Are we in Boston spoiled by our divinity in the sports world? Yes. But at the same time are we wrong to when we see a Bruins team with a Vesnia Trophy favorite (Tuukka Rask), a Selkie Trophy finalist (Patrice Bergeron), two 30 goal scorers as well as one of the most balanced attacks in the hockey universe, look at them and expect more than a second round loss? No.
In truth, we expected a championship. But the Bruins failed to give that to us when they lost to the Montreal Canadians in Game Seven of the semifinals Wednesday night and so, for the sake of complete simplicity, the season has been wasted.
You see from day one of the season, the Bruins seemed to have had the makeup of a Stanley Cup winning team from top to bottom. As listed earlier, the team has all the right players positioned in all the right places. Their goalie Tuukka Rask dominated the league with 36 wins in just 58 starts. In a season where he started more than 10 more games than he had ever in his career, Rask was consistently amazing. His GAA held fast at or around 2.00 all season long and not once did his season save percentage dip below .910. From his first few starts of the season, Rask's play was eerily reminiscent of the shutdown hockey played by Tim Thomas in his second Vesna Trophy winning season back in 2011.
But as we turned towards these playoffs, watching the Bruins demolish their March and April opponents with 12 game winning streaks and 14 game point streaks, Tuukka Rask was not the only player on the team whose game was whispering of postseason dominance.
The entire Bruins top line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Jarome Iginla had taken changes in personal makeup from the season before to the present one in stride. Aside from a few rough weeks as the beginning of the year, Lucic found his regular season scoreing touch coupled with his rediscovery of the body-check as a prime method of intimidation and puck possession and became a huge role player in every Bruins win this season. At the face off dot, David Krejci actually climbed out of the shadow of Patrice Bergeron this season and gave the Bruins as huge one-two punch at center on each of their top two lines. Also, though he did not score in bunches (aside from his March hat trick against Florida), Krejci's proved his talent cannot be defined by the number in his goals column. After playing in 80 out of 82 games this season, Krejci was a +39 with a team leading 50 assists and an average ice time per game of almost 20 minutes.
Finally perhaps the best part of the Bruins top line this season was their gifted right winger, Jarome Iginla. After finally signing with Boston during the off-season, Jarome played with a youthful drive that could only be attributed to his lack of a Stanley Cup ring on his finger after over a decade and a half in the NHL. With 78 starts this year, Iginla crafted 2013-2014 into a season involving 61 points, 8 game winning goals and his 13th 30 goal season which just so happened to be the first 30 goal season by a Bruin since 2010-2011.
In addition to Iginla, Patrice Bergeron also scored 30 goals in 2014.
All and all, the Bruins were filling the mold of all gritty Cup winners in past few years perfectly and many experts picked them to earn the same finish to their season that the teams who made that mold enjoyed. And in their first round series with Detroit they solidified the expert's reasons for picking them to win it all.
After losing Game One, the Bruins came back with a vengeance over the course of the next 4 games, winning them all and bouncing the Wings from the playoffs in swift fashion. In that series it was the predicted stars like Rask, Iginla, Lucic, and Krejci that played like the stars they were.
After winning that series however, off we went to Montreal where it quickly became evident that the Bruins would not breeze though this series. The Canadians snagged game one in double overtime and would have stolen Game Two from Boston if it were not for a historic 4 goal 3rd period by the Bruins that erased a 2 goal lead for Montreal and replaced it with a 5-3 win for Boston. After dropping Game Three, the Bruins found a spark in games four and five delivering crushing hits and relentless shooting en route to back to back wins that gave them an opportunity to win the series in Game Six.
They gave it their best shot, no, that's not true. In a pivotal Game Six, the Bruins got blasted 4-0. And then came Game Seven which was a disaster from the start. The Canadians came out blazing with 2 goals in the first 30 minutes of the game. Though Jarome Iginla would answer with his 5th goal of the postseason, Danial Briere would seal the game in the 3rd with a power play goal with just about 3 minutes to go.
When the clock ran out, the Bruins were done. Their season of dominance overshadowed by a final two games of patheticness and failure.
"It's going to be tough to swallow this one," Milan Lucic said.
Yeah, real deep there.
Peter Charelli had a little more thought behind his remarks about the loss.
"We have a young back line right now and I'm partially to blame if you want to assign blame," Chiarelli said during his annual season-ending news conference. "Maybe we didn't get enough at the deadline, maybe we overestimated the youth and where they were."
Maybe, what if, it does not matter because the Bruin lost one game they had to win.
Their Presidents trophy no longer matters when all it is followed by is a second round loss, just like any individual accolades awarded to Bruins players do not matter after the team lost when they did.
After a regular season for the ages, the Bruins could not make things work in the playoffs. So I have two words for you Boston: season wasted.
0 comments:
Post a Comment