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Bruins hope to cut down their mistakes, improve their neutral zone play in Game 3

Boston Bruins v Vancouver Canucks - Game Two

during Game Two of the 2011 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Arena on June 4, 2011 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Bruce Bennett

It’s natural to blame the goalie and praise the goal-scorer when a game-breaking tally takes place. That was the case when Vancouver Canucks forward Alex Burrows foiled two Boston Bruins stalwarts (Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas) on his way to that thrilling overtime game-winner.

Thomas definitely deserved blame for being overly aggressive on that play while many complained that Chara simply wasn’t aggressive enough. While people tend to focus on the end results, the genesis of these moments keep coaches like Claude Julien up at night.

It’s easy to throw Chara and Thomas under the bus, and again, they do shoulder some of the blame as Boston’s normally effective last line of defense. Still, the Bruins spoke of the “little things” that allowed that play to happen in the first place when they discussed their areas of improvement going into Game 3. Simply put, they cannot afford to make the same mistakes, with neutral zone gaffes often being the culprits considering Vancouver’s lightning-fast transition game.

Had Mark Recchi been able to corral Andrew Ference’s errant pass along the right wall at the start of overtime in Game 2 -- or at least chip it into the Vancouver end -- Sami Salo wouldn’t have been able to open up the defense with a quick outlet to Alexandre Burrows at the Boston blue line.

“It was a turnover in the neutral zone,” Patrice Bergeron said Saturday night. “I’m not sure how he got alone, but obviously he made the good fake to fake that shot and come around [Tim Thomas], but we got caught. We won the draw but we have to make sure we do a better job in the neutral zone.”

Added Ference: “We’re going for a quick transition. I think it was Recchi on my side, and instead of getting the right angle on his stick, I think their D-man was playing it tight and kind of one-touched it right back up the ice.”


Feel free to pick apart that goal in the video below, if you feel like it.

If you ask some Bruins players, Game 1 ended in much the same way as Game 2: a transitional blunder bit Boston hard in the game’s waning seconds. This time around, it was defenseman Johnny Boychuk’s failure to get the puck to the neutral zone that made bad things happen. Yet once again, Corey Masisak points out that the situation could have been avoided if a better play was made earlier in the final minute.

The last-minute winner in each of the games so far has come when Boston was unable to put the puck behind the Canucks’ defensemen.

Had the puck gone below the Vancouver goal line in the final 30 seconds of Game 1, the Vancouver defensemen would not have been able to send a long diagonal pass to Ryan Kesler at the far blue line that started the ensuing scramble that led to Raffi Torres’ goal with 18.5 seconds left.


Watch that last-minute Torres goal in the video below.

Obviously, the Bruins want to make crisper and wiser decisions. Of course, we would venture to guess that every defensive group that ever lost a game feels the same way. Little mistakes (and unlucky bounces) tend to pile up; Boston just needs to limit them as much as possible. For two straight games, they made errors at the worst possible times. We’ll see if they can correct some of their problems in Game 3, whether the mistakes come in their zone, Vancouver’s end or the neutral zone.