BOSTON – It’s pretty obvious the heat has been removed from the Bruins/Canucks rivalry that sparked brightly for a stretch of two or three years.
It all rotated around the contentious 2011 Stanley Cup Final matchup between the two, of course, that featured Alex Burrows biting Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand grabbing the closest available Sedin as a speed bag to practice his punching power and dueling goalies Tim Thomas and Roberto Luongo engaging in a tire-pumping war of words through the media.
It was entertaining hockey. It was visceral, unfiltered dislike and it gave way to an entertaining Cup win for the Bruins after seven dramatic playoff games. That was followed by a few memorable games, including the first regular season matchup that led to a Brad Marchand suspension for clipping Sami Salo, and even the regular season game in 2013-14 where Marchand pretended to hoist and kiss an imaginary Cup as he skated past the Canucks bench in Vancouver.
Now, those days are in the rear view mirror now even if there was the odd Brandon Prust spear to the groin on Marchand at the end of a Boston victory in early December.
“I don’t know, to be honest with you. There are a lot of different faces on both teams. I didn’t sense [the rivalry] the last time these two teams played in Vancouver,” said Claude Julien. “I just sensed both teams were focusing on winning the game, and there was that little incident that happened at the end. Both those are the kinds of incidents that happen in a lot of games. It’s not the end of the world.
“I don’t necessarily feel it, and I think [any rivalry] has faded a bit. But when the two teams had the same players there were a lot of memories there from the last Final when we played each other that carried over into the following seasons.”
But both teams have changed general managers since then, the rosters are radically different from those that clashed five years ago and Boston and Vancouver now stand as hungry teams scraping for the playoffs rather than NHL power teams with lofty Cup aspirations.
Boston Bruins
“It’s different GMs with different teams and a different coach [in Vancouver], so it’s going to be different,” admitted David Krejci. “When we go there it’s a little different. We won the last game [of the series] there. To see that dressing room and the arena brings back some memories. But at home it’s kind of just another game.”
So, it’s safe to say the old hatred between the Bruins and Canucks is a thing of the past. Truth be told, the Bruins aren’t the same kind of brawling team that would get drawn into that anymore anyway.
“One of the first years that I came here we had one of the worst power plays in the league, and now they are No. 1 [on the power play],” said now-Vancouver Canucks defenseman Matt Bartkowski. “That kind of tells the story of where they’ve come from, and what they’ve become. It’s just a little different. Different guys, different team and a different mentality, I guess too. They emphasize skating more, and not so much the old stuff we used to do. It’s just different.”
Undoubtedly it’s different in both Boston and Vancouver these days and that means the old rivalry between the two teams in opposite conferences is fading in the rear view mirror right along with the 2011 Stanley Cup Final memories.