2011 Stanley Cup Finals Game 3: Bruins Bounce Canucks. Horton out of Playoffs

Where do you begin?

The Vancouver Canucks had a 2-0 series lead and are two wins from hoisting Lord Stanley's Mug.

They were looking to put a stranglehold on the series and hope to not have to take it back to Vancouver after Game 4.

The Bruins were looking to force this series back to Vancouver and hopefully back to Boston for a Game 6.

First things first. Game 3.

For the Bruins, Tyler Seguin sat out this game and Shawn Thornton was back in the lineup in hopes to bring some fire into the team.

The Game

First Period

No scoring in the opening period, but the story of that period was when Canucks defenseman Aaron Rome made a late hit on Bruins forward Nathan Horton and there was full head contact which took Horton out of the game. He wanted to get up but the team's trainers and physician wanted nothing of it.

He was sent to Mass General and was last reported that he was able to move all extremities and is fully alert, but will be kept overnight for observations.

Lateset update is that Horton will be out of the playoffs with a severe concussion and the Bruins are following the protocol to the letter.

This resulted in Rome being ejected from the game and a five-minute major. There was a disciplinary hearing the next morning and Rome has been handed a suspension for four games which will be at least for the remainder of the playoffs.

The Bruins could not capitalize on this opportunity. The Bruins owned the first part of the period but the Canucks were controlling the latter part.

Both goalies were outstanding in the opening frame and the score was goose eggs.

Second Period

Just 11 seconds into the period, Canucks defenseman Christian Ehrhoff's stick broke and that allowed Dennis Seidenberg to skate in and get a shot off.  

The puck ended up right at B's defenseman Andrew Ference, who knuckled past Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo—1-0 Bruins.

Just 4:11 later, Mark Recchi was setting up Rich Peverley for the pass and Vancouver's Ryan Kesler tried to stick block the shot, but ended up putting it in the net—2-0 Bruins.

The Bruins were playing with a fire in their belly after the hit and their sticks were active. Brad Marchand got on the score sheet by stick checking Daniel Sedin and went into the attacking zone.

He bounced the puck off the boards to collect it himself and then proceeded to the Vancouver net. Marchand waited out Canucks netminder Roberto Luongo. As Luongo went down to cover the bottom of the net, Marchand roofed it after he skated from left to right to earn a shorthanded goal. Bruins lead 3-0.

With 4:13 left in the period, the Bruins were attacking again. Michael Ryder made a partially screened shot to which Luongo quickly reacted, but the puck went out to David Krejci and he used Kevin Bieska as a screen and popped it up and to the left of Luongo to put the Bruins in a commanding 4-0 lead going into the final frame.

Third Period

The Canucks were on the power play and they were trying to get organized but seemed a little disorganized as Ehrhoff was leaving the puck for Jeff Tambellini, but that message was not clearly communicated as he had to quickly retreat to get it.

Tambellini passed to to Ehrhoff, but he didn't play the puck. Johnny Boychuk put it into the attacking zone to a streaking Daniel Paille, who skated in nearly untouched by Tambellini. Paille wristed the shot that seemed to handcuff Luongo and it trickled into the net to put the Bruins up 5-0.

With a ton of ejections, both benches were short of players. With less than half of the final period left, there were nine infractions with four of them being 10-minute misconducts, sending Boston's Dennis Seidenberg and Milan Lucic and Vancouver's Ryan Kesler and Alexandre Burrows to the dressing rooms.

In all, there were 10 misconducts, one of them being a game for Rome.

The Canucks started to organize as Maxime LaPierre passed to Raffe Torres, who got it to Jannik Hansen into the open right side as Thomas was out playing Torres. Vancouver got on the board, but with only 6:07 left of the game—5-1 Bruins.

The Bruins regained the five-goal lead. Marchand got the puck at the back board and Alexander Edler lined up Marchand for the big hit, but not before the puck was passed to Recchi who made it count. Recchi was quietly going to the net and he didn't waste time to score as Victor Oreskovich seemed to expect the puck to be cleared and former Bruin Andrew Alberts was too busy containing Patrice Bergeron—6-1 Bruins.

Thomas nailed Henrik Sedin as he was trying to catch and drop the puck at the blue paint. When asked about the decision, he described on how he got scored on in practice in the same scenario and if he waited for Sedin to drop the puck it may not have been a good result for the Bruins.

Less than two minutes left of the game, Bruins Paille and Chris Kelly were battling behind the net with three or four Canucks players. Paille tried to pop it in short side, but Luongo stopped only to have Kelly sweep it on on the open right side. Bruins lead 7-1.

The Bruins rounded up the scoring with a power play goal by Ryder who made a weak shot that had eyes.

Final Score: 8-1.

Series: 2-1 for the Canucks.

The Good

Good, physical hockey. Both teams had some good hits, but the hits that the Bruins were delivering were taking the Canucks out of plays and they reduced the time and space on the play makers. Every time the Bruins played this way, it limited, if not eliminated chances.

Tim Thomas. He was on fire and was solid despite the critics on how he should play. Every time Thomas is faced with 40-plus shots, he has won.

Bruins special teams. The Bruins made sure that they finished their checks and that thy had some active sticks. While playing for the puck, they made sure that they limited any overplay to avoid too many odd-man rushes. They earned two power play and two shorthanded goals. 

