Chicago Blackhawks win Stanley Cup.
Bickell, Keith find the net just 17 seconds apart to finish Bruins
BOSTON — If it was going to end it was going to be hard, and it was going to be earned.
The Stanley Cup was in the building, and the game was tied, and in a series that has been a mass of Gordian knots, Game 6 was another one.
It’s different when the Cup’s in the building.
That’s when you know things matter.
But how it ended was utterly incredible.
Boston got here with two goals in 1:22 to escape Toronto in Game 7 in the first round; in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final the Chicago Blackhawks scored twice in 17 seconds to wrestle the Cup away from them.
First it was Bryan Bickell from Jonathan Toews, with the net empty and 1:16 to go; it was tied, and another overtime loomed.
And then 17 seconds later, Duncan Keith took a shot from the point, Michael Frolik deflected it, and it bounced off the post to Dave Bolland, who popped it in, and chaos reigned.
It was as unbelievable as that Game 7 win, and it was the end. It was as stunning as hockey could get. Chicago won the Stanley Cup with a 3-2 win in Game 6, and it was hard to comprehend. Boston had taken a 2-1 lead with 7:49 to go on a Milan Lucic goal, and they were holding on, until they weren’t. Boston was probably envisioning a Game 7, and suddenly they were shaking hands. Patrick Kane won the Conn Smythe.
Boston had started out like a team that wanted to both endure and inflict more pain before the summer began. Bruins centre Patrice Bergeron looked limited in warm-ups after his in-game trip to the hospital during Game 4 — a kidney injury, maybe a bruise, was the most informed of all the guesses — but he took faceoffs, skated well enough, and threw his weight around.
And Boston was better.
Frolik had one excellent chance, but the wave was going the other way, and the dam broke when Chris Kelly won a faceoff, the Bruins won some puck battles, Daniel Paille sent a slap pass in that flipped and was gloved by Tyler Seguin, whose drop pass across the net to Kelly allowed him to score the goal he couldn’t quite finish in Game 4 for a 1-0 lead.
But like Chicago’s dominant first period in Game 2, the Bruins only had the one goal to show for it. Boston attempted 32 shots in the first period to eight for Chicago, and outshot the Blackhawks 12-6 on the ones that reached a goaltender, and were up 1-0 on the scoreboard.
It could have been worse; it just wasn’t. And then Zdeno Chara tried to get to a loose puck too late, and Toews jumped on it and beat Tuukka Rask clean, which for the Finn is a rare species. Toews had one goal in his first 19 playoff games this year; he now has two in three. Chara had, at that point, been on the ice for nine of Chicago’s previous 10 goals, and it was the first time you could really say was his fault. Just 4:24 into the second, and we were all tied.
So, the familiar wait for the coin to land one side up, or the other, except there were many coins.
There was more attrition, too — Jaromir Jagr left midway through the first, returned for the second, left again, came back for the third, hunched over. Boston had to jumble its lines. For Chicago, Andrew Shaw played through a scary injury when a Shawn Thornton shot rode up his stick and struck Shaw in the face — he needed stitches in his cheek and next to his eye, and seemed to be unconscious on the ice, at least briefly. But he came back, and played.
And the third period waited, which fit this series perfectly. They brought the Stanley Cup into the building early in the third, and at the end of a midJune steam press of a day in Boston, with thunderstorms rolling through, the ice began to drip and pool.
And in a series that has been so close, in a game where bounces decide future, the puck began to bounce around like it was travelling across the surface of a pockmarked moon.
Still, chances: Paille sliding in front, Rich Peverley on the side, Brent Seabrook in the slot, Chara.
And then, Lucic, with his clever stick and bullish body, and he forced Corey Crawford to mishandle one puck that seemed essential.
But this breathless deformed frenzy of a season could not manage one more game after wasting so many in conference rooms and on sidewalks.
Instead it ended in a way that nobody will ever forget, and that’s probably enough.