I know that we should live in the moment and appreciate the time we have right now, but would anyone object if we just skipped straight ahead to Round 2 in the Atlantic?
(Scans audience.)
Cool, no objections. Bruins and Lightning, get back out there. Best of seven, let’s do this.
Specifically, let’s do Saturday night, but for seven games in a row. Because that may have been the game of the year
(Stefon voice.) The game had everything. The first and second place teams in the overall standings. Two shorthanded goals on the same powerplay. Bad blood. A flying stick. A Horn of Doom. A brawl breaking out after the Horn of Doom. Jack Edwards being weird. Last year’s MVP. Maybe this year’s MVP.
And ultimately, it had a Lightning road win, which snapped a four-game Bruins win streak and avenged a Boston win in Tampa earlier in the week. The whole game was a trip, so much so that the Sportsnet highlight package apparently decided to go full Tarantino and dispense with chronological order. Look, far be it from me to question somebody else’s artistic vision. The whole thing was a ton of fun.
What the game didn’t have is much impact on the standings; barring a collapse, the Bruins are still going to finish first. The Lightning have the same pure win-loss record (both teams have won 43 and lost 26), but this is the NHL so that’s not how we do things. The Bruins hold a six-point lead, which should be safe.
