Bruins, Canucks: One for the Cup

VANCOUVER - One final game will decide who will lift the Stanley Cup, one game to decide the winner of one of the oddest, most contentious, culturally fascinating and entertaining finals in NHL history.

The Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins touched down in this hockey-crazed city Tuesday afternoon, having taken off in the morning from hockey-crazed Boston. Whatever the outcome of Game 7 at Rogers Arena, most expect tens of thousands of Canucks fans to converge downtown Wednesday night.

"We're going to win Game 7," Vancouver's Daniel Sedin said after the Canucks were trounced in Boston 5-2 in Monday's Game 6.

If Sedin's guarantee comes through, it will mean the series holds to form through seven games. There have been three one-goal Canucks victories in Vancouver, and three Bruins blowouts in Boston. The Canucks would be quite happy with one last single-goal victory at home.

"Everything in the past is in the past," Vancouver center Ryan Kesler said. "If we win tomorrow, we become legends."

But the Bruins have their own mojo going.

"When we're in the garage or driveway playing as a kid and you're fantasizing ... you're saying to yourself, 'Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals,'" said Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, the likely Conn Smythe Trophy winner after giving up only eight Vancouver goals in six games. "You're not saying Game 6, you know? So this is really what every kid dreams about."

Vancouver was stretched to the limit by defending champion Chicago in the first round. The Canucks were here in 1994, when Mark Messier's New York Rangers beat them 3-2 in Game 7 -- and Vancouver hadn't been back to the finals since.

Both teams have played under playoff stress this spring, but no pressure in hockey can match the intensity of a close third period in Game 7 of the finals, when one superb play or a single mistake can change a player's reputation forever. Anybody who fears that scenario didn't show it after Tuesday's workouts at Rogers Arena.

"This is playoff hockey at its finest," Vancouver center Manny Malhotra said. "No one wants to budge on home ice. This entire series has been a full playoff experience, filled with a lot of different types of games."

And nobody exemplifies this series' strange duality better than Roberto Luongo. Vancouver's enigmatic goalie has been outstanding at home, giving up only two goals in three games while posting two 1-0 shutouts, but the Canucks' $10 million man was horrific in Boston, giving up 15 goals in slightly more than four periods while getting pulled twice, including from Game 6.

Since the NHL's first wave of expansion in 1968, no team has won the Stanley Cup while being outscored in the postseason.

"We're going to put what happened [in Game 6] behind us as soon as possible, and get ready for obviously what is going to be a dream, playing in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals," Luongo said Monday. "I've been in those situations before. I know how to handle it. I'll be ready for it."

Material from the New York Times and Associated Press was used in this report.

Game 7s in the Stanley Cup Finals since 2000:

2001: Colorado (H) defeated New Jersey 3-1

2003: New Jersey (H) defeated Anaheim 3-0

2006: Carolina (H) defeated Edmonton 3-1