Welcome Back To The City Of Champions Lord Stanley

Thomas, left and his Bruins earned this
championship after a high drama postseason.

As One drought ends another continues. The Boston Bruins ended their thirty-nine-year drought between Stanley Cup championships with their 4-0 Game 7 victory of the heavily favored Vancouver Canucks Wednesday night. It is the sixth Stanley Cup the Bruins have brought back to the city of Boston since they were established as a franchise in 1924.

    For the Bruins this is a bit of revenge after the way last years postseason ended. Boston had a 3-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Philadelphia Flyers, but lost the next four becoming only the third team in NHL history to squander a 3-0 lead in a best of seven series.

    This year they were determined to finish the job.

    Of the four postseason series the Bruins had to play in route to a championship, they were forced into three decisive seventh games, becoming the first team in NHL history to win them all. The only series Boston was not faced with a seventh game was against none other than their second-round matchup with the Flyers. The Bruins took a 3-0 series lead yet again and were set to rewrite history.

    Boston outscored the Flyers 20-7 in the series sweeping the defending Eastern Conference champions out of the postseason.

     As for the Cup Finals the story like it has been much of the season for the Bruins was their goaltender Tim Thomas. Thomas turned aside all 37 shots attempted on goal by the Canucks Wednesday, tossing his second shutout of the series and fourth of the postseason.

    He is only one of four goalies to record a shutout in a Game 7 of the Cup Final, but the first to do so on the road.

    Thomas becomes the oldest and second American in history to win the Conn Smythe Trophy after his magical season comes to a close. The thirty-seven-year-old goalie save percentage for the Cup Final was an astonishing .961 percent compared to his .938 in the regular season. However, that is nothing to snuff at as Thomas set a modern day record with his save percentage during the regular season breaking Dominik Hasek's mark of .937 set back in 1999 as a member of the Buffalo Sabres.

    This was Thomas's first Stanley Cup championship and he couldn't have done it without the help of his teammates. The four Bruin goals were scored by two players as center Patrice Bergeron and left wing Brad Marchand each scored a pair of their own. 

    Bergeron got the scoring started at the 14:37 mark of the first period giving the Bruins a lead they would never surrender. After Marchand scored his goal in the second period, Bergeron would record his second, coming shorthanded. In the third, Marchand would score his second on an empty net putting the game and champagne on ice.

    Twenty-two-year veteran Mark Recchi hinted at retirement throughout the postseason and officially announced his departure from the game after winning his third Stanley Cup with his third different team. Recchi, now forty-three, played for seven different teams during his career and in the his final game delivered. The left wing contributed an assist on the second goal of the game while going out a champion.

    So much for Daniel Sedin's Game 7 guarantee.

    The Canucks offense really never showed up in the series thanks in large part to the great defense and goaltending of the Bruins. The Canucks outshot the Bruins 37 to 21 in their Game 7 loss, but were unable to solve Thomas's craft in net. Vancouver found the back of the net only eight times in the series putting a lot of pressure on goaltender Roberto Luongo.

It could be a long road back for
 the Canucks and their goaltender.

Luongo, who had been almost unbeatable at home this postseason allowed three goals in this one after only allowing two the first three homes games of the series. The season ends in disappointment for the Canucks after winning the President's Trophy during the regular season.

Vancouver won the first two games of the series, but would go onto lose the next four of five games along with the series. Boston became only the tenth team in NHL history to force a Game 7 after facing an 2-0 deficit to open the series and the fourth to win the Cup.

    Cars were lit on fire much like their goaltender this series in the streets of Vancouver following the loss as Canadians still await their first Stanley Cup since 1993.

    In one of the most heavily penalized postseason series' in the last twenty-five years there were only three in Game 7 with two of them coming late in the third period.

    Since 2001 the New England area has had a plethora of teams win championships, winning six times in the four major sports. The New England Patriots kicked off the decade with three Super Bowl rings in '01, '03, and '04. The Boston Red Sox ended their 86-year curse with a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series and added another in 2007, that time at the expense of the Colorado Rockies. The most successful team in the history of Boston sports, the Boston Celtics captured their NBA record seventeenth championship in 2008.

    Now the B's can add a seventh and start the decade off the right way, finally joining the City of Champions.