I’m not even sure what to make of these blowouts anymore. Canuck meltdowns have become one of the great spectacles in sport, like the Super Bowl or the climb up Col du Tourmalet in the Tour de France. Actually, last night’s 8-1 loss in Boston was more like the descent from Tourmalet, in terms of altitude lost over a very short period of time. All that was missing was the crazy man in the devil suit.
But does the magnitude of these losses really mean anything? We saw two such calamities in the Chicago series, and then in Game 6 it was like they never happened. Last night’s Game 3 might turn this Stanley Cup final into a long, bloody fortnight, but it could just as easily turn out to be the ’1′ in a 4-1 series win for the Canucks. I just don’t know.
What I do know is that if hockey were curling, the Canucks would have shaken hands late in the second period last night. Unfortunately, NHL rules require them to ice a team for the full 60 minutes.
The game started well enough, with the Bruins bringing the energy you’d expect from a team down 2-0 and playing at home for the first time in the series. The Canucks fended them off, and Aaron Rome settled the TD Garden down considerably when he knocked Nathan Horton cold with a late hit at the Canucks’ blueline about five minutes in. Horton left the building on a stretcher, Rome left the game, and when Boston got nothing from their five-minute power play I really didn’t think they’d overcome the humiliation.
But winning the second-period faceoff was the last thing that would go right for the Canucks. The puck went back to Edler, who broke his stick trying pass it up ice. Boston intercepted and scored 11 seconds into the period. Their second goal, four minutes later, was a clean one on the power play. The real killer was Brad Marchand’s goal midway through the period. He tipped a puck along the right boards and beat Ryan Kesler on the outside before crossing in front of the net and outwaiting Roberto Luongo to score up high from a sharp angle. When a Selke Trophy finalist with Kesler’s skating ability is getting bypassed like that, it’s not going to be your night.
I would have removed Luongo after David Krejci’s 4-0 goal with about four minutes left in the second period. The game had become unwinnable, and nobody competes more casually than Luongo when a game is unwinnable. I’m sure he’ll be back in form when the score is tied again at the start of Game 4, but I would have let Cory Schneider finish it off. With Luongo in net, the third period we got was inevitable.
I stopped keeping track of the score at about 5-0. I know Jannik Hansen got a goal in there somewhere. Kesler fought Dennis Seidenberg. A couple of Bruins taunted Canucks with fingers in the face, making a liar of coach Claude Julien who had said in a pre-game news conference that such behaviour was a Canucks thing, and that his organization was better than that.
The Boston crowd got the “Bruins hockey” they’ve been waiting for — a big, bruising win over a team they’ve quickly come to despise. Whether this changes the series, I don’t know, but the hit on Horton has a lot in common with the Raffi Torres hit on Brent Seabrook that Chicago credited for its near-comeback in Round 1.
Which reminds me — the Canucks have now been outscored 10-5 in the series. They were outscored 22-16 by Chicago in the first round. If they do win the Stanley Cup, will they be the first team to do it while being outscored in two series along the way?
