Welcome to Heartbreak

Raffi Torres scored the game-winning goal with just 18.5 seconds in regulation to hand the Bruins a heartbreaking 1-0 loss in Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals. 

With Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals officially in the books, one thing is abundantly clear.

The Boston Bruins can hang with the mighty Vancouver Canucks.

For 59 minutes and 41.5 seconds, the Black and Gold went toe-to-toe with the NHL's best team Wednesday night, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion when Raffi Torres scored the game's lone goal with just 18.5 seconds left to give Vancouver a thrilling 1-0 win.

Despite an unbelievable performance in net from Tim Thomas (33 saves), Canucks' goaltender Roberto Luongo (36 saves) bested the Bruins netminder to pitch his third shutout of the postseason before a raucous sell-out crowd of 18,860 at the Rogers Center.

With the victory, the Canucks take a 1-0 lead in the Cup Finals. Game Two begins Saturday night at 8pm.

"I thought for the first two periods we played a pretty even game," said Bruins coach Claude Julien. "In the third, we just seemed to lack some energy and lost our legs. They just seemed to come at us pretty hard. They kind of took the game over in the third period and obviously found a way to win it with a late goal."

From the opening face-off, it was clear that it would be a goaltenders' duel. After Thomas made consecutive sparkling saves in the opening minute, Luongo took over by blanking the Bruins' four-minute man advantage midway through the first period.

Despite bombarding Luongo with eight power-play shots, the Vancouver netminder stopped all of them and finished with an astounding 17 first-period saves. The Bruins even employed the towering Zdeno Chara in front of Luongo to help the sputtering power-play, but to no avail.

A perplexing moment came just after the buzzer sounded ending the first period, when the usually well-tempered Patrice Bergeron got into a long-lasting fracas with Alex Burrows, the top line winger for Vancouver. With the help of instant replay, it was clear that Burrows bit Bergeron's finger straight through his glove, with blood leaking into the Bruins' best two-way forward's leather mit.

"I dont mind the rough play and little scrums at the end, as long as its just pushing and shoving," said Bergeron. "But biting? Come on."

Burrows could very-well be suspended a game for his unsportsmanlike actions.

As the second period came and went and the game dragged deeper and deeper into the third period, Thomas stood on his head to keep the game scoreless. However, with every incredible save, many Bruins fans couldn't help but have an eery feeling that Boston was flirting with disaster against the league's highest scoring team.

Then, with less than 20 seconds left, the opportunistic Canucks finally broke through on Thomas just as the game seemed destined for overtime.

Ryan Kesler, who played a game-high 24:23 among forwards, caught Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk leaning the wrong way and then beat him to the puck near the Boston blue line.

Kesler quickly dished the puck to a streaking Jannik Hansen, who promptly fed Torres down low with a cross-ice feed to elude the helpless Thomas.

However, the game-winning goal felt like a dagger in in the hearts of Bruins fans not only for its timing, but the fact that Kesler appeared to be offsides before entering the Boston zone.

"Some king of a broken play on the blue line," admitted Chara. "I don't know if it was a turnover. Obviously [Kesler] made a nice play hitting the late guy, the guy coming to the net. Very unfortunate."

The goal ended a shutout streak of nearly 129 minutes for Thomas, who blanked the Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

"We need to reward [Timmy] for his efforts," lamented Milan Lucic after the game. "That's the bottom line."

Despite yet another scoreless power-play for the Bruins (0-6 for the game), Boston managed to blank the highlight-reel Canuck man advantage as well (0-6), which is something to be said. After all, during the postseason, Vancouver had scored at a playoff-best rate of 28.3% with the man advantage. However, the Bruins played spirited defense and held the Canucks to just seven shots in nearly 10 full minutes of power-play time.

"I thought our [penalty kill] did a great job against their power play," admitted Julien. "Timmy made the big saves when he had to. For two periods, I was pretty pleased."

In the end, Game One of the Finals will go down as a heartbreaker for Bruins fans. Thomas played his heart out and the Black and Gold fought valiantly until the bitter end. Save for one glaring defensive miscue by Boychuk, the Finals opener could very well have gone multiple overtimes.

"I thought we were going to play all night the way it was going," concluded Luongo. "It was an exciting way to start the series. It was such a close game. It could have gone either way, a flip of the coin."

Unfortunately, it went the Canucks' way Wednesday night.

But keep the faith, Bruins fans. The series is far from over and our beloved Black and Gold proved to the world that they can hang with the NHL's best regular-season team.

No one ever said Boston's first Finals appearance in 21 years would be easy.

They just promised it would be worth it.