10:02 PM. Overtime. Game Seven of the Bruins first round series with Toronto. Yet after twenty four of some of the craziest hours in the history of hockey, one man, one player stood at the center of it all, gleefully emulsified in the defining cheers of 17,000 screaming fans. For the third straight year, the Boston Bruins had needed overtime to decide their first round series, yet while in the end they would eventually come out on top, relishing the fruits of their overtime victory, it was how they got to that late night triumph that is the real story.
Game One-Game Five
10 days and 3 hours goal- 4 days and 3 hours before Bergeron goal
Coming into the night of Game One, the Bruins were in a very uncomfortable situation. After finishing the season, just one point out of the division lead, Boston held in hand the fourth seed in the conference and the fith best win loss record in the league. Yet even after a forty eight game shortened season they were struggling. After leading the league in penalty kill for the majority of the year even that dropped off as Boston allowed nine power play goals in the final eight games alone. But that was not all. As the season drew to a close even the most important part of the Bruins score card was falling apart: goals for. In that same eight game span, the Bruins were outscored twenty two to seventeen thus contributing to a minus five goals differential and a 2.75 goals against average. Yet when things seemed as though they couldn’t get any worse; they did.
Although as a result of their early season success, the Bruins finished the year with the advantage of home ice through the first round after losing their season finale, (a game in which they still had the option of clenching the division) once their first round opponent was announced it truly was a head in hands moment.
You see for the longest time, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins have been some of the most drastically different teams in the NHL. Boston: a hard hitting team with basically an entire line devoted to completely pulverizing an opponent’s players (the Krejci Horton Luchic line) yet then there was Toronto. Guys like Phil Kessel, James Van Riemsdyk, and Jeroffy Lupul all speed guys, and all skill guys yet all guys who could easily be knocked off their game with nothing more than a simple body check. That and only that was the game plan the Bruins needed to follow going into this series, chip the puck in towards the net, test James Reimer and knock Phil Kessel and company down with every chance you get. This was the series that was about to commence and this was the series that you got the sense that history was in the making.
Nonetheless through all this hype and media attention when Game One rolled around it was game on, sort of. Well for that Game One in Boston, while the Bruins were ready to play, the Leafs were not. While Toronto did in fact score first in that game Boston exploded towards the end of the first frame, as Wade Redden ended up ripping two different shots past Reimer in just the final four minutes of the period alone.
Going into the second period, Boston was relishing a two to one lead, and they never looked back. The Bruins won four to one that day and as they returned to their homes that night, they sent Toronto’s players back to their hotel flushed with questions and above all fearfully worrying what at this point seemed like a very lopsided series. Yet even with the predictions of a sweep looming above their heads, Toronto pushed back, doing exactly what Boston did in game one, themselves.
Long story short, even with a Boychuk goal scored midway through the third, the Leafs skated to a series tying 4-2 win, turning the tables and sending the series back to Boston for what would eventually be an eventful games Three and Four for the Bruins. The B’s won both those games therefore flooding the landlocked street of Toronto with an ocean of doubt and distaste that has plagued them for nearly a decade now.
Boston was up 3-1 in the series yet even after pounding the Toronto net with 15 goals scored it was in game five, a game in which they could easily knock off the Leafs with a win, that the Bruins choked. Just four playoff seasons removed from a series in which they allowed the Flyers to fight back from a 3-0 deficit in the series all to win in game seven, Boston was now in a similar position botching their first chance at ending the series and sending the contest back to Toronto for a mega Game Six.
| Game | Bruins Score | Toronto Score |
| 1 | 4 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 5 | 2 |
| 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 5 | 1 | 2 |
Game Six
1 day and 3 hours before Bergeron goal
Sunday, May 12th, and just after 7:30 on a starlit Toronto night. In Boston fans looked for the series win, yet for the 20,000 home fans in the Air Canada Centre and the near 70,000 more crammed into the Toronto streets as they watched the game on the big screens, Game Six was just one more elimination game, and should they manage a win, a chance to move one step closer towards what at that point had the possibility of becoming a playoff comeback of epic proportions.
Yet even with all this riding on the sixty minute game set before them, it took quite for some time for things to get going. Fact is through the first 40 minutes of the game, no goals were scored, only 34 shots had been let go and most of all neither team was engaged physically. But that was bound to change. Less than two minutes into the third period, a commanding fast break out of the zone and a mighty sin-o-rama pass from Toronto forward James Van Reymsdyke to winger Nazim Kadri put Kadri in a position to, so long as he could be Chara defensively deliver an imposing shot on net.
You notice I said beat Chara. And really, that is easier said than done. With a little less than seven feet and almost 250 pounds of human mass to his name the thirteen year veteran of the league, is the tallest person to ever win a Stanley cup and has been widely regarded as one of the best shut down defensemen in the NHL for almost a decade now. He has played for three different teams all with drastically varying coaching staffs meaning that at this point in his career, the man with what seems like a one way ticket to the hall of fame, is proficient in defusing almost every scheme any opposing forward can throw at him.
