Five years ago today, the Bruins punched a ticket to the Stanley Cup Final

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, inside the TD Garden it was. The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins were battling for a trip to the Stanley Cup Final to take on the Vancouver Canucks.

It was one of the best games ever played. And the cleanest possible box score. 1 goal, no penalties.

Montage

In case you'd forgotten. It was a hard-fought series up until this point. Plenty of hitting, scoring, and general hockey mayhem. Great stuff. In four of the previous six games, at least one team (and in one case, both!) had scored 5 goals in a game.

Recap:

Nathan Horton got hurt in the first, but he came back.

Steve Stamkos blocked a JOHNNY BOYCHUK SLAPSHOT WITH HIS GODDAMN FACE! RIGHT OFF HIS FACE!

LOOK AT THIS:

Right in the damn face! OUCH! Stamkos was bleeding profusely, and broke his nose.

He came back, of course. With a cage. This is a cleaned-up wound from a slapshot that hit him in the facemask:

Yeah, it was gross. Dedicated athlete, though.

Dwayne Roloson was lights-out all game, and so was Tim Thomas. Eventually, one of them was going to have to give up a goal or we'd still be sitting in that arena in the 45,000th (or so) overtime of game 7. The Bruins decided that it should be them.

And who better to deliver that playoff magic than Nathan Horton?

The Tampa Bay Lightning were famously playing a 1-3-1 smothering defensive formation, and it had gotten them this far. Sometimes, you can break that down with the right moves. David Krejci has the right moves. Check this out. First is the goal, then the crowd going absolutely fucking nuts out of their mind because they know that that'll be enough. With 7:30 left in the third, Nathan Horton scored what may as well have been an overtime goal. Here's the clip:

The crowd doesn't quiet down for the rest of the game. In fact, they stay quite loud. It was quite the atmosphere, let me tell you.

Highlights:

This was one of the better games of all time. Constant edge-of-your-seat action. Here's the highlight reel: