Boston Bruins excuses

Everyone agreed his Marc Savard
impression was bang-on.

The Boston Bruins' recent loss to the Flyers has earned them a special place in history. By blowing a 3-0 lead in both the series and the decisive game seven, the Bruins have laid a legitimate claim to the title of the NHL's all-time greatest collapse -- and maybe even in all of sports.

What went wrong? Plenty, as it turns out. And since there's no question that devastated Bruins fans deserve an explanation, I set out to determine what happened. After several days of in-depth interviews with Bruins players and staff, I think I have a pretty good handle on why the Bruins fell apart the way they did.

And to be honest, after compiling this list I'm not sure I can blame them.

• Probably shouldn't have believed Daniel Carcillo when he swore to us that conference semifinal series were best-of-five.
  
  
• We were hoping to draw energy from home crowd, but instead they spent the entire game sitting in silence waiting for Bill Simmons to tell them what to chant.
  
  
• Were getting tired of seeing lazy media and bloggers refer to every blown second-period lead as an "epic collapse"; wanted to remind everyone what that phrase really means.
  
  
• Tricky Flyers play totally different indoors.
  
  
• Just weren't able to shut down opposition scorers during the four minutes a night that Zdeno Chara isn't on the ice.
  
  
• Some fans from Buffalo coughed on us in round one; may have picked up that "inevitable devastating soul-crushing defeat" virus that everyone in that city seems to have.
  
  
• Claude Julien would like to someday pursue a career in television, and blowing a game seven with an inexcusable too-many-men penalty seems to be a great way to do that.
  
  
• Didn't know how best to attack Flyers net, thanks to lazy scouts who only filed reports on the top ten goalies on the depth chart.
  
  
• Figured we could get away with it, since Boston sports fans aren't the type of people who would witness a a 3-0 series comeback and then go on and on about it non-stop for years until everyone else in the sports world wanted to set them on fire.
  
  
• It's probably wishful thinking, but can't help but wonder if having some sort of dynamic 22-year-old sniper on the first line would have come in handy.
  
  
• Younger players were distracted by the excitement of seeing Sea Bass from "Dumb and Dumber" wandering around the pressbox.
  
  
• Yeah, like you'd want to be anywhere near Montreal these days.
  
  
• Every time coach Julien tried to give a firey speech about how the Bruins franchise demands excellence from all players at all times, everyone would get distracted by Tim Thomas sitting at the back of the room noisily eating a bag of $100 bills.
  
  
• In hindsight, the "What Would Lebron Do?" bracelets may have been a mistake.