BOSTON – With their backs against the wall and fans raising decibel levels inside the TD Garden to an all-time high, the Boston Bruins with a four-goal, first period outburst and magnificent defense led by Tim Thomas and Zdeno Chara defeat the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 to tie the best of seven Stanley Cup Final at three games apiece.
Boston’s victory sets the stage for an epic battle of diverse teams in a decisive Game Seven Wednesday night at the Rogers Centre in Vancouver where the Canucks have won all three games, but by the slimmest of margins. The Bruins have dominated all three games in Boston at the TD Garden where they have never trailed Vancouver.
On Monday night, Vancouver could not muster much firepower to breach the Great Wall of Thomas. The Boston goaltender showed early on in Game Six that his door would be shut most if not all of the night. His Bruins teammates started Game Six with a fast-paced, glass rattling tempo reminiscent of Game Four, but the result of their efforts would come quicker on this night.
Bruins skaters were buzzing in all zones of the ice from the first drop of the puck leading to Canucks left wing Mason Raymond to leave the ice with an undisclosed injury when he and Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk got tied up in the corner. Raymond bent backward at the waist with Boychuk’s stick between his legs and looked to be favoring a knee. Raymond went off and doctors from both teams attended to him before he was taken to a local hospital for observation.
The damage was a sign of things to come. Boston pounded the Canucks in their own zone, but Vancouver held tough and generated a few early period scoring threats. It didn’t last long though as Boston found an opening and applied stick to puck to twine just over five minutes into the game.
With two-way play in the neutral zone, Brad Marchand picked up a pass from Michael Seidenberg and carried it over the blue line as he streaked down the right side. He sent a quick snap shot toward the Vancouver goal and the puck appeared to surprise Luongo who did not seem set for the shot. The puck sailed over the glove-side shoulder of the Canuck netminder and first blood was drawn. It was Marchand’s ninth goal of the playoffs setting a new Boston record for rookie scorers.
Marchand’s goal, while very good for the Bruins, was catastrophic for the Canucks as it began a chain of events which led to Vancouver’s demise. Despite some good, early stops from Luongo, the goal deflated the Canucks who have never held a lead in any game on Boston ice in the Final.
Thirty-five seconds after the first goal, more damage was inflicted from the Bruins when Milan Lucic took a nifty drop back pass high in the slot from Rich Peverley and fired a low shot to a dropped-down Luongo for his fifth of the playoffs. The puck squirted through his pads for a 2-0 Boston lead. Again, Luongo was not ready for the shot and seemed tentative facing the Boston attack. The first goal clearly had an impact on him and now the hole was deeper.
After allowing Vancouver a little breather, Boston got back on the scoring march during a power play. With Alexander Elder off for holding, Mark Recchi set a screen in front of Luongo. Knowing the Vancouver netminder was rattled, Andrew Ference fired a blast from the left point for his fourth goal of the playoffs. The TD Garden crowd exploded.
With having let in too many bad goals that put his team in an incredibly difficult position to compete in the clinching game, Luongo was pulled after allowing three goals on eight shots. Instead of that peaceful walk he took along the Vancouver seawall to clear his head before Game Five, he went on a sixty foot skate to the other side of the Vancouver half-wall in favor of reliable back-up Cory Schneider. The tide had certainly changed and Boston was in charge.
Luongo, the All-World goaltender who pulled it all together to single-handedly win a critical Game Five contest on Friday as the Canucks went up 3-2 in the Series, was done in just over eight and a half minutes. It was a testament to how quickly things can change in a hard fought series where home advantage seems to mean everything to these two teams.
Now with a second Vancouver goaltender firmly in place and down range, Boston reloaded and made sure not to leave Schneider out of the fun. Seventy seconds after entering the game, Boston backliner Tomas Kaberle sent a crisp pass along the blue line to Michael Ryder who made no mistake and fired it into the Vancouver net for his eighth of the playoffs. It was Kaberle’s tenth assist.
The period ended with Boston leading in every category except penalties where Vancouver held a 4-1 advantage. Shots favored Boston 19-11, but the scoreboard told the real story as Boston was dominant at home again.
