In the end, it ended in pain

“Words can’t describe how we’re feeling right now,” said Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, trying to stand up straight. “you work so hard to get to this point and give yourself a chance to get the Cup, and you feel like you’re right there and you have a chance to force Game 7, and … it hurts. It hurts to see them hoisting the Cup.”

“This city has been through a lot, and we would have loved to give them a Game 7, and a chance to win it,” Seidenberg said.

This game, boy. This game breaks hearts and fills them, breaks bodies and makes them go. Bergeron said he was playing with a broken rib, torn rib cartilage and muscle, and a shoulder he separated in the final game. Chicago’s Marian Hossa was playing with a back problem so severe he could not feel his right foot, and was skating on one leg. Bergeron hit Hossa, battled with him, early in the game. Others were hurt, in ways we don’t know, may never know, from Zdeno Chara on down.

So many variables, so many factors, so many bounces, and it produced a series where all but one game was decided by one goal, and the other one featured an empty-netter. It was so close. It was so close to going the distance, to giving this breathless deformed frenzy of a season one more game after wasting so many in conference rooms and on sidewalks. But close isn’t done. It’s hockey.

And so, the end. The Blackhawks are a magnificent team, with so much skill and so much heart to match, and they deserve to be champions. And the Bruins are left to ponder how this game can fill your heart and break it, just like that. In the first round, after that Game 7 win, Boychuk said, “That’s one thing you’re going to remember probably for the rest of your life.” After this loss, he said, “Forever. I mean, you are going to remember forever. you remember winning it, but I think you remember losing it a little bit more.”