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Saturday, April 7, 2012

Bruins End Regular Season with a 4-3 Shootout Bang: Fan's Take - Yahoo! Sports

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Bruins End Regular Season with a 4-3 Shootout Bang: Fan's Take - Yahoo! Sports
Apr 8th 2012, 00:56

By Emma Harger, Yahoo! Contributor Network

The Boston Bruins ended their sometimes triumphant, sometimes tragic season as defending Stanley Cup champions with a come-from-behind 4-3 shootout victory over fellow Northeast Division team the Buffalo Sabres. Perhaps they didn't want to say goodbye to the regular season just yet and wanted to give their fans some extra hockey to enjoy.

The Sabres have been an interesting divisional foil this season. There was a time when the Bruins easily beat the Buffalo squad and a rematch soon after that ended in a win as well. There was one game Bruins fans would rather forget. There was one time where the Bruins finally won two games in a row after a long inconsistent patch thanks to the Sabres. In shootouts, the Bruins have won (the end-of-November rematch) and lost. Then, of course, there was the controversy surrounding Milan Lucic and Ryan Miller. But beyond all of that, this game was played just for pride on both sides.

For home team fans, the swellings of pride began before Rene Rancourt came out to sing the anthem for one last time in the regular season. There were four awards to give out to five recipients, after all.

Zdeno Chara won the Eddie Shore Award, given to the player who exemplifies good hustle and determination. With Chara's +33 rating, career-high 52 points and team-leading time on ice, this seems like the perfect choice to me, especially because the award is named for a fellow defenseman.

Brad Marchand got one award for each hand, both the Elizabeth Dufresne Trophy and John Bucyk Award. The Dufresne Trophy is for the player who puts together outstanding performances inside TD Garden and the Bucyk Award goes to the one who has great charitable presence in the community. At home this season, Marchand has scored 17 goals (a team high) and 30 points total. He also launched Brad's Brigade this year, a program that allows underprivileged and hospitalized children to come to games and meet him, and was in other charity events too. See? He's not just a little ball of hate!

Finally, the three stars of the year are, in 1-2-3 order, Tim Thomas, Patrice Bergeron and Lucic. These are pretty good selections, too: Thomas put together a 35-19-1 season with five shutouts, his fourth season as a Bruin with at least 30 wins. Counting this game's production, Bergeron has a +36 rating, 64 points and is at this point practically a lock for the Selke Trophy. Lucic may not have the plus-minus rating of Bergeron, but he excels in another way: he has more than 20 goals to his name—along with more than 100 penalty minutes and more than 200 hits. Hey, Bruins fans know how to appreciate their tough guys.

But with the pre-game celebrations over, the Bruins settled in—to another lackluster first period. There was no scoring from either side and the only big event was when Shawn Thornton took on Robyn Regehr. Jack Edwards found himself so unimpressed by the low-impact play that he urged the Bruins to watch a Jodie Foster movie during intermission. I'm not kidding.

Tyler Seguin opened the scoring with his 28th goal of the season, helped by Bergeron's 40th assist. But then Buffalo perhaps remembered to play for its own pride and stampeded back with three unanswered goals in the second and third periods. Brad Boyes scored twice and Jason Pominville put away his 30th of the season.

A third-period surge by the home team, spurred on by Seguin's 29th goal (on the power play, helped by Bergeron and Rich Peverley) and Marchand's 28th (assisted by Bergeron), knotted the game back up to force overtime and a shootout.

Interestingly, the Bruins' regular season began with a Marchand goal and the last Bruins goal scored in regulation during this game came from him as well. In the end, though, Seguin won the team's goal-scoring title and became the youngest Bruin to do so since Bergeron was 20 back in 2005-06.

So, one last Bruins shootout this season, one more chance for Thomas to shine in extra time. Shine he did: he stopped Tyler Ennis, Boyes and Pominville, while at the other end Jhonas Enroth denied David Krejci and Seguin but was beaten by Bergeron. In the end, that's all it took.

Congratulations, Bruins. It remains to be told what team you will face next and when you will face them, but we fans can't wait to see what will happen in the postseason.

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

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