The fans wanted blood. The media expected a circus. All that was missing from Thursday night's game between the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins was Zdeno Chara going on The Sports Hub and putting a price on Matt Cooke's head.
Less than two weeks after Cooke blindsided Marc Savard with a bicep - and it was a bicep, not an elbow or shoulder - to the head during the Penguins' March 7 win over the Bruins in Pittsburgh, the teams met again - this time in Boston, and this time with something to play for other than playoff positioning.
That was the feeling inside the TD Garden at 7 p.m. Thursday night, anyway. A crowd already buzzing with emotion went to full-on inebriation after the 1969-70 Stanley Cup-winning Bruins were introduced as part of the 40th anniversary of Boston's penultimate Cup title. The noise inside the arena was playoff-loud, and when Shawn Thornton dominated Cooke two minutes in - five seconds after Cooke had stepped on the ice for the first time, met by boos - an already sizzling situation turned feverish.
Here was the moment for the Boston Bruins. Here was the opportunity for a team that had played like a shell of its 2008-09 iteration to show that it still had some fight left - pun fully intended. Here was the time for the Black and Gold to turn the season around, to play the gritty, nasty, snarling brand of hockey that made it a contender after so many years of being a pretender.
The bell rang. Thornton answered. Most of his teammates did not, and the Bruins lost the game, lost momentum, and would have lost their playoff spot had they not gotten some help elsewhere in the league.
Earlier in the day, the message from coach Claude Julien was that regardless of the extra-curriculars, the Bruins needed to get two points.
They didn't, and other than Thornton's snarling, nasty twist with Cooke, they didn't get much at all. Thursday's game was a chance for the Bruins to show what they are. Trouble is, it looks like they did.
What they are is not tough enough, not strong enough, not feisty enough. And not talented enough to make up for all the other things they're lacking.
On a night when their Big Bad ancestors came out to receive laurels from the sellout crowd, there wasn't much of that 1970's rough-and-tumble hockey coming from the Bruins. The closest they got to the Big, Bad Bruins was big Zdeno Chara getting into a bad fight, which was a win over Michael Rupp only because the Bruins captain could hold Rupp at arm's length until the Penguin fell down.
And right after that second-period fight, Mark Stuart took a hooking penalty to put the Bruins on the penalty kill, effectively eliminating any momentum, any juice, any emotion they might have drawn from the captain dropping the gloves.
At the end of that period, Alexei Ponikarovsky put the Penguins up 2-0 with a goal scored one second after Steve Begin (kneeing) was released from the box, making it essentially a power-play goal. And as Ponikarovsky's tip-in of a Kris Letang slapper went past Tuukka Rask, it was hard not to notice there were two Penguins nearer to Rask than the nearest Bruin defenseman.
The mental mistakes continued in the third period, in which the Bruins went nearly 11 minutes without taking a shot - a stretch finally ended by a harmless Miroslav Satan bid that drew mock cheers from those in the sellout crowd who stuck around to see it.
With nine minutes left, Chara pinched in to cover a play in the left wing corner, and Milan Lucic, coming off the bench, slotted in on defense at the blue line. When Chara lost possession and turned back toward center ice, Lucic immediately slid forward to retake his normal position on the wing. But Chara didn't have any momentum to get back on defense yet, and with the two Bruins standing feet away from each other on the half boards, the Penguins streaked up ice with the puck for an odd-man rush.
Lucic raced back and ended up clearing the puck from the top of the crease, but he had arrived well after the real danger presented itself - danger that was stifled by Rask.
It wasn't a goal, but it was another sign of an unfocused, undisciplined team that showed little of the emotion most expected out of its first crack at Cooke and the Penguins since the hit on Savard.
"Not just after those two fights, but throughout the game, we did not show enough emotion or play the right way to earn a victory," Thornton said. "We've got to figure out a way to play the way we do on the road when we're at home. I think we're a little too fancy, trying to do a little too much, and passing up on opportunities."
It's not an across-the-roster problem. Thornton and linemates Steve Begin and Daniel Paille were effective throughout Thursday's game, at least once Thornton finished serving the fighting-plus-misconduct that he picked up to spend most of the first period in the box. They weren't just physical, they were physical with purpose. And Chara may not have looked like someone who knows his way around a hockey fight, but his energy was there.
Where those four led, however, few followed.
"I think the fact that we didn't bring the energy needed after that, the spark, it's not the first time that it's happened this year, and it's definitely disappointing," Thonton said. "I don't think we brought the emotion level that was needed for a win, and it showed."
The problems were most glaring on offense, and were diagnosed by Thornton and Begin after the game. With all due respect to them - and after Thursday, most of the respect aimed at this team is addressed to them and Paille - your checking line is not supposed to have the answers for putting the puck in the net.
"We don't shoot the puck enough," Begin said. "We've got to be better with that, and it's got to start now. There's only 12 games left in the season, and we're still battling for a playoff spot. We've got to be better."
The Bruins had more than one goal to reach Thursday night. And all of those one-night missions - getting a piece of Cooke, putting on a better showing in front of the home fans, winning the game - add up to a season-long theme.
Thornton was asked how his fight with Cooke was sparked, since it was in the flow of play and so early in the game.
"I just saw him, asked, and I think he knew what had to be done," Thornton said.
If only the Bruins could figure that last part out for themselves, too.
Trivia Time
Way back in February, we asked you to name the NHL team that would have had all of its Olympians return with medals if the Slovaks had beaten Finland in the bronze medal game. The Slovaks didn't have the answer for the Finns, but Joe O'Leary of Natick and Michael Smith of New York had the answer to the question, which was the Chicago Blackhawks. The Hawks hauled in a total of four medals thanks to Canadians Jonathan Toews, Brent Seabrook and Jonathan Keith and American Patrick Kane. Slovaks Marian Hossa and Tomas Kopecky would have made it a six-pack had Slovakia found a way around the Finns.
This week, let's hearken back to a warmer time for Boston hockey, in honor of the 1970 Cup winners. You know Bobby Orr scored the most famous goal in hockey (sorry, Paul Henderson) to clinch the Cup. You know Derek Sanderson fed him from behind the net. But do you know which St. Louis Blue stuck his stick in Bobby's ankles to help him into the air? E-mail the answer to the address below, with Hockey Trivia in the subject line, and remember to include your hometown.
(Andrew Merritt can be reached at 508-626-4415 or amerritt@cnc.com.)
