You fought back, sure. But can you even it up?
If you're the 2011 Bruins? Hell yeah you can!
And who better to send them off to the races than Bobby Orr?
Vancouver, clearly not happy with the beatdown that just occurred a couple of days before, send in their backup and eventual New Jersey Devils starter Corey Schneider. Was this a mistake? Eh, maybe. Would it have stopped the score? Who knows. Luongo returned anyway so it wasn't like it was a big deal.
The first period was actually pretty standard. For SCF hockey anyway. High pace, thunderous hits, and the Bruins hemming in the Canucks early. It'd pay off halfway through the period as Rich "Raptor Jesus" Peverley capitalized off of a fantastic pass from David Krejci that he turned into a great shot five hole that blew the place up. 1-0.
The rest of the period was Tim Thomas being Tim Thomas, as he made great save after great save, and the Bruins managed to keep the Canucks guessing as to what their next big move would be. With all the animosity both sides had for each other, it seemed strange that only two penalties were assessed, and that they were more or less standard stuff. They'd find out soon enough in the second period.
The second period was also somewhat uneventful, but it was good if you wanted to see more great Tim Thomas highlights. Michael Ryder would get on the scoresheet 7 minutes in after a great cross ice pass from Tyler Seguin to make it 2-0 on an absolute rocket of a shot that completely baffled Luongo. two minutes later, Patrice Bergeron and some punk kid by the name of Brad Marchand took advantage of the Canucks being absolutely incapable of getting the puck out of their own end in a four on four penalty (Peverley and Alberts for matching stick-related penalties) and put a beautiful shot right past Luongo point blank to put the B's up 3-0.
But again, not a whole lot of animosity. Plenty of scrums, but nothing substantial yet. Where's all that physicality this series is known for again?
Oh. Right.
The third period. Seems about right.
Very few minutes past in the team's retinue where a player was not actively trying to kill an opposing player. Vancouver had enough of this. They were the best team in hockey all year. This was their year after all. And here comes the Bruins who did pretty well in the Northeast, but they were the Bronze medal in the east. How could they be the ones taking them to task?
Well, they did. And they did it well in the third.
3 minutes into the third period, the Bruins managed to get a miracle goal off of Roberto Luongo, as Rich Peverley did something to will that puck past him. 4-0. End of scoring, and it seemed like the Canucks had been soundly beaten. Were they going to phone in the rest of their performance? Hell no. They were mad. Madder than mad. And when Marchand made a wrong move on Ehrhoff towards the end of the game and then upending Daniel Sedin, shit hit the fan. The whole team came in to defend their honor. Sedin was fine, but Ballard and Ehrhoff bit off more than they could chew by attacking the scrappy little forward and Adam McQuaid. It did little in retrospect, as the Bruins would take Game 4 and even the series.
Was that gonna be enough to let them cruise on by? You know the drill. It's called Bruins, and success never comes easy.
But that's another story.