Bergeron no stranger to Game 7
BOSTON — Patrice Bergeron has not played a full season’s worth of Game 7s in his 18-year career with the Bruins. It only seems that way.
Going into Saturday’s Game 7 against the Carolina Hurricanes, Bergeron has played in 12 previous ones, going 6-6 thus far. He has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. He scored two goals in the Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup-winning Game 7 in Vancouver (the last of three Game 7 wins in that magical run) and his overtime goal against Toronto in 2013 — eliciting former radio playby-play man Dave Goucher’s call of “Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron!” — is arguably second only to Bobby Orr’s Cup-clinching flying goal in 1970 in Bruins mythology.
Bergeron also was on the losing end of the B’s soul-crushing collapse against the Flyers in 2010, when they had a 3-0 series lead and a 3-0 lead in Game 7. He’s suffered overtime losses at home to Carolina (2009) and Washington (2012). And, of course, there was the most recent Game 7, the Garden loss to St. Louis in 2019 in the Finals.
So he’s seen a thing or two, Bergeron has. And the thing he has learned the most about these do-or-die games — the ones that have the normal folks at home gnawing on throw pillows with their hearts beating out of their chests with the anxiety they can induce — is just embrace it
“You’ve got to enjoy it. That’s why you play the game,” said Bergeron on Friday before the B’s chartered to Raleigh, N.C. “That’s the biggest thing about it. Make sure you relish the moment and make the most of it. Obviously the adrenaline and energy is always increased. But that said, it’s still the game of hockey.”
Bergeron’s first Game 7 was in his rookie season in 2004, when the B’s had a 3-1 series lead only to lose to Montreal 2-0 at home in the last game. It was then that Bergeron began storing his wisdom for moments like this.
“When you’re younger, you think you’re going to have many cracks at it. And that’s something that even (former B’s coach and current Penguins coach) Mike Sullivan, back in the day, told me. ‘It goes fast,’ ” said Bergeron.