Vancouver Edges Boston 4-3 In Grudge Match
Canucks Score 4 Power Play Goals In Most Exciting Game of the Year!
In a time when few things in life (never mind sports) live up to their hype, yesterdays game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins did just that. The game pretty much had it all, except a happy ending for Bruins fans, as they lost 4-3 to the Canucks on home ice and may have lost Brad Marchand for a few games, as he awaits a hearing with the league for his clip on Sami Salo. The Canucks got all of their offense on the Power Play, scoring 4 times in 11 chances. The Bruins, meanwhile were less disciplined than they were during the Finals and they paid the price. The big blow was a 5 minute power play, courtesy of a dirty hit by Brad Marchand, for the Canucks in which they scored their 3rd and 4th goals of the day, which the Bruins couldn’t recover from.
Coming into the game, the big story was Roberto Luongo ducking out of this game. No matter what they want you to believe, Luongo could have started if he wanted. Typical Canucks!
Before the game was 4 minutes old, the bad blood from last springs Stanley Cup Finals had already boiled over. During a line change, Alex Burrows gave a love tap with his stick to Daniel Paille‘s skates, which Shawn Thornton returned with a little more force. At this point Burrows stuck his stick in the throat of Thornton and that was it. Thornton immediately went after Burrows, with Burrows coiling like he shot and it was on. What happened next was a complete mess! Remember this was when both teams were changing lines. First, 3 Canucks went after Thornton. Then another. Then Maxime Laperierre, in typical gutless fashion, and one more Canuck jumped on the pile. If my math is correct that’s 6 on 1. And this is where it gets interesting. Milan Lucic, who had just gotten on the ice during the line change, took one step onto the bench, then saw Thornton being pig-piled by the Canucks and came charging to his defense.
During the scrum, you could see Daniel Sedin look at the number of Canucks on the ice and quickly scoot onto the bench. Just after this, another Canuck came into the scrum. If my math is correct, that’s 7 Canucks on the ice at one time.
Meanwhile, Lucic gets tossed from the game and the Bruins end up down two men for a full 2 minutes! And the B’s almost killed off the penalty but Ryan Kesler got a lucky bounce and scored with20 seconds left on the PP off a blocked shot. Of course after the game the league reviewed the tape and rescinded Lucic’s game misconduct, but that call shifted outlook of that game, as the Bruins basically played the entire game without their 1st line left wing. But that’s the price they pay for Lucic’s reputation. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The Bruins did tie it up at 1-1 later in the period. After a great breakout, Tyler Seguin crossed the blue line, stopped and feathered a perfect pass to Marchand, who cut across the front of the net and slid the puck under Cory Schneider‘s pad.
Unfortunately, the Bruins just couldn’t stay out the box on Saturday afternoon and they paid the price, putting the league’s best Power Play up a man 11 times! Not all of the calls were just, but the Bruins had 7 power plays of their own and can’t blame anyone but themselves for not taking advantage of that. After the Boston took a 2-1 lead on a Rich Peverley snipe, the Canucks came back and scored again on the man-advantage to tie things at 2-2. Then the Marchand play happened. With 1:13 left in the 2nd period and things seemingly calming down, Marchand committed and ugly clipping penalty sending Sami Salo head over skates, coming down hard on his shoulder. As Marchand went to retrieve the puck on the left half-wall, Salo came skating towards Marchand looking to take the body. At the last second, Marchand lets the puck continue up the boards and gets below Salo’s hip and takes him out. It was definitely a low hit and Marchand definitely knew what he was doing. Marchand is a great young player, but these types of plays are becoming a part of his repertoire and that’s not a good thing. You can play on the line and cross it sometimes too, but hit’s like these can severely injure another player. Hopefully he’s still young enough to learn that or he’ll begin to be seen as a Matt Cooke and no one in Boston, the team or the fans, want that.
So the Canucks went on to score 2 power play goals to take a 4-2 lead. A goal by David Krejci less than 2 minutes into the 3rd cut it to 4-3, but the Bruins could get no closer as Cory Schneider played well in front of his hometown fans to get the win. If the Bruins could have kept the game 5-5 for the majority of the day, they probably would have won this game. Unfortunately, they couldn’t walk the line sufficiently and Vancouver took advantage of it.
After the game, Kevin Bieksa, who was a big talker during the finals last year, had this to say: “We play hard, but we are a disciplined team,” Bieksa said. “That’s what separates us from them. They obviously play hard, but they tend to do stupid things. The Marchand hit was a pretty stupid thing and I’m sure he’ll be getting a phone call for that one. There is no reason for that. But we made them pay for that. We got to score two goals on that power play and that’s the game. He’s got to live with that.” I guess, diving, faking and jumping a guy with six of your buddies is disciplined!
Now we wait to see how long Marchand gets suspended for. It may be steep, but my guess is 4 games. We’ll see.