Boston Bruins vs. Vancouver Canucks: Raffi Torres Scores, Canucks Take Opener

There were times during the second period of last night’s opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals when it looked as though the teams were going to be playing one-on-one hockey. One or two more penalties would have done it, and there’d have been Tim Thomas and Roberto Luongo, lumbering through the neutral zone, whacking away at each other with their goalie sticks.

It was, to say the least, a feisty opener, featuring 13 penalties—none of which resulted in goals for either power-play unit. There were 70 shots on goal: 36 on Luongo and 34 on Thomas. One went in, and it was the culmination of a long (59 minutes, 42 seconds) series of attempts by both teams to execute a strong positioning plan.

There were a few slap shots from the point, some serendipitous wrist shots and occasional rebound attempts, but for the most part, both teams worked a basic tenet of any successful chess game: using pieces in combination to gain an advantage.  

Raffi Torres may have scored the goal in those last 18 seconds of the game, but it was the feed from Jannik Hansen that made it possible.

Like a bishop moving in for a clear, direct shot at the king, Hansen moved in from Thomas’ left, coming right at him. Thomas, whose aggression in those situations had always served him well, came out of the goal crease to challenge him. Hansen popped the puck left onto the stick of Torres and Thomas couldn’t swing back fast enough to stop the game’s only goal.

Checkmate.

We’re going to have to wait and see how the whole Patrice Bergeron/Alex Burrows (“He bit me! He bit me!”) scenario plays out, but it comes down to "Boys will be boys."

You have yourself a garden-variety dust-up; one player’s jamming his glove in the general vicinity of an opponent’s mouth, and crunch. Teeth come together (through a glove that’s about as thick as a loaf of bread, mind you) and suddenly, they’re talking about an adjudication process getting kicked upstairs to NFL officials, who’d just as soon get back to their brews in the luxury boxes, thank you very much.

Move on, boys. If it bothered you all that much, try to keep your hands down next time—and whatever you do, keep your gloves on.

The whole power-play scenario in this series is going to be interesting. With the Bruins’ general ineptitude in this regard (five goals on 67 attempts in the playoffs), you’d have to think that they wouldn’t complain about a missed penalty call unless a Canuck drove a Zamboni over someone.

Full disclosure: I’m a Bruins fan, hungry for the first Stanley Cup since I was in college. Last night’s game was a painful disappointment, made even more painful by the fact that it occurred in the last 18 seconds of the game.

Painful, but not disheartening, because a) Tim Thomas continues to play brilliantly, and b) pound-for-pound, I think the Bruins are a better team in the “using pieces in combination to gain an advantage” department—the last-minute Canucks goal, notwithstanding (Note to Thomas: Try to stay a little closer to home. Not too much, mind you. Don’t lose the aggression. Just flavor it with a teaspoon of caution).

The Bruins are so good at setting things up that it can be frustrating to watch. The puck goes here. The puck goes there, and then over there, and you find yourself thinking, “Will somebody shoot the puck in the general direction of the net, please?” just to give those of us watching a chance to take a sip of the beer we’ve been gripping for the five minutes that you’ve been passing the puck around inside the blue line.

Tough series to call. As evidenced by Burrows’ nip at Bergeron, the Canucks are at least as hungry as the Bruins. And you can forget the single, regular-season matchup between these two, won by the Bruins.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Bruins in six, hard-fought, nose-to-nose battles. I’m guessing they’ll split the first four, each team stealing one on their opponent's ice.

Boston’ll take the fifth one in Vancouver and win it at home, much to the delight of nearly 18,000 absolutely giddy fans who'll be in attendance at the TD Bank Garden and spill out into the Italian North End of Boston immediately afterwards for a long, 39-year overdue celebration.