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There’s just something about a Game 7 at the TD Garden that leaves you on the edge of your seat.
Like any Game 7, it’s the final stage, but when the game is played on Causeway’s choppy, springtime ice, you know that the script can be flipped at any moment. Such was the case in 2010 when the Philadelphia Flyers completed their comeback down from 0-3 in the series and 0-3 in Game 7 to leave Boston as just the third NHL franchise to ever come back from such a deficit. And again in 2013, when the Bruins scored three goals in the final half of the third period against the Toronto Maple Leafs before eventually winning it by way of a Patrice Bergeron overtime dagger.
And for minutes, periods, and hours, a sellout crowd of Bostonians waited. And waited. And waited.
They knew that somehow, someway, the equalizing bounce would go Boston’s way, like it has for almost three straight years now. But eventually the minutes, periods, and hours passed, but not before the bounce bypassed the Bruins and instead went Montreal’s way, as Danny Briere banked one off Zdeno Chara’s skate and into the back of the net.
In the blink of an eye -- but in what felt like the slowest death possible for this year’s Bruins squad -- the dreams of a second Stanley Cup parade through the Hub in four years were gone. No longer were Bruins fans wondering how they’d fit a Stanley Cup Final patch next to the 90th anniversary one on a Bruins jersey, how the B’s would manage Dennis Seidenberg’s minutes when he returned in the next round, or how they’d handle the Chicago Blackhawks this time around.
Melt the ice. Turn out the lights. It’s over. And all much too soon.
“I’m just trying to take it all in… that it’s the end of the season,… B’s defenseman Johnny Boychuk said moments after the loss. “We have such a good team.. to even think that our season is over right now is… just trying to process it because we have such a good team it shouldn’t be.…
But the Bruins made their own bed in this one.
Their start? An absolute nightmare. Much like they were in Game 6, the Bruins opened up this game without much of an attack on Carey Price -- undoubtedly Montreal’s second best player in this series next to P.K. Subban -- failing to record a shot on net in the opening six minutes. This was made worse by Dale Weise’s strike less than three minutes into the game.
The B’s were flat and the Habs, simply, were not.
For a team that failed to lead in four of the previous six games in this series, that was the complete opposite of how they wanted to open it up on home ice.
“We weren’t moving the puck well from the back end, and besides Zdeno [Chara] and Johnny Boychuk, they’re all first-year players — full time, first-year players. And again, you could see that the puck wasn’t moving smoothly from our end as far as breakouts were concerned and it wasn’t quite there and we kept turning pucks over so it’s hard to get momentum that way,… said Bruins coach Claude Julien. “They did get the early goal again like they did in Game 6, and certainly those things really hurt us again. Young player missing his assignment as far as awareness, and they get that early goal in the first couple minutes of the period. So those are things we have to face and look at and say, you know what? That’s of our own doing and we have to live with that.…
Ugly own-zone play also led to Montreal’s second goal of the night, a second period strike scored by Max Pacioretty, and even though the Bruins answered on the power play with a tip-in from the club’s Cup-less veteran, Jarome Iginla, the lights were dimming on the Bruins.
And when they needed the big goal, the club’s top guns went missing. Milan Lucic finished the night with an unbelievable zero shots on goal, Brad Marchand’s biggest contribution came with two reputation-based penalties (something he himself took responsibility for based on who he is), and Carl Soderberg must’ve made about a dozen blind passes to nobody.
Finishing the night with 16 giveaways, the Bruins were just an utter disaster in all three zones.
There were countless passes to nobody throughout the roster, and you almost never saw a Boston winger beat out a Montreal defender for a loose puck clanging around in the defensive zone. They were just completely out of sync, and looked literally stunned by the Canadiens’ pressure.
“It’s disappointing. I can’t stand here and say it’s not disappointing. In my mind, we were going to move forward. We were going to win this game, and that’s what I prepared myself for. So you’re disappointed when that doesn’t happen,… Julien admitted. “At the same time you got to look at the opportunity that our young guys got, and got the opportunity to grow, which — some young players, it takes years for them and their team to get an opportunity to get into the playoffs and get to at least the second round. So there’s some positives in there, but certainly some disappointments as well.…
After the loss, the silence in the Boston room was haunting, as the B’s leaders took the fall.
“People can talk about it, guys can talk about whatever they want. But like I said, as a top centerman if you don’t put the puck in the net in two rounds you don’t give the chance to the team to win the game or the series,… a visibly devastated David Krejci, who finished the playoffs with zero goals and four assists in 12 games, said shortly before leaving with a towel over his head. “I felt like I could have put the puck in the net a couple times, but I didn’t so I didn’t do my job in the playoffs.…
The Black-and-Gold’s other leader up front, Patrice Bergeron, put the blame on the club’s feast/famine knack for waiting ‘til the last second to dial their game up to another level.
