Bruins vs. Canucks: As Good As It Gets For Fans
BOSTON (CBS) - You had to love that the Bruins and Canucks downplayed their first meeting since the Stanley Cup Finals. And you also had to love that it went only four minutes in on Saturday before we found out they were lying.
It started with a gutless move that saw the Canucks jump Shawn Thornton in front of the Vancouver bench. That led to an eventual fight between Nathan Horton and Dale Weise as well as a game misconduct penalty to Milan Lucic for jumping off the bench and onto the ice to protect Thornton. That misconduct was later rescinded by the NHL, which means no suspension for Lucic.
We saw Shawn Thornton drop his gloves after he thought Weise agreed to fight him, but then Weise didn't oblige.
Later on, we saw Brad Marchand clip Sami Salo and get a game misconduct. And that hit may lead to a suspension. Meanwhile, Claude Julien stood by Marchand afterwards, saying that he's instructed his players to do basically whatever it takes to avoid taking a hit that could cause a concussion or worse.
We also saw Vancouver take advantage of 10 power play opportunities by scoring all 4 of their goals on the power play in a 4-3 win.
We watched the home town kid, Cory Schneider of Marblehead and Boston College, get the start in net for Vancouver over Roberto Luongo and come up brilliant at times with 36 saves.
We saw Tim Thomas make some "keep them in the game" saves.
We heard the Garden faithful chant Luongo, Luongo, Luongo over and over again...
We saw one of the prettiest goal you'll ever see when Tyler Seguin fed a streaking Brad Marchand in the first period.
We saw a healthy Ryan Kesler play a solid two-way game for Vancouver.
We saw both teams give it their all.
We saw an electric atmosphere again at the Garden.
Yes, we have been privileged to watch some great hockey over the past year or so with this Bruin team and we saw more of it on Saturday.
For a regular season game, it was as close as you'll ever get to playoff hockey. Both these teams hate each other. Mark Recchi basically said it when he was on 98-5 The Sports Hub and I've had a player or two tell me the same thing.
We witnessed a great sporting event. A game that lived up to our hype... not the players'.
This is why Boston has been an incredible place to be a sports fan since the calendar flipped to 2000.
And for that, we should all be thankful.
