Bieksa has strong reaction to Chara’s comments about 2011 Canucks originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The 2011 Stanley Cup Final was one of the most intense playoff series in recent NHL history.
The Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks quickly developed a strong dislike for each other and played seven exciting games that culminated with the Original Six franchise winning its first Stanley Cup championship since 1972.
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The bad blood between the franchises hasn’t subsided very much over the years, and that was evident Saturday night when former Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa called recent comments made by former Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara on a podcast “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.”
For context, Chara was a guest on Julian Edelman’s “Games with Names” podcast earlier this week and talked about the 2011 Cup Final. One thing he said about the Canucks received plenty of attention.
“After losing two games in Vancouver, we saw players from Vancouver coming on the ice in the Garden, and they were actually practicing how they would be lifting the Cup and handing off the Cup to each other,” Chara said. “And we found out about these things and we were like ‘f–k this, we are not going to allow this to happen.’ It just fueled us.”
Bieksa, in a text exchange with Sportsnet colleague Jeff Marek earlier this week, refuted Chara’s claim that the Canucks practiced lifting and handing off the Stanley Cup. He told Marek it “100 percent” didn’t happen.
Bieksa got a chance to address Chara’s comments further on television during the first intermission of the “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast Saturday night.
Check out his full response in the video below:
Whether this story is true or not, what we do know is the bad blood from the 2011 Stanley Cup Final is not going away anytime soon.
The players, media and fans involved will talk about that series, debate it and argue over it for as long as they live. It was an all-time classic Cup Final that produced so many emotions that don’t easily go away.
