Stanley Cup Finals 2011: Boston Bruins' Next Challenge Will Be Change of Scenery

If a playoff series is not a series until a home team loses, then for the lower-seeded party, a winning battle is not a real winning battle until they have won on the road.

That should be the mantra for the Boston Bruins come Friday night, when they seek to put a stamp on the momentum they have usurped by winning Games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals by a cumulative score of 12-1.

Simply put, if Zdeno Chara is to greet NHL commissioner Gary Bettman next Monday or Wednesday, they will need to snatch at least one game out of Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

And for more reasons than the obvious, it is preferable that they get that requisite road win in Game 5.

With Wednesday’s 4-0 triumph, the Bruins have re-verified their resiliency by deleting a two-games-to-none deficit the same way they did in Round 1 versus the Montreal Canadiens. But now that Boston has drawn this knot, the Vancouver Canucks have a chance to reprise their own kind of elasticity. They, of course, had the experience of spilling a multi-game lead to the point where they were tied, 3-3, against Chicago, only to deliver the belated knockout in Game 7.

And even before this year’s playoff run, Claude Julien’s pupils have repeatedly expressed a penchant for playing with desperation. Under Julien, the Bruins are now 6-3 when the specter of elimination is lining up against them.

It was only virtually present on Monday and Wednesday, but the Bruins still knew these were both must-wins in order to stave off a third-degree must-win. The scoreboard doesn’t lie, does it?

But of course, just as they are now, the Canucks have repeatedly pushed their luck this spring, only to perk back up in a timely matter. After averting the ultimate collapse against the Blackhawks, they improved their torch-juggling skills against Nashville in the second round, squandering a chance to abolish the Predators in Game 5 before claiming Game 6.

Not much sense in putting recent history on one’s side if it is just going to cancel out and start working for the adversary. And by all accounts, playing in front of their rooters once again will do anything but hurt the Canucks chances of turning the momentum their way again.

Since the aforementioned Game 5 falter versus Nashville, Vancouver has gone a pristine 5-0 at home. The Bruins are an identical 5-0 at the TD Garden since dropping the opener of their last series against Tampa Bay, but are also 0-4 on the road ever since Tim Thomas blanked the Bolts, 2-0, in Game 3 of that series.

Those chronic road woes began two days later, when Boston failed to safeguard a 3-0 lead in Game 4. On that note, the most encouraging aspect of Wednesday night had to be the way the Bruins nurtured an identical three-goal edge that they carried into the third period.

Within 3:39 of clock time, they polished off a carry-over penalty kill, promptly drew their own power play at the expense of Canucks captain Henrik Sedin, and then augmented their lead to 4-0 less than a minute after Sedin was released.

Bucking trends will have to be a growing trend, though, if the Bruins are to prevail in the end. It is not only in their best interest to return to the Garden with a chance to clinch the Cup before their supporters (seeing as the only other option would be to lose another road game and then leave Rogers Arena as the only place to book a champagne party with Lord Stanley).

They also want to disrupt whatever adjustments Vancouver is bound to make before those tweaks solidify and put another 180-degree spin on the momentum in this series.

Series? If that’s still not what this is by everyone’s definition, then the B's will want to change that on Friday by being the first road victor.