I didn't understand how the Bruins ended up two men down from the initial battle royale. My guess is they gave Thornton 2 mins for being an ******* and Lucic as part of their bad call. It's unfortunate that the Refs had all technology to make the right call but didn't / weren't able to use it. That put Boston down the extra man I think and then the misconduct. That definitely changed the game and it stinks.
That was the most botched officiating play I have EVER seen in hockey. And I'm not just talking about Bruins games. Burrows slashed Paille in shins as he was changing out (for Lucic), Thornton went and hit Burrows in shin, Burrows proceeds to spear Thornton in the throat. 6 Canucks jump on Thornton (including Lapierre who jumped and was throwing haymakers) and 2 more guys were punching him from the bench. This is when Chara, Lucic, and then Horton came over to Thornton's aid.
Somehow out of all of this the Canucks get a 5-on-3 and Lucic gets a game for "leaving the bench" when he was
already on the ice! Horrible call. If anything one or more of the Canucks should have been called and ejected for violating the third man in rule on the altercation between thornton and burrows.
It completely changed the game and you can confidently say it would have been different had they not screwed this up and Lucic played the whole game. Yes, in the end we lost because our power play didn't match up to there's, but Lucic is also our top power play scorer.
Having said all that, I have to hand it to the Canucks. They developed a strategy based on a weakness and executed to that strategy perfectly. They taunted the Bruins, got them to bite, and the put the puck in the net on every power play. Good for them.
The silver lining is that the Bruins needed a game like this to learn to get their emotions in check. Hopefully this was a good lesson that will pay them back later in the year.
Well said. Our team is really strong mentally, and they will no doubt use this as a learning experience for later in the year. And you can bet, if we somehow happen to play Vancouver again this year (it could only happen in an SCF rematch), these tactics won't work for Vancouver then.
Still no word on any possible discipline for Marchand.. don't know what's taking so long. I won't even touch on the ridiculous character assassination attempts coming out of Vancouver the past two days. I've never seen such a bunch of hypocritical whiners as bad as this Vancouver team. They have players that play just as dirty as the Bruins.
Props to Claude Julien and Peter Chiarelli for not backing down and standing up for their guy.
