Among the Canucks’ many headaches: Kevin Bieksa (3) and other key members of their defense corps look gassed or are injured and must find a way to halt Boston’s momentum. (Brian Jenkins/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Alain Vigneault said all the right — and predictable — things at the podium after his team lost Game 4 to the Bruins, 4-0, on Wednesday night to even the Stanley Cup final at two games apiece. Asked about his team’s confidence, he responded, “It’s real good. You know, if somebody would have told me at the beginning of the year that we could play for the Stanley Cup, best two-out-of-three series with home ice advantage in front of our fans, I would have taken those odds, I would have taken that anytime to play for the big prize.”

But what if that someone had also told him that his Canucks had just been outscored 12-1 in the last two games, the biggest two-game margin in Cup finals history, that his best players weren’t playing like his best players, that his defense corps had wilted, that his power play had gone south, that his goaltender had stopped making the big saves,  and that his team was being physically dominated and worn down? How much confidence could that inspire?
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A key question: If the Bruins come out flying and quickly put Roberto Luongo under siege, how will the Canucks’ goaltender react after being shelled in Boston’s Game 3 blowout? (Greg M. Cooper/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final goes tonight in Boston in the wake of the NHL’s unprecedented decision to suspend Vancouver’s Aaron Rome for four games after his late hit on Nathan Horton.

For a contest that isn’t a seventh game, this may be the most highly anticipated Cup final match of the last couple of decades. There’s great curiosity about whether the patterns of play that emerged in Game 3 will carry over — can Boston again impose its style on Vancouver? — and how the teams will adjust with their necessary lineup changes. How will the B’s will fare without one of their top line forwards and who will the Canucks bring into the lineup on defense?

And, for many, the lure will be to see if and how the two antagonists further escalate their already fierce series.
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The Bruins won’t last long if goalie Tim Thomas has to keep bailing them out. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The Stanley Cup Final moves to Boston tonight for Game 3 and the Bruins must win, as NBC/SI analyst Pierre McGuire explains in this SI.com video. In fact, the Bruins pretty much have to take the next two games at home or the series will return to Vancouver with the Canucks having a chance to win the Cup on home ice in Game 5. But the B’s can’t think about two wins just yet. “One at a time” has to be their mantra.

The Bruins have been accentuating the positive despite their 2-0 deficit. They speak about their resiliency, the fact that they’ve rallied from being down two before, and how they were in both games right up to the very end. All that is true, and with a few bounces, we could be at 1-1 or even 2-0 the other way. But Vancouver has been the better, more consistent team so far and had it not been for Tim Thomas, these games might not have been so close.
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Mark Recchi has been a major part of the Bruins’ power play struggles. (Brian Babineau/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Like Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, in which four people describe a crime in four very different ways, Game 1 of the Canucks-Bruins Stanley Cup Final evoked very different reactions. Some found it boring, lacking flow and intensity and overmanaged by the referees who called too many penalties. Others found it a rousing opener that provided one late game-winning goal, a number of big hits, spectacular saves, a few angry scrums and something for the world to nibble on as we head for Game 2.
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Given Vancouver’s firepower and Boston’s suspect power play, Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas will likely have to be at his acrobatic best to win the Stanley Cup. (Anne-Marie Sorvin/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

Sometime in the next two weeks, one of these teams will end a long Stanley Cup drought.  Each faced down a strong first-round challenge by a major rival and enters the final round  relatively healthy and with good depth. Both head coaches are Cup finals first-timers, they are former minor league teammates in the St. Louis Blues organization and each ran the bench for the Montreal Canadiens. But the similarities between the two foes are less striking than their differences.

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The Bruins have tried to juice their punchless power play by sending big blueliner Zdeno Chara to Tampa Bay’s net, but that creates questions for them elsewhere. (Scott Audette/NHL via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s Tampa Bay at Boston tonight and the winner gets a trip to Vancouver, where the Canucks await, hoping this Game 7 goes a few overtime periods and the Bruins and Lightning beat each other’s brains out. Could happen. When it comes down to one game, anything can happen.

