The Bruins survive to see another day!
The B's scored 4 goals in the span of 4:14 in the first period en route to a 5-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals at TD Garden to even the series at 3-3 and force a Game 7.
Bard Marchand opened the scoring for the Bruins 5:31 into the game when his wrister from the right circle whistled over the glove of Roberto Luongo. Mark Recchi chipped the puck up the right wing boards in the neutral zone and into the attacking zone. Marchand skated onto the puck just inside of the blue line before skating to the outside edge of the right face-off circle and uncorking a shot in stride for his 9th goal of the playoffs.
Milan Lucic extended the Boston lead to 2-0 just 35 seconds later. Rich Peverley left a drop pass for Lucic in the slot before he skated to the left circle and beat Luongo through the five-hole with a soft wrister that trickled through for #17's 5th tally of the postseason.
The Bruins struck again 8:35 into the first period with Alexander Edler in the box for boarding after leveling Rich Peverley into the endboards on an icing touch-up. This time, it was Andrew Ference's slapper from the right point that found the back of the net while Mark Recchi provided a great screen at the top of the crease. After giving up 3 goals on the first 8 shots he faced, Roberto Luongo was pulled for back-up Cory Schneider.
Michael Ryder made it 4-0 at 9:45 of the first period when he deflected Tomas Kaberle's point shot over the shoulder of Cory Schneider.
Vancouver finally got on the board 22 seconds into the third period on a power play goal from Henrik Sedin, who roofed a backhander from the slot after Daniel Paille went crashing the goal post.
David Krejci regained the Bruins' 4-goal lead at 6:59 of the third period on a 5-on-3 power play. Tomas Kaberle worked the puck down low to Mark Recchi along the goal line on the right wing before threading a perfect cross-crease pass to David Krejci, who was driving to the net on the far side. Krejci's one-timer found the puck of the net to make it 5-1.
Maxime Lapierre added a goal for the Canucks with 2:26 left to play in the game to account for the 5-2 final score. Jannik Hansen's pass from beyond the goal line found Daniel Sedin in the slot. Sedin then fed a short pass to the left to Lapierre, who had an open net to shoot at.
Notes & Quotes:
- Mason Raymond left the game early in the first period after getting tangled up with Johnny Boychuk in the corner and falling awkwardly in the boards. Raymond hit the boards back-first while in a bent-over position. He was slow to get up, but was able to skate to the bench with some help. He was transported to a Boston area hospital for further examination.There has not been any update on his status.
- The Bruins' 4 goals in 4:14 was the quickest period of time that 4 goals had been scored by one team in a Stanley Cup Finals game in NHL history.
- Tim Thomas made 36 saves.
- This game got pretty chippy. Surprisingly, Patrice Bergeron was on the players, who seemed to be in the middle of the scrums all night. Bergeron was whistled for four minor penalties tonight.
- The Bruins out-shot the Canucks 36-34.
- The Bruins won 62% of the draws tonight (46 of 74).
- Kevin Bieksa recorded a game-high 8 shots.
- The B's out-hit the Canucks 43-38. Andrew Ference and Rich Peverley were the only skaters on either team not to record a hit. Shawn Thornton had a team-high 7 hits in just 10:08 of ice time.
- Claude Julien gave some players a light workload late in the to rest up for Game 7. Zdeno Chara (23:36) and Dennis Seidenberg (19:27) both logged their least amount of ice-time of the playoffs.
- Nathan Horton was spotted down by the Zamboni entrance waving rally towels to show his support of his teammates.
- Hey Doc, it's "The T" or "The Green Line", not "The T Line".
- Game 7 is Wednesday night in Vancouver. This is it. Two teams going at for Lord Stanley's Chalice.
David Krejci when asked if he likes the Bruins' chances in Game 7:
"I do. I do like it. We are going there to win the game. We’re on our toes, and we’re going to try to get the first goal and if we do that, then I like our chances."
Michael Ryder on people criticizing Tim Thomas' goaltending style
"Yeah well. Timmy, he’s been great for us all year. And in the playoffs and you know as long as he stops the puck that’s all we care, it doesn’t matter how he does it. He’s a unique goaltender, he battles and that’s what he does and he’s been doing it like all year for us. And he’s one of the main reasons we’re where we’re at."
Canucks forward Manny Malhotra on avoiding the trash talking that is going on in this series:
"We realize early that nothing good is going to happen after the whistle. So, we don’t bother with that garbage. We will play between the whistles. It has been working for us the entire year, I don’t know why we would change now."
Johnny Boychuk on Tim Thomas:
"Well how big has he been all series? What can you say about him? Right now, he’s the best goalie in the world."
Milan Lucic on forcing Game 7:
Yeah, it definitely doesn’t get any better than this, you know, you dream about going up and playing game seven in the Stanley Cup Final and here we are, in this situation, we just have to go there and like I said, do what we need to do to win and have fun with it.
Brad Marchand on the fans at TD Garden:
"The fans are unbelievable. You know sitting on the bench at one point just listening to the crowd and they were going crazy. You know I don’t think if it was for them we would have had the same game tonight, we just seem to build so much momentum off of them. And it’s nice to have them."
Zdeno Chara on home ice advantage:
"That’s the way, in the playoffs, sometimes you see that the home ice is not really a big difference in the series and obviously in this one, it seems that both teams took advantage of it. So now it’s going to be interesting to see what’s going to happen in game seven."
Roberto Luongo on giving up 3 early goals:
"They came out flying obviously and got some goals and I obviously didn’t make enough key saves to weather the storm early."
Roberto Luongo on what Shawn Thornton said to him in warmups
"I can’t say it on the air."