want it in Winnipeg, 15 years after the Jets left town, months before a new, nameless team takes the ice.
If any of those teams win Lord Stanley's grail, that would be fine with the hockey world. Those cities have seen enormous sports heartbreak, their spirits deflated as they trudge through January blizzards waiting for their shot at the big one. If a parade runs through Chippewa Street next summer, mazel tov. They'll deserve it.
But you, Bruins fans? No one wants you to have it.
Oh sure, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to jump on the Bruins bandwagon. This is an anonymous, lunch pail-carrying team. Only one Bruin cracked 30 goals this season, and he's a gritty two-way player from Vancouver who goes by Looch. One of their best players is a 21-year NHL veteran, also from B.C., still going strong at 43. Boston's goalie was a 217th overall draft pick, toiled for years in the minors and in Europe, didn't become a starter until age 31, and six years later might be the best netminder on the planet.
This series should have reinforced pro-Bruins sentiment. Vancouver's Alex Burrows biting Patrice Bergeron's fingers was a punk move, one that would have been handled with a flurry of right hooks to the head if this were 30 years ago and the game hadn't turned away from fighting. Maxim Lapierre's Game 2 taunt, where he stuck his fingers in Bergeron's face and dared him to bite back, wasn't much better.
And there's The Hit. Five minutes into Game 3, Aaron Rome lined up Nathan Horton, watched him get rid of the puck, took three strides, dipped his shoulder, leapt for the head, and blew him up. However you felt about the hit, you had to feel for Horton, laid out on the ice, his teammates and 17,565 spectators looking on in horror, medics fumbling with a stretcher, trying to stabilize the big Ontarian before the frantic ride to Mass General.
The Bruins responded with eight goals in the final two periods. After the game, they placed The Jacket—an old Bruins warmup awarded to a player who made a special contribution to that night's victory—in Horton's locker. The last player to receive The Jacket was also Horton, after his game-winning goal in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. This was Win One for the Gipper stuff, the 1970 Willis Reed-inspired Knicks crossed with the '93 Islanders rallying after Dale Hunter cheapshotted Pierre Turgeon's shoulder into oblivion.
And you know what? We're still not rooting for you.
No one in Canada wants you to win, of course. Not when a Canadian team might bring the Cup back home for the first time in 18 years.
But U.S. hockey fans aren't behind you either. There's none of that (slightly weird) national pride here. Flyers fans hate Boston. Rangers fans hate Boston. Casual hockey fans in Boise or Mobile are, at best, indifferent about Boston.
You know what everyone really hates? When Boston fans complain about The Drought. The Bruins haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1972. Old-timers get weepy for Orr and Esposito and Bucyk, wish for one more Cup before they die.
Sure, Boston was once a suffering sports town. Injuries derailed Larry Bird's career, and Lenny Bias' tragic death sent the Celtics into mediocrity for nearly two decades. The mismanaged Red Sox ran out a series of bloated, overpaid veterans, only to see the rest of the division—Toronto, Baltimore, and the hated Yankees—stomp all over them. Curse or not, 86 years without a title would wound any sports fan. The Patriots? They just sucked. So yeah, those were tough times for Boston sports fans.
Now? You sound like the douchebag who bitches that, after the three-bedroom in Tribeca, the place in the Hamptons, the kids' boarding school, the annual trips to Paris and Aruba, the four cars, and two alimonies, you've barely got enough left for that third bottle of Dom at Per Se.
The vast, vast, vast majority of Bruins fans are also Sox fans, C's fans, and Pats fans. The Celtics won the city's most recent title, in 2008. If the Bruins win the Cup this year, the Boston pro sports team with the longest championship drought will be the Patriots, who won the Super Bowl in...2004.
Meanwhile, the Canucks have existed for 41 years and haven't won jack. Vancouver had an NBA team once. They were run into the ground by an incompetent stooge, then shipped off to Memphis.
We hope Nathan Horton makes a full recovery. We feel for the 12 Bruins fans who've shunned the city's other franchises and waited nearly 40 years for their shot.
Greg Louganis would be proud of the Vancouver Canucksdiver forward Henrik Sedin because based on his antics during the Stanley Cup playoffs he has shown that he can dive with the best of them. If you look you will see Henrik Sedin spear Boston Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference in the groin area, no call on either infraction.
Keys for Vancouver: the sedin twins finally stepped their game up in the semis vs the sharks and they are going to be needed big time for them to win the cup. the play of ryan kesler in these playoffs has been amazing you could say he is the best two-way forward in the league. kevin bieska stepped up big time as well vs sharks and he showed some offensive skills even though he's known more for his defensive skills. they are going to need to involve thier defenseman again in this series because they will want to get shots from the point that can be tipped past thomas off deflections because that has been working well for them throughout the playoffs. PLAYERS TO WATCH: Ryan Kesler and Alexander Burrows
Keys for Boston: the B's are going to need their first line of horton, Lucic, and krecji to keep on rolling for them to win this stanley cup. I believe that chara will be a big problem for the sedins and the pairing of him and seidenberg has been the best D pairing in the playoffs. they also need to clear the front of the net for tim thomas, who has been the best goalie in the playoffs so far and he made the save of the year on that purcell shot in the last series vs Tampa Bay. what more can you say about Horton in these playoffs? two game 7 winners so far and i believe that he is hungry for that stanley cup after all those losing years as a panther. the b's need to continue to activate their defensman in the offensive zone and let them rip shots from the point and let their big men like ryder and lucic get deflections and rebounds out front. Players TO WATCH: Zdeno Chara and Milan Lucic
Prediction: I believe that the Boston Bruins will win in 7 games because of the play of tim thomas and Chara who have been the best goalie and defenseman in these playoffs. it should be an epic series and i don't think the sedin twins and crew will go down easily.
While it's no mystery that San Jose Sharks forward Ben Eager is a bit of a meat head and had a very rough game last night and he could be looking at a suspension from the NHL after he smoked Daniel Sedin from behind with an unneeded vicious boarding penalty. Eager looked like he was going to come unhinged on the San Jose Sharks players bench last night following the Kevin Bieksa and Patrick Marleau fight, all things considered Eager does have a valid point; Kevin Bieksa does like to go after the opposition's talented guys that don't fight and shies away from fighting the heavy weights and though guys that are known for racking up fighting majors and penalty minutes in the NHL. In case anyone forgot, Kevin Bieksa went after a non fighter in Chicago Blackhawks forward Viktor Stalberg during the first round of the NHL playoffs.
"We've seen that before with Kevin," said Ben Eager. "It's sad that someone's gonna sign him for big money when he's a phony. He goes after our top players. He's been asked many times, by lots of players throughout the League (to fight), and he's declined."
So it would appear that the Vancouver sports writers might have short memories when it comes to their beloved player hack Kevin Bieksa. While Eager might like the moral high ground in this situation and is a documented meat head, a bit of a loose cannon and acted like an unhinged psychopath that cost his team a power play goal, by taking an unneeded penalty and frankly should be watching game three from the press box. Seriously, you can’t really take him to task for speaking the truth, can you? Even if the Vancouver Media and fans have a short memory, it's a proven fact that Kevin Bieksa does pick his spots when it comes to fighting, so the Vancouver Canucks beat writers and fans might want to take their blue, green, silver, white goggles off when looking at this situation.
Eager, of course, couldn’t leave it at that, and after taking 20 minutes in penalties and damaging his team’s chances to win, he called Bieksa a phony in the post-game locker room, accusing him of picking his spots and not fighting the real tough guys.
“I’m not going to say too much about that,” said Bieksa. “Right now, my focus is on winning the series, and if they want to worry about that kind of stuff, that’s to our advantage. Our power play did a great job tonight of making them pay for some of their penalties.”
I think it's safe to say that this series is going to get more exciting going into games three and four in San Jose. It will also be interesting to see if the Sharks can at least put up a fight and contest this series and not just let the Canucks take them to the woodshed.
