Bruins Save Their Best for Last Period of Game 7 You have to hand it to the Boston Bruins. They have this Game 7 thing down to a science. How do you top a 2011 Stanley Cup run that featured three Game 7 victories, including a first-round tightrope walk/grudge match in overtime against Montreal? How do you make fans forget last year's Game 7 overtime loss at home in the first round against Washington? How do you wipe away the epic face plant of 2010, losing not only a 3-0 series lead to hated Philadelphia, but also a 3-0 lead in Game 7 at home? On Monday night the Bruins fashioned their answer out of a hope, a prayer, some invisible string and a spray of ice chips: a three-goal rally in the third period to erase Toronto's 4-1 lead, then an overtime winner from a line Bostonians were about to slap on the side of a milk carton because they had not noticed it on the ice in seven games, topped with a howling celebration that registered on the Richter scale. Now that is a Game 7, Bruins style. (Memo to the Rangers and the Capitals: a 5-0 score is not a proper Game 7. Sigh.) The Bruins, befitting their city, are not afraid of making history, be it good, bad or eye-shieldingly ugly. That it was the good kind this time - the first team to erase a three-goal deficit in the third period of a Game 7 - seemed a matter of chance, but what a spectacle it was, perhaps the biggest comeback in Boston sports history, as Steve Buckley argues in The Boston Herald. It was perhaps measured best by watching the crowd gathered in downtown Toronto to watch on a giant screen, its agony growing with every Bruins goal. In Boston, TD Garden shook with the energy of the comeback, which not only won a game and a series, but most likely kept the current Bruins together, Nicholas Cotsonika writes on Yahoo.com, at least for another week, thanks to the reappearance of Patrice Bergeron and friends. Toronto's agony might have been mitigated by the unlikeliness that the Leafs were in this position at all, which is why Bruce Arthur writes in The National Post that they simply did not have enough to bury a championship team. The Bruins, after all, could lean on battle-scarred veterans like Zdeno Chara and Milan Lucic, as David Shoalts writes in The Globe and Mail, while the Leafs had a bunch of young guys and a snakebit Phil Kessel. Or you can decide the Leafs hacked it up like a cat expelling a fur ball, as Damien Cox prefers to in the Toronto Star. There will be a long off-season for the Maple Leafs to debate such things, but no time for anyone still playing because the second round starts Tuesday night. The schedule makers did give the Rangers and the Bruins until Thursday night to catch their breath, not that the Rangers need it after dispatching the Capitals in Monday night's other Game 7. That was the forgettable one, in which goalie Henrik Lundqvist reprised his puck-swallowing role as Rangers savior, Filip Bondy writes in The Daily News, and the Rangers went back to the ugly brand of hockey that got them to the Eastern Conference finals a year ago, Larry Brooks writes in The New York Post. The Capitals just went back to the kind of game that gets them painted as not serious Cup contenders, Alex Ovechkin absorbing most of the criticism for coming up small in big games, as Barry Svrluga writes in The Washington Post. Each failure, though, points out that the Capitals" stars are watching the prime of their careers pass without a serious championship run, Mike Wise writes in The Washington Post. Worse, Lundqvist isn't going anywhere any time soon. The N.B.A.'s second-round series are trying to crank up the drama, although in Oklahoma City, it's the wrong kind altogether. After getting outworked down the stretch by a Memphis team that just competes its heart out, writes Gary Parrish on CBSSports.com, the Thunder used another lengthy defensive lapse to put themselves on a 3-1 brink of losing this series, Berry Tramel writes in The Oklahoman. The Heat are trying to be drama-free in taking a 3-1 lead on the Bulls in their series, in which the only real concern is the state of Dwyane Wade's knee, as Brian Windhorst writes on ESPN.com. That's why the shorter this series is the better it will be for the Heat, Ian Thomsen writes on SI.com, although Miami has played well enough with Wade in a limited role to ease many of its worries, Ken Berger writes on CBSSports.com. On the flip side, injuries have finally seemed to deplete the Bulls and they are running out of fight, Michael Wilbon writes on ESPN.com. Of course, the same could have been said about the Bruins in the third period of Monday night's game. But it turns out, they have not run out of fight yet. And their supply of Game 7 drama appears to be endless.