Bruins Eager to Take Care of ‘Unfinished Business’ Following Playoff Collapse

It’s been the inescapable question all summer long, asked of every player at every media availability throughout the offseason.

How will the Bruins respond to last year’s historic playoff collapse against Philadelphia?

Can they put it behind them? Will it serve as motivation for the Bruins to finally get over the hump and make a deep playoff run this season? Or will it weigh too heavily on a group that already appeared to have a fragile psyche at times last season?

The real answer won’t be revealed until next spring at the earliest when the Bruins show how they handle another opportunity to close out a playoff series if they get in that position again. Until then, the questions will linger and the wounds remain open.

The Bruins have said all the right things, with most promising to use the bitter memory of the setback to drive them to new heights this year.
 
"It’s going to light a fire, that’s for sure," said defenseman Johnny Boychuk. "Hopefully next year we take this and use it to our advantage and go further."

"I think there was some unfinished business," added veteran Mark Recchi after re-signing in June. "I’ve never been so disappointed to end the way we did. … But we’re continuing to get better. I think we’ll be a little bit younger and a little bit faster. I think we’ll be a better hockey team."

There’s not much that history can tell us about how teams react to such catastrophes, as there’s only been three other teams in major pro sports to blow a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series. The 1942 Red Wings did it in the Cup finals against Toronto, but obviously took the motivational route as Detroit came back to win the Cup the very next season.

Pittsburgh blew a 3-0 lead in the second round to the Islanders in 1975, and that group of players never fully recovered. They lost in the preliminary round each of the next two years and didn’t make a serious playoff run until winning their first Cup 16 years later in 1991.

"It’s something you have to live with the rest of your life," Hall of Fame defenseman Denis Potvin, a member of the Islanders team that rallied past Pittsburgh that year, told the Boston Globe in May. "Everybody is going to focus on the positive, but everybody knows the team that lost in a series like this. Everybody knows that it was the Pittsburgh Penguins that lost after leading, 3-0. That will never, never go away. Most athletes have learned to deal with the downside of the sport, but this exacerbates it because you’re in the record books for everybody to see forever."

Boston fans were on the opposite side of the most recent rally from a 3-0 deficit, as the Red Sox pulled off their improbable comeback against the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. The Sox went on to win their first title in 86 years and another three years later. The Yankees didn’t make it back to the World Series for five years before winning it all last fall.

Horrific losses can galvanize a team though. Throughout their run to a 16-0 record in the 2007 regular season, the Patriots frequently pointed to the previous year’s second-half collapse against the Colts in the AFC Championship Game as a motivating factor. The Sox likewise overcame their devastating Game 7 loss to the Yankees in the 2003 ALCS with their dramatic comeback just one year later.

"Obviously there is going to be a bitter taste in your mouth for all this summer, but at some point you have to try and get over it," said Bruins forward Milan Lucic. "Who knows how long it is going to take, but hopefully we can take some things out of this and we can learn a real valuable lesson that we can’t take anything for granted at all.

"I think everyone in this room is going to have that bitter taste in their mouth and hopefully everyone uses that to come out hungry and work even harder to push more to start off and have a good start to next season."

Some Bruins, however, would rather just forget last year’s frustrating finish altogether. When asked this summer if that series loss would make him even hungrier this year, Shawn Thornton replied, "I like to think I’m always starving. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I like to think I prepare the same way every year."

Center David Krejci, whose absence in those final four games due to a wrist injury helped turn the tide of the series toward Philadelphia, also has tried to block out the bad memories.

"Yes it was," said Krejci in July when asked if it was tough to put that loss behind him, "and you guys [in the media] keep reminding me of it. I try not to think about it. It happened. I know we had a good chance to make it to the finals, but you know, it happens. I believe that our team in the next few years will have a good chance to win the title. It didn’t happen last year, but maybe it will happen this year. We have the team to do it.

"You learn from your mistakes and what happened, happened,” added Krejci. “You can’t look back. You have to start from zero again and hopefully we’ll learn. And we have a much different team and I believe we’re much better."

The Bruins have made changes, and they may well be a better team with the likes of Nathan Horton and Tyler Seguin added to the mix. Seguin’s arrival, in particular, has been a smoothing balm for the wounds from that series, as the excitement for the prized prospect’s debut this season has certainly eased the agony of that defeat for the fans who flocked to Ristuccia Arena for a glimpse of him at July’s development camp.

Still, there is no escaping the history last year’s team made. From now on, every time a team takes a commanding lead in a playoff series, the Bruins will be on the graphic showing the only teams to squander such an advantage.

"There is no doubt we have to live with this," said Bruins coach Claude Julien. "No matter what we say, we have to live with this. It happened, but at the same time, I am going to tell you, that I have to start preparing for next year and it can’t start soon enough."

NESN.com will answer one Bruins question every day in August.

Sunday, Aug. 29: How will the travel to Europe to start the season affect the club?

Tuesday, Aug. 31: How do the Bruins stack up against the elite teams in the East?