The Sedin brothers get all the attention, but Alex Burrows has been stepping up all season long.
VANCOUVER -- Henrik Sedin looks right at a reporter he knows has been here every step of the playoffs, smiles, and says, "I don't know how many games you've been watching."
The question was, how often does it unfold like in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final, where the best player on the Sedin line isn't named Sedin at all?
The answer? More often than we give Alex Burrows credit for.
"He's a big part of our line, and on a lot of nights he's the one making plays," Henrik said. "A lot of years here, everyone thought we needed a big grinder. That's not the guy we want to play with. We want a guy who can make plays, and he's that guy."
This was Burrows' night in Vancouver, as the Canucks put a tight 2-0 grip on this Stanley Cup final with a 3-2 overtime win. Burrows was the best player on the ice, sniping a quick, close-in shot to make it 1-0 in the first period, making a lovely feed to Daniel Sedin for the game-tying goal in the third, and then busting down the left side to score on a wrap-around just 11 seconds into overtime.
If you think the Bruins are going to come back and win this series, go ahead and think that way. We'll simply reference red-haired Hank, whose quote you may recall: "I don't know how many games you've been watching."
Burrows had done his homework. The kind of pre-scouting that guys like him -- who have scratched and clawed for every inch of his hockey life over the years -- have to do.
He knew that if he went wide on Boston goalie Tim Thomas, that Thomas would challenge him. So the plan was to fake a shot, and slide the puck five-hole as Thomas tried to recover.
"I wanted to walk around and shoot it, but … I lost it," Burrows said. "Once the puck went behind the net, I knew he was out of the net. If I was able to wrap it quick, I had a chance. Not even sure how it went in. Probably the tip of my blade."
The snapshot of big Zdeno Chara draped over Burrows' back as he deftly circled the net and wrapped the puck home from a steep, steep angle, which serves as a metaphor for the Cup final thus far.
When Vancouver slows its game down a notch, Boston can play with them. But when the Canucks need a goal and tap the gas, the Bruins find themselves chasing.
In the third period, the Sedin twins woke up to join Burrows, who had been pulling them along through the opening 40 minutes. It's a statement no one ever thought they would read, when Burrows was kicking around the East Coast Hockey League, toiling for clubs like the Greenville Grrrowl and the Columbia Inferno, until 2004.
After two years in the East Coast League, Burrows said, "I told myself, at Christmas if I was still going to be in the East Coast League I was going to pack it in and go back to school. Making $425 bucks (a week) in the East Coast, you don't really save a lot of money. I was 23, 24 years old… You want to start thinking about the future."
But the Manitoba Moose picked him up, and the rest is history. Kind of like the Bruins chances, some would say.
"He won us the game tonight," Ryan Kesler said of his old friend Burrows. "He doesn't get the recognition, but he works extremely hard on that line. He battles hard, and he creates space for those guys. To see him get rewarded tonight, it's nice."
Of course, Bostonians were irate as this one unfolded, sour that Burrows had not been suspended for biting the finger of Patrice Bergeron in Game 1. This was exactly what fill-in discipline czar Mike Murphy didn't need -- a three-point night and overtime winner by the guy he let of the hook only hours before.
"The NHL made its decision. You live with it," said Boston defenceman Andrew Ference. "You don't whine about it and feel sorry for yourselves. I mean, he bit Bergy. His finger was bleeding. But if they can't have conclusive evidence..you've got to live with it. Nobody in here is complaining about it."
And no one, at least here in Vancouver, is complaining about the kid who never got drafted, who somehow found an unlikely home on the Sedins' right wing.
"All my life I had to work for everything," said Burrows, quickly rethinking that quote. "People might look at it as hard work, I look at is as fun.
"If you're not working hard, what's the point, really?"
Follow Mark Spector on Twitter.com @SportsnetSpec
