What happened when the Bruins last played in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final
Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand scored two goals each and Tim Thomas made 37 saves in a 4-0 shutout of the Canucks on June 15, 2011.
The Bruins and Blues play Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final Wednesday at 8 p.m. By the end of the night, one team will hoist the Stanley Cup. The other will leave TD Garden empty-handed.
The Blues have never been this close to championship glory in franchise history. The Bruins’ veteran leadership group in Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, and Brad Marchand know how it feels to win it all. All five players were on the 2011 Bruins team that matched up with the Vancouver Canucks in the 2011 Cup Final.
2011’s championship series was every bit as hard-fought as 2019’s has proven. The Bruins narrowly lost the first two games of the series to the Canucks, who were the league’s best regular season team, only to blow Vancouver out in Games 3 and 4, outscoring them 12-1. The Canucks won Game 5 by a 1-0 score. The Bruins ultimately forced the series to a seventh game on the road in Vancouver.
Here is a reminder of what happened on June 15, 2011:
Bergeron and Marchand took the lead and never let it go
The Bruins struck first at Rogers Arena when Bergeron, planted in front of the Canucks’ net, slapped a one-time shot past Roberto Luongo at 14:37 of the first period.
Marchand, then a 23-year-old rookie, extended the lead to 2-0 in the second period when he collected a rebound, wrapped the puck behind the net and slid it in on the opposite side. Luongo actually stopped the initial attempt with his blocker, but inadvertently slid the puck in himself when he moved his hand backward.
“We wanted to come in and be a difference-maker,” Marchand told The Boston Globe postgame. “We knew we had to step up in this building. It’s very tough to play here and we always wanted to go out and work hard and leave it all on the ice.”
Bergeron scored once more before the second period ended, a short-handed breakaway goal, and Marchand put the exclamation point on the Bruins’ win when he scored an empty-net goal with less than three minutes to play.
“It’s surreal,” Marchand said. “I don’t know if it will ever kick in.”
Tim Thomas made 37 saves and earned the Conn Smythe Trophy
Thomas played one of the best postseasons of any goalie in NHL history in 2011. He ended it with one of his best performances; a 37-save shutout against the team that scored the most goals in the league that year.
But that was almost par for the course for Thomas, then 37, that postseason. He registered four total shutouts, made 30 or more saves in 17 of 25 games played, and allowed only seven goals in seven games in the Cup Final itself. His unorthodox, aggressive style of play endeared himself to Bruins fans. When Thomas flailed across the crease to make stop after stop, the hockey world noticed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56PkSPOLByM
“[Thomas has] got to be up there with the best I’ve ever seen,” Bruins team president Cam Neely said after the game. “He elevated his game, especially in the Stanley Cup. He was so calm and composed. He took it to another level, and it was really fun to watch him play.”
Thomas’s outstanding performance earned him the Conn Smythe Trophy as the NHL playoffs’ most valuable player.
“Going into the game we talked about not getting too high if we do score,” he said about staying calm even after the Bruins took the lead. “You can’t act like you’ve won the Stanley Cup because you’ll get that emotional high and it will end up showing on the ice. I was just trying to stay level. It was one goal; it was a huge goal, the game-winning goal. At that time, there was still a lot of game and a lot of work left to do.”
Zdeno Chara lifted the Cup first and the Bruins celebrated with injured teammate Nathan Horton
The only players on the ice for the Bruins in that game who had won the Cup before were forwards Mark Recchi and Shawn Thornton. For the rest, including captain Zdeno Chara, that night was a first.
Chara’s screams of pure elation were caught by television microphones as he lifted the Cup for the first time.
“Come on boys! Yes, yes!” Chara yelled.
Every Bruins player and coach got a chance to kiss the Cup that evening, even forward Nathan Horton, who was knocked unconscious and concussed by Canucks defenseman Aaron Rome in Game 3. Horton did not play in the remainder of the series, but he emerged on the ice in uniform after the game to celebrate with his teammates.
“We won the Stanley Cup,” Horton told NHL Network after the Bruins’ win. “That’s all that matters right now. It doesn’t matter who scored the goals as long as we are here, and that’s where we are. We all couldn’t be happier to be here.”
