Rink Rap is not of the opinion that Sunday was a no-show by the Bruins at TD Garden. Rather, it was something we’ve seen before in the Stanley Cup playoffs, like late in the second period of Game 5 of the 1991 Eastern Conference Final in Boston Garden where future former Bruin Paul Stanton was the late man, taking Bryan Trottier’s brilliant set-up and roofing the puck on Andy Moog to stretch the Pittsburgh Penguins’ lead to 5-2.
Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr may be the legacy talent in the early ’90s Penguins’ arsenal, but it was Stanton’s goal that would chase Moog at second intermission in what ended as a dam-breaking, 7-2 loss and the prelude of the series clincher in Pittsburgh.
A good hockey team got trounced that day, and though the Bruins stuck with it and took Game 6 to the final five minutes, the die was cast. Mark Recchi, who would also begin his NHL career as a Penguin and end it as a Bruin, scored the series winner that sent Pittsburgh into a Cup final it would win in six over the upstart North Stars.
Tonight, the Buffalo Sabres, the team that embarrassed the Bruins on Sunday in Boston, are the closer hockey team. That is, closer to the fruition of their drafting and development. And, while it took an extraordinarily long time for them to finally achieve in proportion with their drafting opportunities over the last decade, they’re showing the potential to catch up to the development curve with some explosive performances.
The Sabres feel like the future of the Adams (Atlantic) Division, in part because they’re pretty to watch. Theirs is an aesthetically pleasing brand of hockey, much less like the 1998-99 team Lindy Ruff guided to the Cup final the Sabres lost on Brett Hull’s controversial overtime winner for the Dallas Stars but more like their 1974-75 predecessors of the French Connection with the great Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert.
For years, it looked like this iteration of the Buffalo Sabres couldn’t, perhaps wouldn’t ever, get it right. Heavily mocked as a joke of a franchise and widely expected to play the role of dead carcass for the rest of the NHL to pick at for future pieces suitable to other, better franchises’ purposes, something finally gave.
But was the three-game winning streak that began before GM Kevyn Adams was fired in favor of Jarmo Kekalainen the little bang that became a big bang or, as Lindy Ruff indicated, did injuries undermine a good hockey team showing signs of progress that to which the hockey world at large didn’t pay enough attention?
Can an entire organization find a magic touch because one former Bruins prospect is running the show instead of another?
World No. 5 Jessica Pegula finally has a hockey team she can agonize over missing its games while pursuing top form across Spain and Italy, as the WTA turns its calendar toward Roland Garros. Known on the women’s tour as the rich girl, Pegula has a great sense of humor to endure the jokes as one of tennis’ hardest-working competitors. Now her parents’ hockey team is no longer a laughing stock but rather an embarrassment of riches. Buffalo looks poised and ready to make a deep run in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Can the desperate Bruins do anything about it? Absolutely, they can buckle down, check like hell and get this series to Game 6 Friday night in Boston. The Bruins have been in this position before, in Montreal in 2008 and in Carolina in 2009. Both series went seven games, and both times the Bruins lost.
So, while the Bruins have actually never in their century of hockey come back to take a best-of-seven that they trailed 3 games to 1, the idea they should or would fold their tent and hasten weekend tee times is out of the question. Whatever the scoreboard says, a competitive collapse tonight would be antithetical to the Bruins’ entire body of work this season.
The Boston Bruins are a proud group, admittedly embarrassed by Sunday’s debacle on home ice, and eager for tonight’s opportunity to exhibit pride in their craft, however rough around the edges compared to the hockey being played by their opponent.
The Bruins put up 100 points and made the playoffs out of a season-long grind, emerging from the NHL’s enormous middle class and deservedly so. They don’t want it to end like Sunday, so it won’t.
Win the series? That would be a first in over 100 years of Bruins hockey. I won’t hold my breath, and neither should you. Serious Cup contention is off in the future for the Bruins, who have a lot of work to do on their forward lines – and, yes, some on defense as well – before counting a first-round playoff elimination as anything more than what it will be, and that’s a realistic end to a hard season that brought about the restoration of their credibility as a tough out.
It’s a good start.
Meantime, it’s still awfully sudden for the Sabres to turn this apparent victory into a serious run at the Cup. Not yet, but I have to admit, they look like a team that’s been here before, and perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between because, especially if the Montreal Canadiens and not the Tampa Bay Lightning are next, then what does Montreal have on Buffalo at this point? Nothing if you’re asking. Tampa? Entirely different story, especially if Victor Hedman’s status changes.
Bruins fans should need no introduction to the relevance of Hedman vis-a-vis injury status. Had Covid not canceled the 2020 on-schedule playoffs, the Lightning would not have had Hedman to get in Boston’s way following the Bruins’ Presidents Trophy effort as a sequel to the Cup they weren’t quite ready to win in 2019.
Just imagine.
Hedman is a difference maker. More on that in the next Rink Rap post on contenders vs. pretenders and the emerging, monkey-wrench team of the playoffs.
Rink Rap with Mick Colageo 