BOSTON – The question had been asked of Jaromir Jagr, but one of the quickest wits in the game sat in his stall, waiting for an answer to come.
“Have you ever played for a defensive team that can skate quite like this (Bruins team)?” came the query, shortly after a 2-0 smothering of the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 3 of this Stanley Cup final.
Jagr ran his hand through his hair. Then he itched his nose. Still, no answer. Then he rubbed his old man beard.
“How to explain,” he asked aloud, in his still-thick Eastern European accent. “The easy answer is, ‘No.’ That’s why I’m having the trouble.
So he explained it from another direction: “I like to make the plays all of the time. Don’t dump it in. Sometimes not make the safe plays — I’m used to making all the plays all of the time,” he said. “Guys here (on Boston), they always makes the safe plays. So they’re always good on the defensive side of the play. Always.”
The scoreboard concealed the Bruins level of dominance in this one. Outside the final two minutes of the game, Boston gave Chicago absolutely nothing, letting the Hawks touch the puck seemingly only when it suited Boston. Almost every Chicago chance in the first 58 minutes came from the perimeter, and was never followed up with another on Tuukka Rask, who appears impenetrable.
It was a defensive effort that left few questions, other than perhaps this one: How on earth had the Toronto Maple Leafs managed to score 18 goals against this Boston team in Round 1?
It was only the second time all season long that the Blackhawks had been shut out. Can Jagr imagine how it feels to play against a team as defensively sound as the Bruins are right now, he was asked?
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” he said. “Look at me. They shut me down every game, so I know how (Chicago) feels.”
Not quite.
In his 199th career playoff game Jagr fashioned his 197th career point, a bullet pass across the top of the crease to Patrice Bergeron for the power-play goal that made it 2-0 at 14:05 of the second period.
“It was a hard pass, a great pass. I just had to settle it down, put it in,” said Bergeron, who is simply the perfect centreman in the game right now. “I was expecting the puck to come, but it was a perfect play.”
“I see plays,” said the 41-year-old Jagr with a smile. “I’m not that fast anymore, but I still can see. And hands, they are still there.”
Bergeron has both power-play goals in this series, went 86 per cent in the faceoff circle in Game 3, and painted a Mona Lisa defensively. He is as fine an all-around centreman as these eyes have seen in many a season, going right back to Joe Sakic.
As a team, the Bruins won 71 per cent of the draws Monday, outshot Chicago 35-28, and at one point in the third period the Blackhawks had registered one shot on goal in their past five power plays.
“It’s a low-chance game. It’s a low-chance series,” observed Chicago head coach Joel Quenneville, who lost his first-line winger Marian Hossa during the warmup with what is being called an upper body injury. “It’s hard to get A-plus chances. You have to manufacture the … ugly goals. Tips screens, deflections…”
While Quenneville’s stars have gone silent — Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith and Hossa have combined for two assists, no goals in this series — Boston got another tally from third-liner Daniel Paille.
He blasted one past Corey Crawford’s glove hand — an obvious, repeated target for Boston — to open the game in similar fashion to the way he’d closed Game 2 in overtime, notching back-to-back playoff game-winners for the first time in Paille’s career.
“He plays the game the way it should be played,” linemate Chris Kelly said of Paille.
So do all the Bruins. And this is becoming an issue for Chicago.