This one they blamed themselves for.
"I don't think, to be honest, we played as well as we could," Bruins forward Gregory Campbell said. "For whatever reason, I don't think I could put my finger on it, but it's definitely not because of the [Vancouver] crowd. It's because we are not working hard enough to get those chances."
The Rogers Arena crowd definitely didn't make things easy on the Bruins, who dropped their fifth straight road game and third straight game here in Vancouver.
After pulling even in the series with two dominating wins in Boston, the Bruins couldn't carry that momentum into their return to Vancouver on Friday. Now they face elimination back in Boston in Game 6 on Monday, and if they win that, they'll still have to finally find a way to win in Rogers Arena in Game 7 to end their 39-year Cup drought.
"We lost the game," Campbell said. "We're disappointed in ourselves. It was an opportunity lost. But there's no time to hang our heads. There's two games left possibly, hopefully for us, so there's no point in worrying about this one now."
The only goal of the game came off a fortunate bounce off the end boards. Kevin Bieksa sent a shot in from the right point that went wide of the net, but the puck came out on the other side of the cage and Maxim Lapierre banged it home from along the goal line to the left of the net. It was a tough way to put the only blemish on another outstanding effort by Tim Thomas, but the Bruins couldn't begrudge the Canucks the lucky bounce.
"You make your own breaks," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "I think tonight, as a whole, they were the better team. We have to acknowledge that, because if we don't, we're not going to be a better team next game."
The Bruins were clearly the better team in the previous two games. They scored 12 goals on Roberto Luongo in the two games in Boston, but couldn't get a single shot past him on Friday. They outshot the Canucks 31-25 in the game, but quality chances were few and far between and the Bruins were kicking themselves for making life more miserable for Luongo, who appeared primed to be exploited again after his shaky outings at TD Garden.
"I think that's a telling tale of not having enough traffic, not being gritty enough around the net and not being desperate enough around the net," Campbell said. "You have to give him credit. He played well. He bounced back. But on our end of it, we have to look that if we're going to get 35, 30-whatever shots, if we're going to get that many shots on him we have to make it harder on him."
The Canucks certainly made things hard on the Bruins, taking the physical game to Boston the way the Bruins set the tone with their aggressive play at the Garden. The Canucks had a 47-27 edge in hits, with all but two Vancouver skaters recording at least one and Alexander Edler piling up a game-high 10 hits.
Beyond the pressure put on the Bruins defense in deep with an aggressive forecheck, Boston also had trouble generating any speed through the neutral zone as Vancouver effectively bottled up Boston's transition game.
"I think the difference was getting pucks deep," Bruins defenseman Dennis Seidenberg said. "In Boston we drove hard through the neutral zone and were making the D's turn and retrieve pucks and forechecked them hard. Here, we tried to do the same but way too many times we turned the puck over. That just leads to too many counterattacks for them and too much speed for them."
The Bruins acknowledged that Vancouver made some changes to tighten up that aspect of their game, but again felt the onus was on themselves for not handling that changes better and finding a way to battle through them.
"They made a few adjustments," Campbell said. "They tried to tighten up in the neutral zone and give us less room. I don't think it's something we couldn't make adjustments to. We were prepared for that going into the game. The responsibility is on our players, our forwards to make those adjustments and we didn't quite do as well as we wanted to."
The Bruins know they can't afford to come up short that way again, as their margin for error is now gone facing a 3-2 series deficit. They need to find a way to regain their form once again back in Boston, then somehow solve the mystery of how to win in Rogers Arena.
"Obviously they feed off the crowd," Campbell said of the Canucks. "There's a lot of energy in this arena. That's no excuse though. We've been a good road team all year. If we're going to have a chance to win it, we're going to have to win one in this building. Tonight wasn't our night."
