NHL Playoffs 2012: 5 Best Game 7 Players on the Boston Bruins Active Roster

Head coach Claude Julien and seven individual players have been with the Boston Bruins for each of the franchise’s post-lockout playoff runs, including six Game 7s.

The seventh of those sevenths will occur Wednesday night as the Bruins host the rubber match of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Washington Capitals. The game will fall precisely 52 weeks to the date of another do-or-die conference quarterfinal tilt versus Montreal, which Nathan Horton won on an overtime strike.

That victory snapped a three-game seventh game losing streak for Boston and commenced a three-game winning streak in the same scenario.

Horton, a summer 2010 acquisition from Florida who has scored the winning goal in the only two Game 7s of his career, will be unavailable after his second concussion in seven months ended his 2011-12 campaign.

But whether they have been here for the duration of the Julien era or settled into Boston in the middle of the team’s renaissance, the Bruins have no shortage of historically reliable Game 7 players. The five most impressive individual resumes on the roster are encapsulated as follows.

Patrice Bergeron

The Bruins’ longest-tenured skater posted a 2-1-3 scoring log in the three seventh games last year.

Not counting his rookie campaign in 2003-04, when the Bruins lost to Julien’s Montreal Canadiens, he has three takeaways in five career Game 7s. And characteristically enough, has won a cumulative 71 out of 119 faceoffs in those games for 59.7 percent success.

And as of last June 15, he is now in the company of Bill Carson, Roy Conacher, Bobby Bauer and Bobby Orr as the only men to score a Cup-winning goal for Boston. He is the only one of those with a winning goal in Game 7 of the Cup final.

Johnny Boychuk

The third-year NHLer has already logged 44 Stanley Cup games, coupled with six goals and 11 assists. One of those strikes and one of those helpers have come over his four Game 7s, along with eight hits and a plus-three rating.

Andrew Ference

Prior to his arrival in Boston, Ference played in a total of four Game 7s between Pittsburgh and Calgary, including one in the 2004 Stanley Cup finals. His team went 2-2 in that scenario.

With the Bruins, Ference has taken part in five rubber games, missing their 3-2 overtime loss to Carolina in 2009 due to injury. But when he has played, he has arguably been their most impressive defenseman, logging three assists, a plus-four rating and eight blocked shots.

Appropriately, his single-best performance as a Bruin came in last year’s conference final against Tampa Bay, the team that denied him a Cup in Calgary. He set up the end-to-end rush en route to the secondary assist on Horton’s icebreaker/game-winner, thrust five shots on goal and logged three hits and blocked shots apiece.

Milan Lucic

Since posting a minus-one rating in a 5-0 loss to Montreal that ended his rookie campaign, Lucic has posted a 3-1-4 scoring log and a plus-three rating in five rubber games.

He had a goal, six hits and two takeaways against Carolina in 2009 and two goals versus Philadelphia in 2010. He made the centering pass to set up Horton’s overtime strike that zapped the Habs last spring and was also on the ice for Horton’s series winner versus Tampa.

Lucic also threw a playoff-high six hits in the Cup-clinching tilt at Vancouver.

Tim Thomas

Thomas’ NHL playoff career, not unlike his playing career as a whole, burgeoned to radiance from humble beginnings. He stopped 30 out of 35 shots in his first Game 7 and handled 64 out of 72 over two straight Game 7 losses to Montreal and Carolina in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Last year, though, he logged 95 saves on 98 shots-faced in three Game 7s, winning the aforementioned 4-3 overtime decision versus Montreal and shutting out Tampa and Vancouver for the conference and Cup.

In his Game 7 career as a whole, he has played 324:20, the equivalent of 5.4 games. In that time, he has posted a 3-2-0 record with two shutouts, stopped 159 out of 170 shots-faced for a .935 save percentage and allowed 11 goals for a 2.03 goals-against average.