“You can’t rely on comebacks to win games every time and that’s it,… Bergeron, one of the only B’s to show up in this series, said. “That’s an example right there that it’s not going to happen every time. You do believe, you do have the confidence that it might happen, but you can’t rely on it.…
Amazingly, the Bruins had five games in this seven-game war where they didn’t have a lead at any point. For the fourth-best offense in the league during the regular season, that’s straight-up insane.
“You always try to get better as the series went on. I don’t think this was the case for us,… said B’s netminder Tuukka Rask (who stopped 15-of-18 shots in the loss), after tonight’s season-ending defeat. “As far as defensively goes, I think the last two games we made some uncharacteristic mistakes, and that ended up costing us the series. It’s not that it’s anybody’s fault but, it’s just we couldn’t take the next step as a team and, you know, raise our game.…
At the end of the day, the Canadiens were just better than the Bruins when it meant more.
I think that there’s an obvious case to be made that Price saved the Habs in the first three games of this series, but when the Bruins had the chance to put the final nail in Montreal’s coffin in both Game 6 and Game 7, they went completely awol and let the Habs’ speed dictate the pace of play. The Habs did exactly what people thought the Detroit Red Wings would do in the first round. Obviously, a rush-for-rush game benefitted the smaller Canadiens, while it undoubtedly took its toll on a heavy first line featuring Iginla, Lucic, and a clearly not 100 percent Krejci over a seven-game stretch.
Perhaps that explained some of Lucic’s frustrations at the conclusion of this series. Aggressively shaking hands with every Hab in the line -- and even allegedly threatening Weise and Alexei Emelin (they claim he said “I’m gonna kill you next year…) -- the 6-foot-4 winger’s carried over into the room, as he had perhaps the most heated postgame media scrum of his entire hockey career.
“It’s said on the ice so it’ll stay on the ice, so if he wants to be a baby about it, that’s – he can make it public,… Lucic said of Weise telling reporters of Lucic’s threat and ‘disrespect’ throughout the series. “Disrespect? I don’t know what they’re talking about, disrespect. Having a goal celebration – what kind of disrespect is that? I mean, I’m not going to say anything. I’ve got nothing to say about that.…
Though you understand Lucic’s frustration as a competitor, it’s tough to stand by those sort of actions, especially when the handshake line is put on a pedestal as playoff hockey’s greatest tradition.
But it’s painfully apparent that Lucic took Montreal’s offense to the muscle-flexing personally, and it turned into this weird, Inception-esque web of grown men taking offense to really silly things. Everything -- from the chest-thumping to the flexing to the mock chest-thumping -- was blown out of proportion by both clubs by the end of this series. Everything done was disrespectful.
It was absolutely absurd.
Even after Montreal’s win, Weise continued on and on about how the B’s disrespected the Habs.
“They just disrespected us in every single way and I don’t think they had any respect for us as a team. We’ll leave it at that. The better team won,… Weise said.
(Except he didn’t leave it at that.)
“I hated Boston before I got here,… Weise continued. “Obviously on Vancouver we didn’t like each other and it just grew as the series went on. They just have some guys that do some disrespectful things, even in the handshake they had a couple guys, or sorry just one, that couldn’t put it behind them and be a good winner. Milan Lucic had a few things to say to a couple guys.
“We were very comfortable playing that team. I think everybody else doubted us, I heard someone on the TSN panel actually say that [the Bruins] were the perfect hockey club so I don’t know what that says about us now. I guess we’ll have to wait for the TSN panel.…
The blame-game can go for days when it comes to the play of the Black-and-Gold in this one.
Marchand’s reputation as a pest/agitator/diver killed him all series long, and his inability to find the back of the net (he’s now without a goal in 20 straight playoff games) was just brutal. The 6-foot-9, 37-year-old Chara looked uncharacteristically bad in his own zone, and you even saw the Habs attacking his end on dump-ins and battles by the end of this series. That’s a previously insane thought, but it’s also exactly what the Blackhawks did by the end of last year’s Cup Final, too. And the franchise goaltender, Rask, was simply outdueled by Price, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And while it’s tough, the Bruins won’t have too much time to sit and think about this one in the now, as the offseason looms with big names like Iginla, Reilly Smith, and Torey Krug up for new contracts, and with serious questions about the futures of Shawn Thornton, Chris Kelly, Adam McQuaid, and the backup goaltending situation on the table.
Painful (adj): Thinking about what could’ve been if Kevan Miller doesn’t misplay the puck and give an easy goal to Lars Eller in the opening minutes of Boston’s Game 6 loss in Montreal.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.Anderson[at]gmail.com