The Bad

Vancouver puck control. The Bruins created turnovers and left Luongo out to dry.

Luongo. His head was not in it and allowed some weak goals allowing eight of 38 shots in. 

Vancouver special teams. Although they outshot the Bruins, it was only a difference of three. They went 0-for-8 on the man advantage.

The Ugly

Rome's hit on Horton. Unnecessary. The puck was long gone. Sure, rub him out of the play, but to deliver such a blow to an unsuspecting player who did not have the puck will be frowned upon.

Luongo's .789 save percentage.

Vancouver's power play. With the Bruins' power play picking up, the Canucks' man advantage game has cooled down, going 0-for-8 in Game 3 and 1-for-16 for 6.25 percent in the series to date.

My Take

The Bruins needed to respond in the way that the Bruins play: physical. When they play hard and fast, this team is extremely difficult to deal with. Unbeatable? I wouldn't go that far. But the odds are heavily in their favor when they play with an edge.

As for the antics of Recchi and Lucic, this did not sit well with me. In the excitement of the game, I confess that I did smile a bit, but I quickly came to terms that what I thought was not right for Maxim LaPierre as I have written in my previous article is not right for Recchi or Lucic.

They only needed to send the message in their play and on the scoreboard.  Anything more than that would be overkill and make them no better than Burrows for biting or LaPierre for taunting in the Stanley Cup Finals.

As much as the sport is brutally physical and emotions can run high, sportsmanship should not only be respected, but demanded.

After coach Claude Julien stated that his guys would not pull the antics of LaPierre, it was returned twice. Recchi did it to LaPierre and Lucic went as far as taking off his glove and sticking it Alex Burrows' face.

Julien was disappointed on this and in the postgame conference he said as much and was clearly not happy.

"I said this morning I wouldn't accept that on my team," Julien said. "It happened a couple of times tonight. They've been told I don't want any of that stuff."

According to Julien, Lucic and Recchi, there were words spoken to the players by their head coach and none too flattering. The last thing you need to do is to embarrass your coach after he defended his team's integrity.

At the very least, they owned up to the fact it was a mistake. It still doesn't make it right, but what's done is done. They didn't injure anyone in the process, if feelings were hurt, time to quit hockey.

Horton's injury will take him out of the rest of the finals.

According to NECN.com, Horton thought he was still in Vancouver when speaking with the medical staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Shawn Thornton played with Rome as a teammate in San Jose and while he acknowledges that Rome is an honest player, he wants these types of hits out of the game.

Early Tuesday morning, Rome's agent, Jarrett Bousquet, told TSN's Bob McKenzie, "Aaron told me he was sad to see Horton lying on the ice because [Rome's been hit in the head] twice within the year and would never intend to injure another player. He hopes Horton is okay and is sorry."

In the Canucks dressing room, the Sedin twins both said it was a late hit. But Manny Malhotra said he "thought it a very clean hit. The timing was maybe a fraction off, but all in all you see those hits on daily basis."

I have to disagree with Malhotra. Simply because you don't see players wheeled off the ice on a daily basis. You see late hits, yes. But the location and the severity of the hit is not, by any means "on a daily basis."

I will now turn the floor to the Habs fans and Boston haters who will, all in likelihood, mention the Zdeno Chara hit on Max Pacioretty. While the severity of the hit was brutal and I am sorry to see such a thing happen, there are glaring differences.

You know this is where the argument is going to go so I might as well bring it up.

The Chara/Pacioretty incident involved two players going all out along the boards and Chara was trying to rub Pacioretty on the boards to remove him from the play. Clearly interference on any other part of the ice and there was no violent contact from Chara. Unfortunately, some brain dead designer built a stanchion between the boards and the much larger Chara had Pacioretty well over the boards as he struck the stanchion with both players going in the same direction.

There have been several stanchion hits in the regular season and none of them were deemed suspendable. They need to remove those things before someone gets paralyzed or killed.

Horton released the puck to his teammate farther forward just past the center line and was smoked by Rome at the blue line. He turned into him, straightened his legs and did an upward and forward motion at Horton in the opposite direction.

Had he checked the body, there would be no mention of this save a stat that Rome would likely be called for interference and nothing more.

Rome being 6'1" and 218 lbs, along with Horton, who is 6'2" and 229 pounds, colliding with head contact is like two freight trains going head on, but one train got all head. Rome doesn't have a height advantage. In fact, they are nearly the same height.

Emotions run high and it is sad to see that when the emotions get the better of you in such a fast, high impact game, things like this happen.

Some of these hits has to be addressed and addressed properly before other Paciorettys and Hortons are hurt, or worse. I hope the NHL will address this sooner than later before we see the worse scenario. 

Rome will face a four game suspension for the hit but more to make an example than the actual hit itself as there were just as severe or worst hits made in the recent past.

This could be trouble for the Canucks as Rome is a very capable player that made a stupid move and the defense will be shortened. I don't believe this was intentional, but it is a hit that needs to be addressed and removed from the game.  After all the head is a relatively smaller part of the body.  There is absolutely no need to go high on a player.

Thoughts and prayers go out to Nathan Horton and here's to hoping he comes out of this okay.

This is Cory Ducey saying, "Hit Hard, but PLEASE Keep It Clean"