The Journey to The Cup: A look back at how the Bruins got here
by Stanley Cup of Chowder on Jun 18, 2011 2:31 AM EDT
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I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the major events of the past season that led the Bruins to their sixth Stanley Cup in franchise history.
For a short stroll down memory lane, continue reading after the jump.
May 2010
May 14th: Bruins blow 3-goal lead in Game 7 of Eastern Conference Semi-Finals to the Philadelphia Flyers.
June 2010
June 4th: Bruins re-sign Shawn Thornton to 2-year extension.
June 5th: Bruins ink Dennis Seidenberg to 4-year extension.
June 16th: Cam Neely is named President of the Boston Bruins.
June 22nd: Bruins trade Dennis Wideman and a pair of drafts to Florda Panthers in exchange for Nathan Horton and Gregory Campbell.
June 24th: Bruins re-sign Johnny Boychuk to a 2-year deal.
June 25th: Bruins re-sign Mark Recchi to a 1-year contract.
June 25th: Bruins draft Tyler Seguin with the 2nd overall pick in the NHL Entry Draft.
June 26th: Bruins trade Vladimir Sobotka to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for the rights to defenseman David Warsofsky.
July 2010
July 1st: Bruins re-sign Daniel Paille to a 2-year deal on the first day of NHL free agency.
July 6th: Bruins open Development Camp.
July 9th: Bruins sign Mark Stuart to 1-year deal.
July 15: Bruins sign Gregory Campbell to a 2-year deal and extend Adam McQuaid, Andrew Bodnarchuk, and Jeff LoVecchio.
July 30th: Blake Wheeler is awarded $2.2 million in arbitration and signs 1-year deal
August 2010
August 3rd: Bruins sign Tyler Seguin to an entry-level deal.
August 4th: Bruins hire Doug Jarvis as assistant coach.
August 24th: Aaron Ward announces his retirement.
September 2010
September 10th: Bruins rookie camp opens
September 15th: Rookie game between the Bruins and Islanders draws 11,571 fans to TD Garden to see Tyler Seguin's "pro debut". Jordan Caron steals the show with a hat trick in a 5-2 Bruins Rookies win.
September 17th: Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli announces at a press conference that Marc Savard is still suffering from post-concussion symptoms and will not start the season with the team.
September 18th: Bruins open training camp.
September 21st: Bruins hold "State of The Bruins" town hall meeting.
September 22nd: Bruins beat Montreal Canadiens 4-2 in preseason opener.
October 2010
October 3rd: Bruins head across the pond to Europe for an exhibition game with the Belfast Giants.
October 5th: Bruins play Liberec White Tigers of the Czech Extraliga in an exhibition game in the Czech Republic.
October 8th: Bruins sign Patrice Bergeron to a 3-year extension worth $15 million.
October 9th: Bruins sign Zdeno Chara to 7-year $45.5 million contract extension.
October 9th: Bruins lose to the Phoenix Coyotes 5-2 in season opener in Praque, Czech Republic.
October 10th: Bruins shutout Coyotes 3-0 to split the two-game series in Prague.
October 20th: Bruins skate past Washington Capitals 4-1 in their home opener to start the season with a 4-1-0 record.
October 23rd: Johnny Boychuk breaks his wrist in a 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers.
November 2010
November 1st: Tim Thomas is named NHL's First Star of The Week.
November 7th: David Krejci suffers a concussion in the Bruins' 2-1 shootout loss to the St. Louis Blues
November 10th: Bruins score 5 goals in the third period to beat Pittsburgh Penguins 7-4 in a wild game in Pittsburgh.
November 24th: Mark Recchi records his 1,500th NHL point in a 3-1 win over the Florida Panthers
November 29th: Bruins trade Matt Hunwick to the Colorado Avalanche for Colby Cohen
December 2010
December 2nd: Bruins rout Tampa Bay Lightning 8-1 in Marc Savard's return to game action.
December 8th: Mark Stuart breaks his finger in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres.
December 11th: Bruins trade Marco Sturm to Los Angeles Kings.
December 23rd: A high hit from Atlanta defenseman Freddy Meyer on Milan Lucic sparks a 5-on-5 brawl in a 4-1 win over the Thrashers.
