CHICAGO --The Flyers haven't claimed the Stanley Cup since 1975, and the primary reason, I'll assume we'd all agree, is that they've spent the better part of the four-plus ensuing decades prioritizing thuggery over speed, skill and smarts.
Is it possible, I can't help but wonder, that the current Blues have a little too much Flyers in them?
Yeah, I know, this feature's supposed to be about strategy. But once the tournament's wound down to two teams, and now just a single Game 7 after the Bruins' 5-1 victory Sunday night in St. Louis, the real separators tend to be so much simpler. Because all it takes to negate all other factors is one snap, one moment of sheer stupidity.
Behold such a snap and, yeah, such stupidity:
That, my friends, is the dumbest damned thing anyone's done in the entire playoffs.
That's Brayden Schenn, skating several strides into the Bruins' Joakim Nordstrom, staring straight into the 2 and the 0 on the back of Nordstrom's sweater, then sent right off by the refs with what ridiculously was ruled only a minor for boarding.
That's also the first period of a scoreless Game 6 of the Final, with the home team having whipped up all three of the high-danger scoring chances through the first few minutes, with the home team having the hungriest imaginable hockey city at its back and, oh, yeah, with a chance to pass around the franchise's first Cup by evening's end.
On the ensuing power play, which became a five-on-three after a flipped puck into the crowd, Brad Marchand scored, and the visitors never let go of the momentum therein:
Schenn, in case anyone's forgotten, spent his first six full NHL seasons in Philadelphia.
Craig Berube, the Blues' coach, was, of course, one of those actual thugs, spent seven of his seasons and a big bite of his 3,149 career penalty minutes in Philadelphia.
A stretch on my part?
Maybe, but hear me out.
Through the first three rounds, the Blues were the least-penalized team in the NHL, averaging 2.78 per game. But once the Final began, they took five each in Games 1 and 2, four more in Game 3, three each in Games 4 and 5, then four more Sunday night. And I could easily make a case that, with the minors in Game 1 having been basically all that prevented the Blues from taking that one, now combined with Schenn's rockheadedness, they'd already be parading beneath the Arch.
As it is, the Bruins' power play is now 7 for 21 in the series and a near-historic 33.8 percent for the playoffs overall.
Don't misunderstand, please. The Blues, as a whole, aren't thugs. Schenn isn't one, either, even though he's put his on-ice status in peril multiple times in this series alone, not least of which was this head-hunting miss on David Pastrnak in Game 3:
My point here is this: Everything about their resurrection from being the NHL's worst team in early January has been built, to one degree or another, on the coaching change that put Berube in charge. The players believed in him, bought into his systems, and performed with unprecedented fire. Berube's got a ton of that. He's as no-nonsense now as in his playing day, and he expects the same from all 20 players dressing on a given night.
But whether it's the Bruins being annoying -- and I can tell you they annoyed the Penguins more than any opponent all of this past season -- or being slightly faster and forcing the Blues into excessive stick fouls, the penalties have been the killer.
Bruce Cassidy, Boston's coach, appeared to slyly acknowledge as much after Game 6, telling reporters, "We'll take hits, but we're not going to chase them. We took advantage of one of theirs, then we played good, smart hockey."
It isn't often that an undisciplined team, to any degree, takes it all.
Not since 1975, right?
