After being booed in the Rogers Arena on Wednesday night by fans watching game four of the Boston-Vancouver series on the Jumbotron, Roberto Luongo turned the crowd around 180 degrees as he was exalted in every way after a stellar 1-0 shutout over the Bruins to give Vancouver a 3-2 series lead.
Luongo stopped all 31 Boston shots including five during Boston's four first period power plays. Kudos also need to go to Tim Thomas who only allowed the one goal on 25 Vancouver shots.
The only goal came 4:35 into the third period when Kevin Bieksa sent a pass from the blue line behind the net to bounce off the board to a waiting Max Lapierre who shot the puck at Thomas who could not stop it from going into the net.
Tanner glass had a shot at an open side of the net earlier in the game and was so excited that he could not hold on to the puck. That was the Canucks best scoring chance before the game winner.
Vancouver went into the game with a plan to play hard physical hockey and out-hit Boston 47-27 including 10 hits by Alexander Edler.
Christopher Tanev made his finals debut replacing Keith Ballard and played well being paired with Andrew Alberts.
The series has been a tale of two cities as Vancouver has won 1-0, 3-2, and 1-0 at home while Boston blew out the Canucks 8-1 and 4-0 at home in games three and four.
In spite of the Canucks 3-2 lead, Tim Thomas remains the clear leader for the Conn Smythe trophy. He has only given up six goals in five games and half of those came in game two.
The teams will have two days off before Monday's game six in Boston when the Stanley Cup will be in the building for the first time this year. Coverage starts on NBC at 7 p.m. central.
Here are tonight's highlights from NHL.com...
More Later...
Buddy Oakes for PredsOntheGlass
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