Yet with all this to his name, Chara is human, and one of the most defining differences between man and machine is the fact that at times human screw up and, heck, it was at this point in time that Chara exhibited that characteristic.
With Kadri spinning towards the blue line, Chara retreated towards the crease allowing the Leafs winger to fire a forceful shot on and past Tuukka Rask, into the back of the net. But even with a metaphorical dagger thrust down the throats of Boston’s fans and roster members, the Leafs were not prepared to let up. Less than eight minutes after taking the lead, a Cody Franson shot into a scrum of players forming in front of the Boston net left Tuukka Rask panicking as he struggled to gain a view of the ricocheting puck. 11:05 to go in the game, and with that puck still sitting at the top of the crease and Tuukka Rask still with no idea where on the face of the earth it was, former Bruin Phil Kessell swooped in on the loose puck beating Rask before he even knew what hit him.
Riding their two goal lead, the Leafs coasted for the majority of the third period yet even with the game tilted in their favor, Toronto may have lifted their foot off the gas about twenty seconds early. With 37.2 ticks remaining on the clock a pass off the goal line from Jaromir Jager to mighty Chara all with the goalie pulled began to form the offensive passing presence they had struggled to develop for the majority of the game. 35 seconds now, Patrice Bergeron taking the pass from Chara turns to the goal and blats the slap shot in the general direction of James Reimer. After seeing the puck blocked in front yet then turned back into the crease, power forward Milan Luchic elected to cut in towards an empty pocket in front of the Toronto net. 25.6 to go now and with the puck now rotated back to Jager, the 41 year old future hall of famer slid the puck to the top of the crease where it was gleefully redirected into the back of the net, thus cutting Toronto’s lead to one and giving Boston a renewed breath of life. Yet twenty five seconds after that breath of life was given, the pesky game clock ran out clasping a hand around Boston’s throat and cutting off that breath for good: kind of.
Twelve days after the series began, Boston had blown out the Leafs twice, won once in overtime before allowing Toronto to fight back and put themselves on the brink of history. Coming into this year’s playoff season only one team had ever come back from a 3-1 series deficit to win in game seven and while Boston was not willing to go quietly, Toronto had proven that they were a far more formidable opponent then they at first seemed.
| Game | Boston score | Toronto score |
| 6 | 1 | 2 |
The Plane
21 hours before Bergeron goal
Bruins fans were panicking and with Game Seven then just over twenty hours way and Boston desperate to get back to their home town to prepare for the upcoming game, getting to Boston seemed would inevitably prove to, like almost everything else in this series, be easier said the done.
Just after ten PM, immediately following their gut wrenching Game Six loss, an unidentified malfunction on the team chartered private jet left the Bruins grounded in Toronto and sleeping in the South Canadian city for the eight hour duration of the night.
Nonetheless after getting a few extra hours of sleep and after being exempt from the morning media circus that came with the game seven morning skate, the Bruins returned to Boston just after 11 o’clock in the morning and quickly prepared for the imposing game set before them.
Game Seven
3 hours before Bergeron goal - 0 seconds before Bergeron goal
Game Seven, Monday, May thirteenth and for a team playing its eighth game seven since 2007 the nerves, anxiety and rampant worry and mistakes that almost always come with an elimination game of that sort were all but absent from the minds of Boston’s players. As for the Leafs well that was a different story. Fact is on that Monday May thirteenth it had been over nine years since the Leafs had last played a game seven (that last game being an April twentieth a four to one win over Ottawa) and one could be assured that in the locker room before game seven there was quite a bit of sweating, anxiety and one of those roaring silences that people can very rarely comprehend.
And while going into the game, one could draw their own conclusions as to how the nerves were effecting the Leafs, when, just over five minutes into the game, rookie defensemen Matt Bartowski broke through scoring his first NHL goal in Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it was clearly evident that the Leafs were stumbling.
Yet it was at that point in the game that the Leafs began to rebound. Just three minutes an 56 seconds after Bartowski’s go ahead goal, a high sticking penalty assessed to Bruins top penalty killer Zedeno Chara, would prove vital in the Leafs march towards a blowout, as with 12 seconds to go on the penalty kill Leaf Cody Franson would willfully snap one into the back of Tuukka Rask’s net.
With the puck down the in corner, Jeroffy Lupal was quickly forced to dump the pass off to his point man as he was forcefully hunted by D-Man Dennis Sidenberg. Now holding the puck on his stick, Phil Kessal blasted the shot in to the net front pile where like the eventual game winning goal in game six, Rask would lose sight of the puck. Bodies flew like ragdolls as all four Bruins penalty killers frantically laid out anyone within a ten foot radius of Rask. But even that was not enough. As Lupal crashed down across the mouth of the goal, the rampant stick of Cody Franson somehow reached through the eight bodies crammed into a four by eight foot rectangular goal crease and smacked the puck past Rask and into the back of the net, swinging the game in Toronto’s favor and giving them the momentum to do what they did for the next 2 periods or so.
Franson again, then Kessel, then Kadri, all Leafs, and all Game Seven goal scores. The Leafs pounded Boston, drilling shot after shot in the direction of Tuukka Rask and lighting the lamp four unanswered times. Boston was down three and even with all their experience, their backs were against the wall. Three goals, three goals against a team that had never gone away, 3 goals, impossible right? Wrong. Right as fans in and around the Bruins organization gave up on the game a marginal four on three break for Boston allowed the puck to be slid around the apron of the goal and given to winger Nathan Horton right at the right faceoff dot. James Reimer down, three bodies standing between him and the puck yet somehow through almost eight hundrud pounds of combined human mass, the puck got through everybody bouncing around before spearing its way into the net.
10:42 to go in the game, and even though their building was now rocking and their bench had sense been infused with life and enthusiasm, the Bruins would have to suffer through even more delayed gratification. Yet at this point in the game, the series and a dwindling career, one story about this game was over shadowed. Zedeno Chara.
Alright Chara is going to be in the hall of fame someday, and when you look at the stats, it would be safe to say that among all the players to come through Boston, Zedeno Chara is one of the best (and that includes Bobby Orr, Ray Borque, and Phil Esposito). Yet unlike Orr of Borque, Chara’s legendary qualities have not been surrounding his scoring. It has been his monster stature, his imposing playing style and terrifying strength that has carved his name into the stones of time and while “Big Zee” has made history many times in his career, he earned himself a new chapter in his career that day, playing a titanic thirty eight minutes of the game. By comparison it took rookie D-man Dougie Hamilton three games to even get a combined total number of minutes like that.
“I don’t know if he plugs himself into a wall or something but he is amazing” Hamilton said after the game.
But back to the game. The clock was ticking away and slowly but surely time was running out on Boston’s chances at a comeback. 1:31 now left in the game, and with the Boston net empty, Zedeno Chara smacked a shot in on Reimer where the rebound came loose to Milan Luchic and was punched into the back of the net. Four to three now.
"We've been there before. We just relied on our experience to do the job," long time Bruin center Patrice Bergeron said following the game and really in this Game Seven with less than a minute and a half to go in regulation, it was experience that would ultimately win out.
Literally before the Bruins in house announcer could finish calling Luchic’s goal, the Bruins continued to press pulling the puck out to the point with just over fifty six seconds left in the game. Once he had controlled the puck, point man Bergeron quickly slid the pass over to Jaromir Jager who after recognizing he had not shot put it right back to Bergeron. With five bodies directly between him and the goal, one of them being “Mount Chara” as NBC reporter Piere Mcguire said as he called the ensuing plays, Bergeron let the shot go, an heck, it went in.
In the span of just under thirty seconds, the Bruins had scored twice with the goalie pulled and tied the game at four. For Patrice Bergeron it was the biggest goal he had ever scored, but that was bound to change. They had fought their way into overtime and while the Leafs were not willing to go down without a fight, the Bruins might have already given Toronto all the fight they could handle. The Maple Leafs were spent: the Bruins were not.
Six minutes into overtime, two hundred ninety one hours after the series began over a week earlier, the Boston Bruins broke into the Toronto zone already with their home arena roaring with atmosphere. The puck worked to the corner, then fought to Bergeron who rifles it into the pads of James Reimer. The rebound: kicked out by Seguin and swung out to Bergeron by Brad Marchand. Reimer down and out Bergeron crashing in: for a split second, time seemed to stop. Seemed to. With the OT clock reading 13:56, Patrice Bergeron-Cleary’s stick made contact with the puck slipping it up and over the outstretched arm of James Reimer.
Reimer lay on the ice, his confidence shattered and his heartbroken image broadcast across the nation. His teammates, scattered across the ice as they were, stood, unmoved stunned by what had just happened. In Toronto, millions of die-hard Canadian hockey fans screamed profanity, stormed out of their bars sullen faced and verbally enraged. Yet for Boston their bench erupted. Claude Jullian Mr. no emotion himself jumped up and down in jubilation, Patrice Bergeron hopped off his skates and threw himself at the boards as Tuukka Rask rocketed out of his goal crease arriving at the celebratory pile in a matter of seconds. Across Boston, living rooms roared in excitement, heads were stuck out windows screaming to any who would listen. Video clips of local Boston restaurants as their customers reacted the to the goal circulated the news channels and the 17,000 fans packed into the TD Guarden screamed louder than many had ever heard before. And well, in my opinion, while it took Harry Potter eight movies to defeat Voldemort, Patrice Bergeron showed us he is a magician with the timeliness of his goal scoring and he would have had “he who must not be named” down in a heartbeat.
Note: After winning game seven, the Bruins went on to face the Rangers in the first round and are currently up 2-0 in the series
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