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What Vancouver’s Game 2 overtime win over Boston told us

Manny Maholtra

Vancouver Canucks left wing Alex Burrows scores the winning goal during the first overtime period as Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara and Bruins goalie Tim Thomas look on during Game 2 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals on Saturday, June 4, 2011, in Vancouver, British Columbia. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)

AP

After a stunning 3-2 overtime win by Vancouver in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals to take a 2-0 series lead, we learned a bit more about what makes both the Canucks and Bruins tick. The Bruins played a solid Game 2 but still failed to come out on top. There’s a few things we can take away from Game 2 though and there’s some silver linings for Boston but most of the positives belong to Vancouver.

Vancouver proved that they don’t quit at all. They haven’t quit all playoffs long and tonight they battled back after being down 2-1 after two periods. They got the big play they needed out of their top line with the Sedin twins and Alex Burrows. Burrows had two goals and an assist while Daniel Sedin had a goal and an assist. Somehow Henrik Sedin ends up out of the loop points-wise. The key on Burrows’ game-winning goal though falls on the play of three different Bruins players: Andrew Ference, Zdeno Chara, and Tim Thomas.

It starts with the faceoff that the Bruins win and Ference looks to send up the boards. The puck gets cut off by Alexander Edler and Daniel Sedin. Sedin dishes it off to Alex Burrows and Burrows had the step on Chara. Chara isn’t one of the fastest skaters in the league and relies on his size and reach to make life tough on scorers. In this case, Burrows was already past Chara enough so that he had to overcome his reach. Burrows draws in closer on Thomas, who closed out the third period playing very aggressive challenging pucks and players far from his net, faking a shot to get Thomas down and committed so he can go behind the net to wraparound and score.

While the Bruins won’t want Thomas to change his style of game, it was clear that the Canucks crashing and buzzing of his net was making him cranky. Seeing a guy like Burrows come barreling down on him got Thomas thinking he had to cut him off with Burrows already past Chara. Thomas went for the poke check and missed. The end result sees the Bruins heading home down 2-0 in the series.

Thomas’ brand of goalie rage was something that became evident late in the game and while we love watching him play aggressively and not take anyone else’s crap, seeing him get faked out the way he did in overtime makes some wish he’d rein it in a little bit more often. Nonsense. He’s gotten this far by doing things his way and he relies heavily on the play of the defense in front of him. The winning goal showed that when breakdowns happen all over the ice, he feels the need to try and stop it himself. It didn’t pay off this time, but other times already in this series it’s worked. In short: Thomas is fine, let him be. Dominik Hasek used to play a crazy, aggressive brand of hockey too and he did all right.

If you want a silver lining for the Bruins after what turns out to be two gut-punch losses in the finals (losing with 18 seconds left in the third period in Game 1, and now tonight’s overtime loss) it’s that they’re headed home for Game 3 on Monday. With the fans being ready to rage and with the way they’ve fueled the Bruins through the playoffs, the atmosphere at TD Garden will be out of this world and the exact kind of thing the Bruins need to feed off of. If the Bruins can protect home ice, they’re in fine shape. If they can’t... Then things might get really sad, really fast in Boston.