GEARING UP: Vancouver Canucks Daniel Sedin (R) looks back at the play during a team practice in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Canucks will meet the Boston Bruins in Game 1 of their NHL Stanley Cup Final hockey playoffs today.  (Reuters
AFP/Boston

Some 1,000 Boston Bruins fans gave their hockey team a noisy send-off Monday as the team left TD Arena after a warm-up to head to Vancouver for Wednesday’s Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Canucks.
Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, brilliant in the net during Boston’s seven-game triumph over the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference finals, acknowledged the thrill of playing for the Stanley Cup.
“It’s great and it’s where you’ve wanted to be,” he told reporters.
“What I’ve worked for my whole life, to get to this point in the Stanley Cup. And so it’s a big accomplishment.
“But you don’t dream of getting to the Stanley Cup Finals, you dream of winning the Stanley Cup. So there’s still more work to be done.”
Bruins coach Claude Julien said the team was done celebrating
its 1-0 victory Friday in the Eastern decider and ready to aim at ending the franchise’s 39-year Stanley Cup drought.
“It’s sunk in. I mean it sunk in that we’re there,” Julien said. “It also sunk in that we’re not done.
“We realize there’s a lot of work ahead of us, probably the hardest games to win...against a team that kind of dominated the league this year. And we know we’re capable of doing it.”
The Canucks led the National Hockey League with 117 points this season, with the Bruins amassing 103.
Julien said he took care to ease his players back onto the ice after their arduous conference finals.
“I think one of the things was giving our guys some rest and that’s why yesterday not everybody went on the ice,” he said.
“Guys that have played a lot, they could benefit from two days of non-skating.
“Today we came back on the ice as a whole team and it was a little warm out there. So ice was probably not at its best and it was a tough grind to push through this practice today, which I think is not a bad thing. We might as well get used to it.
“That’s what the buildings are like on game nights.”
The superstitious Boston coach said he hoped these upcoming games would give him the opportunity to lay hands on the Cup.
“I’ve seen it in the Hall of Fame in Toronto. I have stayed away from it,” he said.
“All I said is the day that I even get a picture or touch it will be the day that I’ve earned it.”