Bruins Have a Lead, but Not Peace of Mind

Many hockey fans would be pleased if their team had taken a two-games-to-none lead in a playoff series, especially if those victories came on the road. But not Boston Bruins fans, judging from the radio call-in shows nhl jerseys Tuesday morning, only hours after the Bruins had won Game 2 of their second-round series, 3-2, in overtime.

There was a distinct undercurrent of trepidation with Game 3 to be played here Wednesday, and it is easy to understand. Recent history, it seems, weighs heavily on the Bruins. Last spring they took a three-game lead over the Flyers but lost the series, a collapse that included blowing a 3-0 lead in Game 7 at home. Only three teams have ever lost a series after winning the first three games.

“It’s only natural for people to be pessimistic a little bit,” said Mark Recchi, the 43-year-old Bruins forward who has seen a lot in 15 postseasons since 1991. “We know what’s at stake here. We believe in each other. We’re not worried about what people say.”

Even Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette senses the burden of history bearing down on the Bruins.

“It relieves us of the pressure, I believe, a St. Louis Rams little bit to just go in and play a game in Boston,” he said after Monday’s loss. “And while it relieves us of the pressure, it certainly mounts onto them to be successful now that they have a 2-0 lead.”

Surely Laviolette’s claim seems incredible, since it sounds almost as if he preferred that the Flyers had lost the first two games.

So what could Boston fans possibly be uneasy about after David Krejci scored 14 minutes into the extra period, boosting the Bruins’ overtime record this spring to 4-0, and capping a trip to Philadelphia that started with a 7-3 victory Saturday?

For one thing, they are worried that it took tremendous goaltending by the Vezina Trophy favorite Tim Thomas to hold off the Flyers on Monday. He stopped 52 of 54 shots, including the last 46 in a row.

The Bruins took only 41 shots and were outshot by 32-12 over the last 34 minutes.

“It’s almost unfair that we have Customized NFL jerseys Timmy back there for us,” forward Brad Marchand said. “They could have dominated that game, and they did for the most part, but he just made some unbelievable saves.”

There is also trepidation in Boston over the ineffectiveness of the Bruins’ power play, which is 0 for 29 in the postseason. When the Bruins beat the Canadiens in overtime in Game 7 in the opening round, they became the first team to win a best-of-seven series without scoring a power-play goal. It was the 560th best-of-seven series in N.H.L. history.

“Oh yes, we’ve talked about that quite a bit,” Bruins Coach Claude Julien said Tuesday, clearly tired of having to address questions about his team’s futility with a manpower advantage.

When pressed, he was hardly more forthcoming.

“We had some chances, but we didn’t bury them,” he said of the Bruins’ two power plays and five power-play shots Monday. “Although we didn’t score, I thought our power play was better. And if it keeps getting better, we’ll get results real soon.”

Mike Milbury, the former Bruins defenseman Green Bay Packers Jerseys and head coach and now a television commentator, was not so optimistic. In a radio interview he suggested “blowing up” the power play and parking Boston’s 6-foot-9 defenseman Zdeno Chara in front of the Flyers’ net to create screens.

Julien insisted that if the Bruins stayed focused on the game at hand, they would be O.K..

“If we play well, we’ll be up another game,” he said, without mentioning the 2010 debacle.

But the Flyers, at their practice rink in Voorhees, N.J., were certainly mentioning it, transcripts provided by the team showed.

“You can say they’re the same, I guess,” Claude Giroux said, comparing this series with last year’s. “We’re in the same position.”

Mike Richards, the Flyers’ captain, said: “Boston obviously has had us in this situation before. For us, it’s something that I think we can’t get discouraged by.”

Laviolette acknowledged that the Flyers might be pressing their luck to think they can rally from a 2-0 deficit a year after coming all the way back against the same team. Still, he said, “we’re going to go into Boston and have some fun — we just put our comfortable slippers on.”

He added: “That’s technically 0-5. I’m not sure that any team in the history of sports has ever come back from 0-5.”

Back in Boston, Recchi said the Bruins were hermes birkin blocking out the chatter about the prospect of failure with success so close.

“There’s no pressure,” he said. “We get in our bubble and worry only about what we have to do. We’re not worried about the past.”