Bruins hit bottom

Carter, Dafoe hurt; McSorley headhunts

By Nancy Marrapese-Burrell, Globe Staff, 02/22/200

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - The Bruins completely unraveled last night. If you didn't stay up for the ugly and despicable finish, the game ended with the Vancouver Canucks winning, 5-2, and the Bruins embarrassed.

However, the chagrin of losing was nothing compared with a disgraceful incident with three seconds left in the game. Boston defenseman Marty McSorley two-handed Vancouver forward Donald Brashear across the head with his stick and knocked him to the ice.

Brashear lost consciousness temporarily, although he was said to be alert and walking around later, with a giant welt on his head.

Adding to the bleakness of the night for the Bruins was the loss of two key players to injury. Goalie Byron Dafoe left with a knee problem and Anson Carter tore his right rotator cuff. Both will head back to Boston to be examined.

McSorley's attack angered not only the Canucks (coach Marc Crawford said he was sick to his stomach) but also his fellow Bruins, who were disturbed by his behavior.

"There's no room for that," said captain Ray Bourque. "You can't justify that. I have never witnessed anything like that. I don't know what happened there. It was a shocker. It blew me away. That's the first time I've witnessed something like that. It's not fun."

"That put a real damper on the way the whole night went," said Dafoe. "That's just not hockey. That's not acceptable. I think a lot of people were just speechless."

McSorley seemed stunned himself.

"I embarrassed my hockey team, I apologize to Donald Brashear and the fans who had to watch that," said McSorley, who seemed near tears at times. "I guess I'm trying to write checks my body can't cash and I got way carried away.

"I apologize to my own team and my organization. I wanted to go over and fight him like I'd done with so many guys at so many different times. Why that happened, I don't know. No excuse. I'm still kind of in shock at what I did."

Coach Pat Burns said he didn't see McSorley's act but would never send a player out to purposely injure anyone.

"You know me better than that," said Burns.

As disgraceful as the last period will be remembered, the first 20 minutes were just as embarrassing and appalling for the Bruins. It took the Canucks a minute and a half to get on the scoreboard.

The Bruins were down, 4-0, at the time of Dafoe's injury (13:57), as both he and John Grahame gave up a pair of early goals. Burns had replaced Dafoe with Grahame after the first two scores, but the Boston coach switched goalies again after Grahame surrendered a pair.

"My knee locked up," said Dafoe. "It's either a [piece] of cartilage or something that just got caught. I think it's just something that's floating around. It's something that's been swelling up at times. Tonight it got to the point when it locked."

Dafoe will have X-rays, and he said he could require an arthro scopy to clean out the cartilage.

After the Bruins fell behind on Markus Naslund's 18th goal, McSorley tried to jump-start the team by going after Brashear at 2:09, but Brashear pummeled him.

With the Bruins down, 4-0, the game took a turn for the weird at 12:22 when Ken Belanger took on another of the Canucks' tough guys, Brad May. McSorley, at the same time, went back after Brashear and wound up with a double minor for cross-checking and roughing. When McSorley protested, he was hit with a 10-minute misconduct.

There was a glimmer of Boston offense in the second period when Andre Savage centered a pass through traffic that Sergei Samsonov banged in at 2:03. But Carter was lost at 6:32, taking a good portion of the Bruins' offensive hopes to the dressing room with him.

Bertuzzi struck again at 10:45 to make it 5-1, barreling down the left circle and beating Grahame with a backhander. Bourque finished the scoring at 16:32 of the third.

It was not an easy game to watch from the Boston side.

"They've forgotten how to play," said president/general manager Harry Sinden. "If we keep playing like this, we'll lose a lot of games.

"We've really lost our way."