Bruins Trying To Forget About Game 7 History, “We are 1 win away!”

Added on May 27, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

Many thought that when Montreal face Boston in Game 7 of their series that Montreal would walk away with the win. The numbers were in their favor, as Boston lost their last four game 7s and most were in a soul crushing fashion. Tonight at the TD Garden in Boston we will find out if that was a fluke win, or if the Bruins have changed their game 7 luck.

A lot of Boston fans aren’t feeling real comfortable, and most would argue that all the momentum belongs to the Lightning. For a decent chunk of the first and second periods in game 6, it really looked like Tampa Bay had no answer for the Bruins. They were taking a hard stand on their 2-1 lead and then it all fell apart, and they ended up losing 5-4. The argument can be made that they let the Lightning back in this series.

The important thing to remember is that Boston did a lot of work to ensure that they would have home ice advantage in this situation. The Bruins feel every little thing counts in games like these, and they are one win away from playing the Vancouver Canucks for hockey highest honor. Claude Julien tells it the same way, and he even went as far to say they had no reason to be frustrated. He said “I don’t think we’re deterred. We’ve got a Game 7, it’s at home, we’re one game away from going to the Stanley Cup Final and the opportunity’s in front of us. So, why shouldn’t we be excited?”

The coach has a point, no matter what happens they will remember this for the rest of their lives, and you can think you are one game away from winning OR losing. He continued “This is what playoffs is all about. I guess if you had told us at the beginning of the year that we had to win one game to go to the Stanley Cup Finals, we would be excited about it, and that’s where we’re at right now.”

Boston defenseman and captain Zdeno Chara echoed the same sentiments as his coach, and said these games are the reason they play hockey all season, just to get to moments like this one. He said “If somebody was going to tell us that we were going to be, before the playoffs or before the season, somebody would tell us we would be one win away from the Finals, for sure we would be all excited. So we have to take it that way. We have to embrace it, be excited, and have fun at the same time.”

One thing is for sure, they have to forget the past and concentrate on what is happening now. I recently heard Brian Burke GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs talk about how he was done apologizing for the errors of teams from the past. Burke said he was 11 years old when the Leafs won the cup, and if fans wanted to blame someone, they had a lot of phone calls to make before they got to him. That’s how the Bruins need to think tonight. Whether they were on the ice for the last game 7 losses or not, they need to focus on the game.

It really sounds like they are trying to do just that, and they probably don’t have much of a choice. Andrew Ference said that the key to the success this year has been the composure they have been able to keep, “It’s a focused group; I don’t know how to describe it other than that. It’s focused on the task at hand and the day at hand. We’ve never really been up and down, up and down, it’s really been constant the whole year. There haven’t been emotional swings. It’s more constant and more calm this year whether you are winning games or going through a rough patch. We’ve improved on that this year.”

Some statisticians think game 7′s can turn into 50/50 coin flip games. If what Ference is saying is true and they can remain cool and calm, the odds could be in their favor tonight at the Garden.