Bruins Can Now Afford to Be Forgiving

One can imagine how the Boston Bruins feel when each victory comes easier than the previous.

Ever had a good day? Then a great day? Then another great day? For the Bruins, this has been like vacation.

Then there’s the feeling when the good times end. That’s how the Washington Capitals feel.

Having stormed this city like the British once did, the Bruins find it easy to praise the Capitals (with the exception of Dale Hunter). They smile despite bruised and puffy faces that look like the work of Buster Douglas.

The mystery is gone from the playoffs. An irony remains that hurts: in each of the three games a former Capital has scored the first goal. Garry Galley. Bobby Carpenter. Dave Christian.

Would the Capitals want any of them back? Certainly not Carpenter. He had become such a drag on the team that it suspended him, then miraculously managed to deal him to the Rangers for not one but two quality players, Mike Ridley and Kelly Miller. Galley left as a free agent in 1988. Christian was the only one who went to Boston directly in trade, for Bob Joyce, seven years younger; it was the youth movement in the person of John Druce that carried the Capitals to an unprecedented victory in the second round of the playoffs. Still, the reappearance of the three has helped make a miserable time for the Capitals.

Another irony is how bad the Bruins look while looking so good. Defenseman Al Pedersen has an eye resembling Mike Tyson’s after Douglas. With a red scrape the shape of a half dollar, Glen Wesley’s face looks as if it were branded. Craig Janney, who had been knocked out for the first time in his life, is still learning some of the details about the Bruins’ third straight victory.

He never saw Hunter coming, making him one of the few in Capital Centre Monday night who didn’t. As a result, Janney also didn’t see his game-winning goal. He lay on the ice in a condition he’d never known before, “in a ring and in a fog.”

Hunter is a test of the Bruins’ turn-the-cheek philosophy. They turn the cheek and he hits the other one.

Once known as “big and bad,” the Bruins say, You want to hit us, hit us. They preach discipline. They seldom retaliate. They don’t even talk tough.

“I just knew somebody jumped on top of my head,” Wesley said. He might have known it was Hunter.

If Dale Hunter were a TV series, the episodes would never run out. He’d be late night, not prime time. It’s because of the violence.

“If that’s the price, if that’s what it takes to win,” Wesley said, “I can take it. If that’s the way he wants to do it, let him do it.

“You can’t get carried away and go after him. That’s Hunter’s game, to get guys off their game, try to draw a penalty.”

Disciplined -- that’s the word the Bruins use to describe their game. They’ve been precise in their play and well-mannered on the ice all season. “We worked at it for 80 games,” Andy Moog said, “and we don’t have to turn it on for the playoffs.”

Moog, a 5-foot-8, 170-pounder, has been “great” in goal, Galley and several Bruins say. But the Capitals suspect it’s more their lack of pressure on him. They haven’t been getting many second shots.

But when your team is up, 3-0, and when you would have had back-to-back playoff shutouts if it weren’t for a five-on-three goal, it’s easy to spread the credit. What Moog says is true too: “Our defense has been taking care of the rebounds very well this series.”

The Capitals hardly tested Moog in Game 3. “It was similar,” he said, killing the Capitals softly, “to Game 2.”

Game 1 was Moog’s toughest. “I thought they played very well in Game 1,” he said. Since then, the Capitals have failed to apply the “sustained pressure they often do.”

From behind his mask, he can see that the Capitals are “pressing.”

“A couple of times they had a good chance to score,” he said. “If they had waited a second, they would have had a great chance to score.”

The result is that while both teams feel the effects of three games, the Bruins’ tiredness is a happy one. “I know we’re not as tired as Washington,” Moog said. “They played three -- and lost three. That’s hard. It’s hard when you’re always battling from behind.”

The Bruins have maintained the restraint that Mike Milbury has preached since taking over as coach this season. A Bruin from 1975 through 1987, Milbury said that he played on too many Boston teams that retaliated only to have their actions “backfire.”

“You just can’t get even for every hit,” he said.

Galley said: “We had our meetings before the series. We knew what to expect from Dale Hunter, Neil Sheehy -- although we haven’t seen much of him -- and Alan May. We didn’t want to fall into their trap.”

They’ve remained as steady as Milbury had hoped. They’ve refused to be distracted by the desperate Capitals.

“If somebody has to take a stick in the face or block a shot with his head,” Wesley said, “we’ll do it.”

Not many teams can boast that its plans worked out, but Boston can. According to Moog, the Bruins never looked too far ahead during the season even though midway they found themselves in first place in their division. “We really stayed short-sighted,” Moog said.

“Everybody had in mind our goal, but we didn’t talk about it.”

Montreal tried to knock them off their almost perfect stride -- they failed. The Capitals can do no better. They have the look and feel of a beaten team. The Bruins, meanwhile, look as if they’ve assembled an almost perfect mix: a goaltender who’s 11-3 in the playoffs, a center who’s making things happen in Janney, a veteran from Philadelphia in Dave Poulin who’s contributed playoff experience, steadiness from incumbent standouts Cam Neely and Ray Bourque and, to the Capitals’ chagrin, a few old friends who’ve come calling at an inopportune time.

They’ve done just about everything -- everything except fight.