The second period was relatively quiet with no scoring. Boston was called for three penalties, all to Patrice Bergeron for interference on the goaltender, interference on a skater and elbowing. Vancouver narrowed the shot differential, now trailing 27-22, but still trailed where it mattered most, 4-0 heading into the final period.
Quickly out of the gate though, the Canucks finally registered in the scoring column. Just twenty-two seconds into the third period, while on a carry-over power play, Henrik Sedin netted just the second Vancouver road goal of the series succeeding during a goal mouth scramble. The Vancouver captain was assisted on the goal by brother Daniel Sedin and defenseman Christian Ehroff.
And it seemed as though the Canucks might just get back into the game. Just three minutes after their first goal, Vancouver winger Jason Hansen 
took a centering pass from behind the goal and sent a quick shot along the ice that squarely found the post. Hansen and his teammates thought they had cut the lead to two, but replays proved otherwise.
Boston continued the pressure and at the seven minute mark, with Vancouver’s Andrew Alberts off for cross-checking, Boston increased their lead.
Having netted one power-play marker already and pumping on all cylinders, the Bruins man-advantage pressured a beaten down Vancouver penalty killing unit. With precision passing, Mark Recchi slid a cross-crease pass from the right of the Vancouver goal to David Krejci who had a wide open net and made no mistake with his shot. It was Krecji’s fourteenth of the playoffs and Recchi’s second assist of the night.
To close out the game, but having no bearing on the end result, Maxim Lapierre took a pass from Daniel Sedin in front and sent the puck into an open Boston net to narrow the score to 5-2. With two minutes left though, it would not be enough.
After the game, when Vancouver goaltender Roberto Luongo addressed the four minute stretch where the Bruins scored four goals, he responded, “Yeah, I mean they came out flying obviously and got some goals and I obviously didn’t make enough key saves to weather the storm early.”
On the Brad Marchand goal that started the four-goal barrage, Luongo added, “Well I mean I was there. It was a good shot, but at the same time, I got to make that save, so I mean, he put it where he wanted it, but you know I got to make the save there.”
Seemingly devastated after squandering the opportunity to clinch the Stanley Cup on the road in Boston, Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault spoke about what tonight’s loss meant to the Canucks and how it might affect them in the critical Game Seven. When asked what he said to Luongo after making the change in goal just eight and a half minutes into the game, Vigneault said, “I haven’t talked to him. He knows he’s going back in next game. He’s going to be real good.”
When asked about the difference between how his team played at home as opposed to playing on the road, Vigneault said, “We’re going back home. We’ve got home ice. We worked all year long to get “home ice”. Out fans are going to be excited and our players are going to be excited and we’re going back home.”
While the momentum from winning Game Six will be important, Boston coach Claude Julien was asked about how his team will get things going offensively on the road Wednesday night in a place where they have scored just two goals in three games. Julien replied, “Well, I think we are very well aware of how we’ve played on the road the last three games in Vancouver. It hasn’t been good enough and our plan is certainly to change that for Game Seven.”
Julien continued, “We’ve created ourselves another opportunity and it’s up to us to take advantage of it. But we’ve got to be hungrier than we have been the last three games in Vancouver and want to put some pucks at the net and get yourself hungry around that net area.”
When asked about the three games in Boston being so one-sided and how in Game Six the Bruins jumped out to a four goal lead in a little more than four minutes, Julien responded, “I don’t know. We needed to come out hard tonight and I thought our guys responded. We need to come out hard the last two games before that because we were trailing 2-0 in the series. So our guys have responded well and now we have to make sure we don’t get comfortable with out game. We’re willing to bring it to Vancouver with us, because that’s what it’s going to take to win.”
Wednesday night, Vancouver hopes to get back to their tight defense and a confident goaltender in Roberto Luongo while waiting for scoring opportunities to present themselves. Boston will try to dictate the tempo with physical play and a tight defense which has only allowed eight goals in six games.
Boston has never played in a Game Seven in the Stanley Cup Final while Vancouver’s only Game Seven ended in a loss to the New York Rangers in 1994.
Contact Dennis.Morrell@prohockeynews.com
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