Bruins 4 – Canucks 0

Once Montreal was eliminated from the playoffs I figured that it was my duty as a Canadian to root for the Canucks. So I watched most of their series (except for the one verses Nashville, two games of that was enough, it was some of the most boring hockey that I have ever watched). So I tried to like them, I really did. There were times when I even convinced myself that I was a fan. I enjoyed watching Kesler’s heroics in some of the early series, Bieksa was, at times, impressive and when I was a kid I owned a Canucks shirt when they had that cool 70’s hockey stick logo. But I just couldn’t warm up to the Sedins and their gaped mouth lack of emotion and I’ve never bought in to the Roberto Luongo hype, even when he was backstopping our gold medal winning national team. So I found myself quietly rooting for the Bruins. At first I thought it was because I just wanted to watch a good series and I especially wanted it to go seven games. But it’s hard to root against a story and a performance like the one Tim Thomas gave us (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a professional athlete smile as much Thomas did throughout the series); or how about a 43 year old Mark Recchi playing beside a 19 year old Tyler Seguin who wasn’t even born when Recchi started his NHL career; or the four foot two inch (or something like that) Brad Marchant playing alongside the eight foot seven inch (or something like that) Zedano Chara…..in any case, you get my drift. The Bruins are a tough, hard working, resilient team. They had to win three game sevens and they came back from 0 – 2 in two series including the finals. Congrats Bruins…you deserve it.