Will home ice matter for the Bruins? It did when they played Montreal in Game 7 of the opening round, as B’s Coach Claude Julien has mentioned a few times since the end of Game 6 vs. Tampa Bay. On the other hand, the Lightning won a Game 7 on the road in their first round series against Pittsburgh, as their coach, Guy Boucher, has mentioned a few times as well.

The Lightning’s victory over the Penguins is the only Game 7 triumph by a road team so far in this playoff tournament. The home teams have won four times. But last year, visitors took all four Game 7s, and in 2009, road teams won four of six. In the six playoffs since the lockout, home teams have won 11 Game 7s and road teams have won 11. So the most obvious advantage may not be an advantage at all.
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Besides trying to beat Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, Steve Downie (here being robbed in Game 1) may have to deal with the absence of Sean Bergenheim on his effective third line. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The roar of approval from Bruins Nation during Monday’s Game 5 win over the Lightning had to be loudest for two events. One was Tim Thomas’s save of the year on Steve Downie, which preserved Boston’s one-goal lead in the third period. The other was seeing Zdeno Chara playing in front of the Lightning net on a Bruins power play, an adjustment by coach Claude Julien that B’s fans have screamed was needed for months.

That combination of great goaltending and some coaching flexibility will have to continue for Boston to skate into Tampa Bay tonight and come home with the Prince of Wales Trophy for the Eastern Conference championship.
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Dwayne Roloson’s sudden meltdown and who will start in net for the Lightning in Game 5 are just part of the intrigue in an Eastern final series that has taken some unexpected twists. (Chris O’Meara/AP Photos)

By Stu Hackel

It’s sorta our job here to make sense of playoff games, but sometimes they just don’t make sense. With the Bruins-Lightning series now down to a best-of-three contest and Game 5 in Boston tonight, we know even less about how this might play out than we did at the beginning of the round. How is that possible? These teams are supposed to reveal themselves in the course of the games. But the only revelations we’ve had are that these teams’ supposed strengths don’t seem particularly strong at the moment. It’s made for great, and sometimes exhilarating hockey, but you’d be a fool to say you know what’s going to happen next.
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The Lightning now have to concern themselves with how to stop a repeat performance by Game 2 rookie sensation Tyler Seguin, who brings speed and creativity to Boston’s attack. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The venue will change and the delirious pace of the game may, too, but however Bruins-Lightning Game 3 unfolds, there will still be lots to look back on and admire from Tuesday’s Game 2, a 6-5 victory by Boston that knotted their series at one game apiece.

With just over a minute left in the incredible second period, the Lightning had just scored a power play goal to narrow the gap to 5-3 and was back on the attack. An enthused Mike Emrick — who had just described 19 minutes of roaring back and forth action — said over Versus, “My goodness, it’s faster than one of those table hockey games!”

Those old flat metal players could whip the big wooden puck along the perimeter while the center was in front to pick up a rebound. And, sure enough, that’s just what happened. As if on cue, Boston turned the play out of its zone and spent a good 40 seconds pressuring  Tampa Bay, throwing the puck around the boards the way those tin men of the ’60s used to do. And it worked out well.
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Bruins coach Claude Julien has taken heat for his reluctance to make changes during games, something he will surely have to do in order to even his series against the Lightning. (Charles Krupa/AP Photos)

By Stu Hackel

When it comes to coaching in the Stanley Cup playoffs, you can’t underestimate the importance of making adjustments before and during games. That was a big part of the Eastern Conference Finals opener between the Bruins and Lightning, a 5-2 Tampa Bay win, and it will be also be a big part of Game 2 tonight in Boston.

Now trailing 1-0 in the series after being thoroughly outplayed for almost the entire game, Bruins coach Claude Julien has had two full days to mull over what he saw and fix it. He’s got lots to address: his team’s poor execution and inability to get much sustained pressure in the offensive zone, how to counter Tampa Bay’s various forechecking systems, and how to improve Boston’s special teams play. It seemed for much of Game 1 that the B’s were in over their heads. You can expect a better effort in Game 2.

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