Bruins-Blues still felt like Stanley Cup Final
Since 1939, the Stanley Cup Final has been contested as a best-of-7 series.
You could excuse us if we’d have liked last year’s edition between the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins to continue further, and not just because the skaters in the spoked ‘B’ came out on the short side of the 4-3 decision.
The hockey was great, wasn’t it? The entertainment value was through the roof. It was fast, it was physical, and there were just enough goals scored to keep those who value offense over defense happy.
Missed calls — in both directions — added to the intensity, and some less-than-clean infractions allowed the partisans of Causeway to develop an intense dislike of Craig Berube and his Blue Notes.
For the Black and Gold, the only thing truly missing was a win in Game 7.
Saturday night’s rekindling of that June fire offered a chance not at redemption, but at continuation, and a measure of closure. The teams’ compositions are different, of course. The Blues spent the summer parading the Cup around the world; the Bruins spent the summer seething, and working to put those seven games firmly in the past.
But when the puck dropped from the referee’s hand Saturday, the players on the ice, some of whom had played lip service to the “just another game” mantra this past week, proved the point that this was anything but that.
On the first shift of the game, freak of nature Zdeno Chara, who played through the end of the Cup Final with a wired jaw, had an opportunity to staple Oskar Sundqvist to the boards in front of the Blues’ bench.
He didn’t miss.
Sundqvist, you might recall, was suspended during the Cup Final in June for injuring Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk.
Chara remembered.
Brayden Schenn skated over to Chara in the aftermath of the legal hit and tried to give the big man a shove. Chara cast him aside like he was a fly buzzing around his morning Mike’s Pastry. A crowd gathered, and then dispersed. Chara, with his mouth wired shut last June, was scary enough for the Blues, never mind this year’s fully functional version. Schenn and Chara each received minor penalties for the post-curricular fracas.
And that was only the start. The game had the vibe of a Stanley Cup Final game all night. Minutes after Chara’s hit, Torey Krug and David Perron got into a tussle, and if that sounds familiar, it should. Ask Robert Thomas.
It was Perron, in Game 1, who grappled with Krug in front of Tuuka Rask’s net. He sat on the Bruins’ defender, poked at him, and ultimately ripped his helmet off. After Perron released him and started skating back to the bench, Krug followed him, built up speed and appeared to be hunting the shifty Blues forward. Instead, as Perron peeled off, Krug turned up ice, maintained his speed without taking another stride, and slammed into an unsuspecting Thomas, who bore the brunt of the defenseman’s rage.
Saturday, with Steve Kozari, the same official from Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, on the ice, they tussled again, but it did not escalate. The players received matching minors, and the Blues got their first legitimate scoring chance on the ensuing 4-on-4. Tuukka Rask made a save on a breakaway.
It was again Perron, a talented pest in his own right, who found his way to the penalty box just past the midway point of the first period. On that power play, the Bruins did what they do best on the power play — they scored a goal. David Pastrnak, who wasn’t himself in Games 5, 6 and 7 of the Cup Final, has been more than fine to begin this season. His 11th goal gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead.
The goal gave the Bruins some jump, but the physicality didn’t wane. Charlie Coyle, a primary offensive catalyst in the playoffs a year ago, was silent on the scoresheet, but delivered multiple hits throughout the night. Connor Clifton drew a rise from the crowd late in the frame when he rattled Ivan Barbashev into the dasher.
And what would a playoff redux be without a suspect Sundqvist hit? This time, at 7:54 of the second period, he rattled Charlie McAvoy’s head against the glass in the corner to Tuukka Rask’s left. Sundqvist went off for two minutes, McAvoy eventually returned to the game after getting up slowly.
And so it continued.
It was tense. The majority of fans sat on the front edge of their too-small-for-them seats all night long, cheering with each Bruins’ scoring chance, gasping with each Blues zone entry, and cascading “Toooooooook” with every save from the B’s stalwart between the pipes.
Their second goal saw the Bruins take advantage of the Blues’ aggressive, hit-first mentality. A missed bodycheck instead of an obvious play on the buck led to a half-ice 3-on-2 break, which led to Anders Bjork’s first goal of the season.
Even that goal wasn’t enough to calm the palpable nerves in the building, and on the Bruins’ bench. But it helped.
And the collective exhale when Brandon Carlo scored from 175 feet away in the final minute of the game led directly into cascading applause for a 3-0 shutout win.
Saturday, it felt like June all over again at the Garden, like Game 8, if you will, of a nine-game series.
So, rubber match?
Book your flights now: Game 9 is on Thursday, April 2, 2020.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/33XyQiK
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