By Jack Healey
The St. Louis Blues are the Stanley Cup champs and quite frankly they deserved it. They won three of four games on the road including game 7.
I thought the Bruins would win the series in 6 and I certainly thought they’d win game 7, but it wasn’t to be. One team wins and all the others lose and in the final analysis it really doesn’t matter if you lose by not making the playoffs or in any of the playoff rounds because a loss is a loss. Actually the losses are worse the deeper you go in the playoffs or at least they hurt more.
Sometimes you can say you are happy to be there, but this is not one of them. The Bruins have been to Final and lost before. As a matter of fact 14 times as they stand at 6-14 now in the Final.
There is a lot of blame to go around, but Tukka Rask is certainly not one of them. I haven’t been the biggest Rask supporter, but he was great in the playoffs and if the Bruins had won he easily would’ve been the Conn Smythe winner. That being said and I know it’s not fair, but he just didn’t close the deal. Tim Thomas won three game 7’s in 2011 including two shutouts including 1-0 and 4-0 in game 7 of the Final. There is a monkey on Tukka Rask’s back and his name is Tim Thomas.
As a fan I am always an advocate of the fewer penalties or fouls the better, but in the case of this series it would’ve been nice to see a few more penalties. The Bruins just weren’t as good as the Blues 5 on 5 and a big key was that after game 3 the officials basically put their whistles away. The Bruins were up 2 games to 1 and lost three of the last four games including two of those games at home. Most of the penalties called were delay of game penalties and those are automatic.
Let’s talk about momentum AGAIN! Big win on the road by St. Louis in game 5 and they go home and get blown out in game 6. Big win by the Bruins on the road in game 6 and then get blown out at home in game 7. There weren’t too many Bruins fans who didn’t think they had the so called “momentum” going into game 7. I thought the Bruins would win game 7, but I point out time and time and time again that momentum changes countless times within a game and this is the point I make all the time that every game is a separate entity and one game has nothing to do with another.Momentum from game to game is absolutely the dumbest cliche used in sports. It’s just plain stupid! “Tough to beat a team three times” another cliche which is almost as dumb and is generally used by the team that doesn’t get it done in the 3rd game. You don’t have to beat a team three times. You only have to beat them once since you’ve already beaten them twice. Yes dumb, dumb,dumb!
A few other things:
The Paramount Theatre in downtown Rutland stopped showing the Stanley Cup games on the big screen after game 3 because of lack of interest and the Bruins were in it. They say because people have HD screens at home and can get beer and snacks cheaper. I say it’s because Rutland is not a hockey town. The Red Sox in the World Series drew much better crowds at the Paramount in 2013 and 2018.
A lot of talk about the US womens soccer team piling it on against Thailand 13-0 in the World Cup opener.Come on! This isn’t high school, it’s the World Cup and you play hard to the end. One US player said that it would show more disrespect if the US took it easy. I agree with her 100%. I always would see that in high school hockey games where a dominant team would shoot wide on purpose and take the puck back into their own zone etc. I always thought that was rubbing it in way more than scoring at will.