For two weeks, the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins rekindled their rivalry in a grueling series of two teams with plenty of bad blood. While the traditional handshake line that signifies the end of a season for one team and the advancement of the other team into the next round usually ends all of the hostility, that wasn't the case Wednesday night.
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The Canadiens surprised a lot of people by crawling out of a 3-2 series hole and won Game 7 at the TD Garden in Boston on Wednesday night by a 3-1 margin, and while the series had concluded, the bad blood spilled over into the handshake line.
Canadiens forward Dale Weise netted one of the goals in the deciding game and then said that the Bruins had done some "disrespectful things" in the series and that Boston forward Milan Lucic threatened some of the members of the team in the handshake line allegedly saying, "I'm going to kill you guys next year."
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"They had a couple of guys, or sorry just one, that couldn't put it behind them and be a good winner," Weise told reporters afterwards. "Milan Lucic had a few things to say to a couple of guys."
The Canadiens had complained that the Bruins pumped their chests and flexed their muscles during goal celebrations throughout the series and that they weren't classy winner or losers. That hostility on Boston's part extended into the traditional handshake line, where all of the emotions of the series are usually put on the backburner in the name of sportsmanship and remembered again come October.
Lucic, perhaps overcome with the realization that his team wouldn't make it to its second straight Eastern Conference Finals this season, couldn't believe Weise made those comments public.
"It's said on the ice, so it'll stay on the ice," Lucic told reporters. "If [Weise] wants to be a baby about it, he can make it public."
Lucic, who helped guide the Bruins to a Presidents' Trophy this season, said that he didn't believe he and his teammates were disrespectful.
"Disrespect? I don't know what they're talking about, disrespect," he told reporters. "Having a goal celebration, what kind of disrespect is that? I mean, I'm not going to say anything. I've got nothing to say about that."
Bruins coach Claude Julien was approached about the situation and said that he also didn't believe there was any disrespect throughout the series, just two fierce Original Six rivals going at it.
"You talk about disrespect, but I don't think we disrespected them," Julien told ESPN. "There's a rivalry here. We don't like each other because it's a rivalry. At the same time, the pounding of the chest, people who have been here have seen us do that all year because it's related to 'Boston Strong.' Our guys take some pride in what's happened with 'Boston Strong' and unfortunately everything we did seemed to be as disrespect in Montreal."
On the night of Game 7, it was Montreal getting the upper-hand in the rivalry, and now the Canadiens await Saturday afternoon for Game 1 of their Eastern Conference Finals series with the New York Rangers to open up at the Bell Centre.
If past playoff series are any indication, the Canadiens will have a new team to hate once that series opens up.
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