January 2011
January 1st: Tyler Seguin records his first multi-point game in a 7-6 shootout loss to the Buffalo Sabres on New Year's.
January 10th: Bruins score 4 goals in the last 3:23 of the game to down the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-2.
January 11th: Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas are selected to participate in the NHL All-Star Game, while Tyler Seguin is invited to be one of the rookie to take part in the Skills Competition.
January 11th: Patrice Bergeron nets hat trick as Tim Thomas and the Bruins shut out Ottawa Senators 6-0.
January 17th: Zdeno Chara records his first career hat trick and Tim Thomas turns in his 7th shutout of the season in a 7-0 win over the Carolina Hurricanes.
January 22nd: Marc Savard leaves game after taking a hard hit from former teammate Matt Hunwick in a 6-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche
January 24th: Marc Savard is diagnosed with a concussion.
January 29th: Zdeno Chara breaks the NHL All-Star Skills Competion's Hardest Shot record with a 105.9 MPH drive.
January 30th: Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas participate in NHL All-Star Game.
January 31st: Patrice Bergeron is named NHL's First Star of The Month.
February 2011
February 3rd: Bruins down Dallas Stars 6-3 in a fight-filled game at The Garden. Daniel Paille is given a game misconduct for a blindside head shot on Raymond Sawada. Paille is suspended 4 games for the hit.
February 7th: Marc Savard is placed on the long-term injured reserve list. A press conference is held by Marc Savrd, Peter Chiarelli, and Dr. Peter Asnis to announce that Savard will miss the remainder of the season.
February 9th: Bruins outlast Montreal Canadiens 8-6 in a wild game that featured 14 goals and 14 fighting majors.
February 13th: Bruins get swept by the Detroit Red Wings in a home-and-home series.
February 16th: Bruins acquire Chris Kelly from the Ottawa Senators for a 2011 2nd round pick.
February 18th: Bruins trade Joe Colborne, a 2011 1st round pick, and conditional pick in 2012 to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for Tomas Kaberle
February 18th: Bruins send Blake Wheeler and Mark Stuart to the Atlanta Thrashers in a trade for Rich Peverley and Boris Valabik
February 18th: Bruins score 3 goals in the third period to record 4-2 win over Ottawa Senators.
February 27th: Bruins beat Vancouver Canucks 3-1 in their only regular season meeting.
February 28th: Bruins send minor leaguers Mikko Lehtonen and Jeff Penner to Minnesota in a trade for Anton Khudobin.
March 2011
March 3rd: Bruins win 7th straight game by edging the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1.
March 8th: Bruins lose to Montreal Canadiens 4-1. Zdeno Chara's ride-off of Max Pacioretty sent Pacioretty flying head-first into the stanchion between the benches. The hit left Pacioretty with a fractured vertebra and a concussion. Montreal fans flooded Montreal's 911 emergency line with calls for legal action to be taken against Chara. As ridiculous as that sounds, a legal investigation of Zdeno Chara is still on-going.
March 11th: Bruins fall to the New York Islanders 4-2 to lose 4th straight game.
March 15th: Bruins snap 4-game skid with 3-2 shootout win over the Columbus Blue Jackets. Brad Marchand's high hit on R.J. Umberger earns him a 2-game suspension. Mark Recchi moved in 5th place on the all-time games played list by playing in his 1,640th NHL game.
March 22nd: Milan Lucic scores his 30th goal of the season and Zdeno Chara records his 400th NHL point in a 4-1 win over the New Jersey Devils.
March 24th: Bruins rout rival Montreal Canadiens 7-0.
March 29th: Mark Recchi tells reporters that he will retire at the end of the season if the Bruins win The Stanley Cup.
April 2011
April 2nd: Bruins clinch Northeast Division championship with 3-2 win over Atlanta Thrashers.
April 9th: Tim Thomas breaks NHL's single season save percentage record after 3-1 win over Ottawa Senators.
April 10th: Bruins warp up regular season with 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils.
April 16th: Bruins go down 2-0 in their first round playoff series against the Montreal Canadiens after a 3-1 loss in Game 2. Zdeno Chara missed the game after being hospitalized the night before for dehydration.
April 24th: Bruins take a 3-2 series lead over the Canadiens after Nathan Horton nets a game-winner in double overtime.
April 27th: Nathan Horton scores in overtime to give Bruins a 4-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 to advance to take on the Philadelphia Flyers in round 2.
May 2011
May 6th: Bruins finish off 4-game sweep of Philadelphia Flyers with 5-1 win and advance to face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference Finals.
May 7th: Patrice Bergeron is diagnosed with a concussion resulting from an open-ice hit by Claude Giroux in Game 4.
May 14th: Bruins lose to Tampa Bay 5-2 in Game 1.
May 17th: Tyler Seguin records 4 points in a 6-5 Bruins' win in Game 2 to even their series with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
May 19th: Tim Thomas stops 31 shots to shutout Lightning 2-0 in Game 3. Patrice Bergeron returns to the lineup.
May 21st: Bruins give up 5 unanswered goals and fall 5-3 to the Lightning in Game 4.
May 26th: Bruins lose 5-4 in Game 6.
May 27th: Nathan Horton's goal late in the third period lifts the Bruins to a 1-0 win over the Lightning in Game 7. Bruins advance to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1990.
June 2011
June 1st: Bruins drop Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals to the Vancouver Canucks 1-0.
June 4th: Canucks down Bruins 3-2 in overtime to take a 2-0 series lead.
June 6th: Bruins blow out Canucks 8-1 in Game 3. Nathan Horton suffers a concussion after a head shot from Aaron Rome. Horton misses the rest of the playoffs and Rome is suspended for the remainder of the series.
June 8th: Tim Thomas makes 38 saves to shutout Canucks 4-0 to even the series at 2-2.
June 10th: Canucks take Game 5 with 1-0 win.
June 13th: Bruins force Game 7 with 5-2 win in Game 6.
June 15th: Bruins clinch their first Stanley Cup championship since 1972 with a 4-0 win over the Vancouver Canucks. Tim Thomas wins the Conn Smythe as the NHL playoff MVP. Mark Recchi announces his retirement after the game.
June 16th: The Stanley Cup arrives in Boston with the team.
June 18th: Bruins parade through the streets of Boston with Lord Stanley's Cup.
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this was fun
man a lot of those trades/moves worked pretty good, eh?
I.M. Forme
"When you get yourself into trouble is when you feel you have to do something, and then you get yourself in trouble." --Omar Minaya
That rookie game was something else. I ended up winning the in-game lottery to ride the Zamboni during the intermission. It was pretty sweet. So was the hatty.
I can't seriously be asked to summarize my sports fandom in a short blurb for all to see, can I?
by Johnny Appleseed on Jun 18, 2011 10:06 AM EDT reply actions
Minnesota Wild fan here
I just want to say congratulations on the awesome Cup victory. I really enjoyed the series overall. I’m a very new hockey fan and to be honest I was rooting for Vancouver in the beginning but then after all chump play, diving and overall crap from their team I found myself rooting more and more for Boston. I know all teams at times play a bit “dirty” and it isn’t just Vancouver but I just judged them based on this series. I was very happy to see your team lift the cup and wish you all nothing but the best in the future.
Congratulations and if you can pay Tim Thomas more money, please do! It was amazing to watch him play in this series. He really made it a joy. Thanks again for the great series.
by TC Mooch on Jun 18, 2011 10:35 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Thanks for the stroll!
Bruins trade Dennis Wideman and a pair of drafts
+1 to Florida for requesting the Sam Adams.
I meant to write draft picks, but I guess that works haha
by Stanley Cup of Chowder on Jun 18, 2011 12:35 PM EDT up reply actions
Which undoubtedly
they enjoyed more than Wideman.
"Jason Heyward was a Greek philosopher reincarnated as a baseball player." - Don Sutton
Along the same lines
NHL network is reshowing all the Bruins’ games in a series called “Path to the Cup”
Re-watching them is a lot of fun. I have to confess I was a bit tense watching them the first time through. Last night, I stayed up til 2 am watching games 4/5 against Montreal. There was some great hockey in there.
It also got me to thinking about how overblown the Canucks were. From the playoff games against the Bruins, it looked like Montreal was faster, Tampa had the better power play and Philly had better goal tending.
