VANCOUVER -- It's the last thing the Bruins want to talk about, and the last thing anyone in the media wants to ask about. The devastation of the power play has gotten old, and the Bruins have gone from hoping, to being out of answers, and now to being very optimistic. 

If the Bruins going 0-for-6 on the power play can also come with the same showing from the Canucks' man advantage, as it did in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday night, the B's should take that deal every time. But while stopping the Sedins and Vancouver's power play could be a key to winning the Cup, a game can hardly be considered a special teams triumph for the B's with the power play still as unsuccessful as ever. 

This team can win the Stanley Cup without a power play. That much we know, and if you disagree with it, get with the times. The B's could have easily won Game 1, and were it not for Ryan Kesler proving that he is, indeed better than Johnny Boychuk, Boston would have had the chance to get their fifth overtime victory this postseason. But they didn't, and here we are talking about the power play once again.

The B's looked fantastic on the man advantage throughout Daniel Sedin's double-minor four minutes into the first period. The puck-movement was superb, and Zdeno Chara in front of Roberto Luongo created just the discomfort the Vancouver goaltender said he was trying to avoid earlier in the week. The Bruins didn't get a puck past Luongo (a night-long theme), but they got eight shots on net. Neither the first unit nor the second had capitalized, but there were plenty of reasons to be encouraged. 

Chara would have had a first-period goal off a rebound in front, but Dan Hamhuis did what he could to prevent the B’s captain from getting his stick on the puck. The Canucks pushed him around and tried to make each second Chara spent in front of the net more taxing than the one before, but he handled it and gave reason to believe that, eventually, it would lead to results. 

“Obviously he's moving around pretty good at trying to be a screen in front and also not trying to get sucked into penalties,” Claude Julien said Thursday at the University of British Columbia. “They were pretty hard on him yesterday at times. He just got back up and did his job. I anticipate he'll only get better at that position as we use him there.”

The players made available to the media Thursday who play on Boston’s man advantage were upbeat in describing each unit. Yet it’s where being so encouraged makes things a bit tricky. The man advantage didn't look that good again the rest of the night, and on Thursday they were accentuating the positive so strongly that even Johnny Mercer, Perry Como and Dr. John's eyebrows would be raised. 

"I don't know how it looked worse," Mark Recchi, who played on the second unit, said when a reporter offered that the power play dropped off as the game went on. "I thought it was pretty good overall for us. We had a lot of great opportunities on it, and we were able to control the puck and have some great looks. That's the biggest thing about it. If you don't score, at least you can keep momentum. I think the guys did a good job."

The Bruins had four shots on goal on the man advantage the rest of the way after Sedin's penalty expired. Why Recchi was taking a draw with Tyler Seguin on the ice on the power play that followed Alexandre Burrows' high-stick on Andrew Ference was certainly questionable. Recchi won the face-off, but it was certainly an instance in which the mystery that is the Bruins' power play came to the forefront. After Chris Kelly had hopped out of the box to give the B’s an abbreviated power play, neither team had a shot on goal, though the shorthanded Canucks fired off two to the Bruins’ zero. 

“I thought our special teams were as good as, if not better than theirs, to be honest with you,” Julien said. “We had more scoring chances on our power play, and our penalty kill did a great job against a pretty potent power play, so special teams I don’t think was an issue, but 5-on-5, I think they were no doubt the better team.”

Julien’s logic is 100 percent correct, and to disagree with it would make little sense. It takes more to stop the Canucks’ power play than it does to stop the Bruins’ power play, so while both PK’s got the job done and both PP’s failed to, the Bruins pulled off the tough task of stopping Vancouver on the man advantage. At this point, maybe there’s no use in even considering the tougher task of the Bruins scoring on the power play. When there’s so clearly nothing left to say, you might as well say something positive.