The next in a series of blogs reviewing some of my favourite moments from the just-completed 2010-11 National Hockey League season:
It was one of the most hotly anticipated games of the 2010-11 regular season. As if the Bruins vs. Canadiens rivalry needed anything more to make it exciting, there was more controversy afoot heading into the last regular-season meeting between these classic rivals.
Why After Zdeno Chara's questionable - but, ultimately legal - hit on Canadiens defenseman Max Pacioretty in Montreal, the Canadiens were out for blood. The Montreal police had opened a criminal case against Big Z, there were whispers that the entire roster were queuing up to take a run at the towering defenseman, and there'd been a war of words in newspapers and on radio, leading to a powder keg situation. We'd already seen a wild game between these two teams in Boston in February, the Bruins winning a fight-filled contest 8-6.
Footage of THE HIT, Chara putting Pacioretty into the Bell Centre stanchion, is below:
Yep, an ugly incident, but the league didn't suspend Chara for it, deeming it to be an unfortunate by-product of the rough game that hockey undoubtedly is. As for the Montreal police wanting to charge Chara...well, all I can say is that, based on the laws that govern our society, there'd be an assault - or four - on the ice on every given night. Let's just leave that sort of thing on the ice, and not get the law involved, eh?
The next match-up between the B's and Habs promised to be a big one, and there were few people around the league not excited to see what transpired.
Interestingly, in the lead-up, Boston's Mark Recchi discovered, apparently overnight, that he had become a doctor, and as such felt it pertinent to share his learned medical opinion on Pacioretty's ongoing recovery - like, if the guy had such a serious concussion, as was first suggested, he shouldn't be watching a movie. For the record, this was on the back of Pacioretty tweeting that he was out enjoying a film a few days after injuries that, it was claimed, were potentially career-ending. Recchi insinuated that the Habs had embellished the injury to get the NHL to suspend Chara.
And so came the game, after days of antagonism via the media. We all expected a close, hard-fought contest, perhaps with a lot of Canadiens players trying to extract some measure of revenge on Chara for his misdeeds in Montreal. Instead, it was a Bruins 7-0 shut-out, including a gorgeous 3-on-5 short-handed breakaway goal to Gregory Campbell that ended the rout with 6:25 to go in the third.
The best moment of that shorty? Aside from the goal itself, it was NESN's Jack Edwards coining a new phrase. It was a "skunking" that night in Boston. See for yourself:
After all the talk, the Bruins came out to play hockey, and they played good hockey. They were physical without needing to drop the gloves, and the Canadiens came out flat, when you figure they would've taken to the ice with all the fire and anger they could muster. Instead, they put in their worst performance of the season, and were resoundingly beaten and booed out of Boston, to the delight of delirious Bruins fans, who'd mocked them before and after Canadiens goalie Carey Price had been pulled from the game, and all through the moments where Montreal skaters tried to antagonise Chara and just bounced off his lumbering frame:
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