The Bruins won 6-1. See ya in Beantown where the Pens will win both.

Boston Bruins @ Pittsburgh Penguins
Bruins lead series 1-0

NBCSN, CBC, RDS - 8:00 pm/et

Consol Energy Center - Pittsburgh, PA

Like it or not, the Pittsburgh Penguins got frustrated in game one. After starting the game very strong, the Pens were unable to score. Regardless of why you think that is (the Pens' play, the Bruins' play, the goal posts, luck, the Hockey Gods, etc.) it's hard to deny the fact that the team became frustrated by the fact that they weren't scoring. That's why you saw things like Sidney Crosby purposely bumping into/elbowing/striking Tuukka Rask at the end of the second period.

Speaking of Crosby, he had a subpar game (by his standards especially) in game one. The Pens will need his skill, his focus and his leadership in game two. They'll also need to keep their minds on the game and focus on playing good hockey, regardless of anything else that is happening. If, midway through the first period the Boston Bruins transform into the aliens from Space Jam, the Penguins will need to focus on playing hockey. This team has more than enough leadership. At last count, the Pens had 323 current or former captains in the line-up. They'll need all of them tonight.

This is not to say that the Penguins are a bad hockey team or that they're a worse hockey team than the Bruins. In fact, it's the exact opposite. The Pittsburgh Penguins are a very, very good hockey team. They are a team that has the ability to take over and dominate opponents. They have offensive weapons that most teams can only dream of. They have leadership and experience. With all of those skills, it's easy to see how they should be able to defeat the Boston Bruins in this game and in this series. But it won't be easy. The playoffs are rarely ever easy. We saw that in round one against the Islanders. Reaching the Stanley Cup Final takes the right mix of skill, attitude, desire and even some good luck.  Sometimes things won't work out your way. Talented teams are able to overcome those things.

The Pens will need to avoid getting away from their game no matter what the Bruins do, what the refs do, or what the game itself does. They can't allow bad luck or missed chances or an annoying opponent to cause them to lose their focus.

If the Pittsburgh Penguins play as good as the Pittsburgh Penguins can play, they can win this series. They'll just have to actually do that.

There's just something about the Boston media that makes a playoff series and eventual Penguins triumph so much sweeter.

Some guy talking about Marchand and Cooke...

McQuaid has moved on from his dive the Cooke hit...

Pens must be mightier...

But the Pittsburgh media can go toe-to-toe with any city, evidenced by Ron Cook calling for Fleury to go back in net...

Hopefully Andrew Ference plays again tonight. Go Pens.

The year was 1692. About 20 miles north of Boston.

A reverend's two daughters started acting like a couple of dipshits. Then another little girl started doing the same thing. A local doctor couldn't diagnose the girls and, to save face, blamed the supernatural for their odd behavior. The reverend's slave (yes, Boston has a history of slavery) trolled the local magistrate, saying that the Devil was making moves on her. She and two other innocent women were arrested. And so it began that the idiots in Boston (the ancestors of the city's current residents) and surrounding suburbs started accusing random innocent women of being witches.

Woman after woman was accused of witchcraft and hung at the now infamous Gallows Hill. They were even allowing testimony involving dreams and visions to be admissible in court. There were 20 murders overall, with one innocent man being pressed to death with stones. Jesus. The killings finally stopped when the local judge's wife was accused of being a witch. He heard that shit and decided to stop all the arrests and trials for witchcraft, because he couldn't beat her if she was in jail or dead.

Then came the early 1960s...

The Boston residents hadn't gone on an offensive against their female residents for almost 300 years, which is a pretty long time for Boston, so they were due. Over the course of 19 months, 13 innocent women were raped and murdered in their apartments. It was thought that there was only man responsible for the rapes and murders, and his name was Albert DeSalvo. As time has gone on and smarter experts from outside of Boston started looking at the evidence, it's become clear that the murders and rapes were not the doings of one man; there were multiple Boston men raping and murdering innocent women.

WELP...

Boston residents like to play grab-ass with one another about the Boston Tea Party, but nobody outside of Boston even cares about it. They expose themselves to the Paul Revere statue, the guy who ran away from danger as fast as his horse could take him. They want to talk about Fenway Park, which is an embarrassing dump that's been falling apart for like 50 years. They want to talk about Bobby Orr, who retired because he couldn't stand them. They want to talk about steroids-aided Red Sox World Series championships. They want to talk about the Super Bowls the Patriots won before they were caught cheating. They want to talk about Matt Damon.

But it's all a smokeshow to divert your attention away from the two worst crimes ever perpetrated in Greater Boston: the Salem Witch Trials and the Boston Strangler murders.

It's a bizarre vortex. Take nothing away from the Bruins. They walked into CEC and made a statement. But the Penguins didn't play a bad game. In our goalie preview for the series, we looked at goalies comparable to Tuukka Rask. One name that showed up was Semyon Varlamov. 

This series already has a 2009 Caps/Pens feel to it. Rask looked like the good version of Varlamov that showed up in those first two games in Washington. But eventually the dam broke.

Rask didn't "steal" this game, though. He just made the saves he had to and got some bounces. This was like Craig Anderson's performance in Game 3 of the Sens series, in that he just refused to be beaten. Just sucks that the Pens ran into it in the first game of this series.

So what happened? Maybe a combo of a long time off and the fact that the Bruins are way better than the Senators. Or maybe it was the two best teams in the East battling, and one of them got the better bounces. Game Two's response by the Pens will tell us even more. If you're a fan of the Bruins, getting out of Game One alive has to feel like a blessing. This series is gonna head to Boston 1-1, and everything will kick up a notch.

For now, here's a recap of Game One:

One of these hits is worth a five-minute major and game misconduct, and the other is worth only two minutes:

Didn't see this one coming. David Krejci scored two daggers, and the Pens got shutout 3-0. The Penguins played a good game, but they couldn't score on the powerplay, and they hit four posts.

Maybe it was the eight-day layoff; maybe Ottawa was really bad. Either way, the Pens are down 1-0. All kinds of shit with Matt Cooke, too. Get ready for a fun 48 hours until Monday.