(ok the last one was sort of a joke) Philly was tougher and Montreal had better goal-tending :)
The Canucks really weren’t that scary or impressive… I know 7 games says otherwise, but to actually have watched the series, the Bruins mopped the floor with them most of the time. I heard some people talking about their speed as well, and I just didn’t see it. Montreal – there’s speed.
For Horton!
by phonymahoney on Jun 19, 2011 10:19 PM EDT up reply actions
also
I have to give TB props – they seem to be (other than Philly, but that was a whirlwind series) the only team we played in the playoffs that could actually hang with the Bruins once they started playing tough and gritty – Vancouver and Montreal just end up in the box or battered and bruised when they try to play the Bruins’ game.
For Horton!
by phonymahoney on Jun 19, 2011 10:20 PM EDT up reply actions
Bingo
I was quite impressed by TB. (of course, my nature does not allow me to be positive about the Habs…)
by CelticPride on Jun 20, 2011 10:53 AM EDT up reply actions
How sweet it is....
to remember all of the ups and downs of the season. I can remember at times wondering what team we would see in the playoffs. They did have a bit of Jekyll and Hyde during the season but they showed up at the right time. I am sooooooooo friggin excited. I got some serious flack at work today because I had the entire lounge of the golf courses TV’s tuned into NESN (Thank god work decided to go with DirecTV up North!!) to watch the parade. I really wish I was there for it but being there for Game 6 will do just fine!! Soak it up Boston you deserve it!!
For Horton!!
Hahaha All those Leafers must have been pissed.
by Stanley Cup of Chowder on Jun 18, 2011 1:31 PM EDT up reply actions
A bunch of my friends said....
the Leafs should get some credit seeing as we have Kaberle Rask and Seguin in essence from their recent team.
For Horton!!
Umm
I believe we thank Kessel every time he’s in town. ;)
For Horton!
by phonymahoney on Jun 19, 2011 10:21 PM EDT up reply actions
great future for bs
rask, mcquaid, marchand, seguin, krejci, lucic, bergeron horton, all still very young
Thank you Bruins, all of you
Interesting..
I actually read a comment that said this was our best and last chance to win the cup, because Thomas was 37, Recchi was retiring Chara is older etc…and I remember thinking, aren’t almost all of our best players under 27? I think we are set up pretty well, especially with another top ten draft pick this year.
Given Rask, the only one guy that’s aging that I’m worried about is Chara. I think our window of opportunity winning with him is narrowing, and he’s a key cog to the system. As in, the second-most important. I think that if Thomas goes, Claude’s going to have to change his system to fit Rask. Rask is a positional, conservative goalie. Since Boston’s defense did a great job collecting Thomas’ sometimes … well, gift-wrapped rebounds, Thomas didn’t have to worry too much about positioning himself for them and could be aggressive. While this cost him some goals, it also saved more than we could count.
Now with Rask, it’s a bit different. He has rebound control. Boston can afford to be more aggressive, and the cost is negligible since being as conservative as you are, the same number of goals are going to go in.
And that’s called efficiency. Yay, economics coming in handy in real life!
I can't seriously be asked to summarize my sports fandom in a short blurb for all to see, can I?
by Johnny Appleseed on Jun 18, 2011 7:02 PM EDT up reply actions
They can afford to be more aggressive, but it seems (this year, anyway) that they play like crap in front of Tuukka. Porque?!
For Horton!
by phonymahoney on Jun 19, 2011 10:23 PM EDT up reply actions
I think some of those goals was a combination of Tuukka and the team being lackadaisical in the early part of the season. The team played better in front of Thomas partially due to Thomas. His GAA was hovering around 1.50 for the better part of a couple months; Rask was a respectable 2.50 if I remember right, but didn’t get a win until late November. The offense was mediocre at best, and abysmal at worst.
I can't seriously be asked to summarize my sports fandom in a short blurb for all to see, can I?
by Johnny Appleseed on Jun 20, 2011 11:19 AM EDT up reply actions
PC has set this up just fine
a good mixture of players all ages, all roles, and all returing
Thank you Bruins, all of you
For me, I will remember the Dallas game, the Montreal game, and those other early nights when the Bruins actually came to play.
When we went to TD Garden to catch a game, though, it was the Detroit fiasco, and other associated sleepwalks. Until the last Devils game. Sent Marty out in style!
GREAT year.
For Horton!
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take- Wayne Gretzky's dad
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