Another Game 7 disappointment for Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau
Bruce Boudreau coached teams are now 1-6 in Game 7s at the NHL level. All six of those losses have come on home ice, including three in a row as the coach of the Anaheim Ducks.
Before we get too far into this, let's start with this: Overall, Bruce Boudreau is a pretty successful hockey coach.
He really is.
He won a championship in the American Hockey League, his teams at the NHL level have made the playoffs and finished in first place in its division in seven of his eight years behind the bench (the only year he missed the playoffs and failed to finish in first place was in 2011-12, which he split between the Washington Capitals and Anaheim Ducks) and his teams have averaged 108 points per 82 games played.
You can certainly do worse at the NHL level. Many teams do. With Boudreau you know you are going to get a pretty exciting team that will usually score a lot of goals, win a lot of games, make the playoffs, probably win its division, and at least have what should be a fighting chance to win a championship come playoff time.
It's what happens once those teams get to the playoffs that is so maddening and disappointing.
And that playoff record in the NHL -- specifically the record in Game 7s -- is not only something that is impossible to avoid at this point, it is something that will only get worse for him following the Ducks' 5-3 loss on Saturday night to the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference Final, ending their season just one win short of the Stanley Cup Final.
It's another disappointing loss for a coach and a team that is reliving the same day over and over again in some cruel hockey version of "Groundhog Day."
"Well, we've got four months," said Boudreau when asked how he moves on from Saturday's game. "I'm sure they'll move on. I'm not going to lie, it's going to hurt for a while. We truly believe that we were a different team and we had a really good chance of winning five more games. Didn't get done.
"We'll have to live with that for the summer. But the same reason that these guys are great guys that came to play each and every night will be the same reason that they bounce back."
Whether they felt like they were a different team or not, the result ended up being the same. It's always the same.
With Saturday's loss to the Blackhawks, Boudreau-coached teams are now 1-6 in Game 7s at the NHL level. And it's not just the number of losses that make it so difficult to watch year after year (and it really does happen just about every single year).
It's the way those teams have managed to go out in often times spectacular fashion.
Just consider the following:
•Every single one of the Game 7 losses has come on home ice. The Ducks are now the first team in NHL history to lose a Game 7 at home in three consecutive seasons.
•Each of the past four came after his team had a 3-2 series lead before losing consecutive games to lose the series. In one of them it was a 3-1 lead. Go back one more year and the 2009 Capitals had a 2-0 lead on Pittsburgh before losing four of the next five games.
•Three of the Game 7 losses have been by multiple goals, including two of the eight games in league history where a team lost a Game 7 on home ice by four or more goals (2009 Capitals vs. Penguins and 2014 Ducks vs Kings). If not for a couple of late goals on Saturday this would have been the third such game.
This one has to be especially difficult and disappointing because it was not only the closest he has ever come to reaching the Stanley Cup Final, but also because the game was never as close as the final score would indicate. It was a blowout (the Blackhawks had a 4-0 lead late in the second period) that was only made to look close thanks to a couple of late third period goals when the outcome was already all but decided.
And it's still probably not the most crushing loss a Boudreau-coached team has experienced in the playoffs. That honor should go to the 2010 Capitals, the Presidents' Trophy winning team that obliterated the competition during the regular season, that allowed a 3-1 series lead slip away against a Montreal team that simply was not on the Capitals' level on paper. The 2009 loss to Pittsburgh was pretty disappointing in hindsight simply because of the fact they would have had an extremely favorable matchup in the next round against a Carolina Hurricanes team that ended up getting swept by the Penguins.
Then there is this one. One win from the Stanley Cup Final, the closest Boudreau has ever come to the championship round in the NHL.
The thing about all of these losses is that there really isn't any one thing you can point to when it comes to figuring out why it all went - and continues to go - wrong. It's any number of things.
Sometimes, as it was in 2010 against Montreal, it was a matter of the team on the ice playing extremely well only to lose because the other team's goalie stole a couple of games at the end of the series. There was also an overtime loss in 2008 against the Philadelphia Flyers that could have just as easily ended with a different result.
Sometimes, like they did in 2009, 2014 and 2015, the team just gets outplayed from the drop of the puck and gets blown out.
On Saturday, one of the biggest criticisms was about the matchups Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville was able to get throughout the night even though his team was on the road and did not have the luxury of the last change, an issue that Boudreau addressed following the game when it came to the usage of star forwards Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.
"Look, you have to win faceoffs to get your matchup," Boudreau said. "If you noticed in the first period-and-a-half, they won all the faceoffs. Every time they won, they changed. The only option you have is to keep them on the bench. You're not going to keep Perry and Getzlaf on the bench when you need goals."
No matter the reason, the same situation keeps ending with the same result. If nothing else, it's another reminder as to just how difficult it is to reach the top of the NHL mountain no matter how much regular season success you have or how much talent your roster has.
"I think I gained an appreciation this year for that, making it to where we did, on how tough every series is," said Boudreau. "You hear about it on TV, but until you really see how many hurdles you have to go through, it's really difficult. I thought we had a good chance to get to the dance, but obviously we didn't make it."
Assuming he is back behind the Ducks' bench next season he will likely get another chance. But until his team gets a different result he is never going to be able to get away from that 1-6 record.
