Three nights from now, the Bruins will either be hoisting the Stanley Cup in Vancouver, or they’ll be somewhere between a few minutes and a couple days into a gloomy offseason. 

The Bruins have either one or two games left in their season, and given that they are one loss away from falling just short of reaching their ultimate goal, it’s easy too look at where things have gone wrong and why they might not fire off two straight wins.

Yet looking at it at face value, it’s quite easy to see that this series, one that many didn’t feel the Bruins could win (a favorite subject of Milan Lucic), is one the B’s are capable of sewing up. If they don’t, despite the undeniable progress the team and franchise has made, the season will fall just short of spectacular. The Bruins have made Boston about hockey once again with this series, but five games have been enough to show that this isn’t as much of an uphill climb as it looked like it would be on paper.

If the Canucks stroll into the Garden Monday night and end the series, or do so Wednesday in Vancouver with one of their patented low-scoring wins, they will obviously be Stanley Cup champions. And, unless the next game or two end up being nothing like the rest of the series, they’ll watch Tim Thomas receive the Conn Smythe trophy. 

That should say it all. Not since Jean-Sebastian Giguere dominated in 2003 but saw his Ducks fall to the Devils has a player on the losing team taken home the honors, but unless Henrik Sedin or Ryan Kesler goes crazy at Thomas’ expense, it looks like the B’s goalie will become the sixth losing player to ever win the Conn Smythe. 

While winning the trophy would add to an already solid resume that is soon to include a second Vezina trophy, if the Bruins lost, Thomas receiving the Conn Smythe would only further paint the picture of this being the one that got away.

The Canucks have managed just six goals through the first five games of the finals. The Bruins have 14. Granted, blowouts do happen, and they skew the numbers, there is no skewing the lack of Canucks’ offensive output. 

“I know it's a bizarre stat, but as they say, ‘it is what it is,’” Claude Julien told reporters Saturday. “Probably our inability to score down there has been the result of why we're down three games to two. When you get shut out two of the three games, that's what happens.”

The big matchup for the Bruins going into this series was how well the Zdeno Chara – Dennis Seidenberg pair would handle the Sedin twins. The Bruins have obviously won that battle to this point, as Henrik Sedin is still looking for his first point of the series after putting up a postseason-best 21 through the first three rounds. The B’s haven’t been able to always have their top pair out against the Canucks’ top line at Rogers Arena given that Vancouver has the last change, but all things considered, the brothers Sedin haven’t been able to produce anywhere.

Nor has Ryan Kesler, who is still looking for his second point of the finals and first since he set up Raffi Torres’ game-winning goal in Game 1. Vancouver’s top two lines have yet dominate. Of the team’s top six forwards, only Alexandre Burrows has been able to be a thorn in Boston’s side both with his play and his antics. 

The difference in the series at this point is a pair of goals from third-liners. Torres’ goal in Game 1 and Maxim Lapierre’s goal in Game 5 were the only goals in their respective games. As much as that stings, the Bruins can’t let themselves lose a series because the other team’s third line scored a couple of goals when the top two lines did zilch.

One problem for the Bruins is that they haven’t gotten consistent enough output from their top two lines either. They have obviously fared better statistically than their Vancouver counterparts, but just as Canucks fans may wonder how they can win without the Sedins playing big, B’s fans have every reason to be concerned with the combination of Nathan Horton being out with a concussion and Lucic coming off a dreadful performance. On the second line, the B’s could probably use more of the Brad Marchand they saw in Games 3 and 4 as opposed to the one that failed to show for Game 5.

Monday, they’ll play in their first non-Game 7 in which they’ve faced elimination this postseason, and it’s all too predictable to see the B’s blowing Vancouver out of the water, perhaps with yet another silent night from Vancouver’s offense. Many of the challenges one would think they’d have to account for have been essentially neutralized, and now it’s up to the Bruins to beat them in the other areas: getting more traffic, offensive opportunities, and therefore offense. 

If Thomas has to receive one trophy this week, he and the Bruins would undoubtedly rather the Stanley Cup. The sight of him winning one without the other is avoidable for the B’s.