The more things change, the more they remain the same.
For a short stretch of time, the Bruins-Canucks rivalry was arguably the most heated strife in the NHL.
That venom doled out between both franchises was not without merit, considering the vitriol extracted out of a seven-game title bout featuring bone-crunching hits, postgame passive-aggressive chirps, and the unsanctioned gnawing of fingers after the whistle.
Fair to say, most of that hostility has dispersed over the past decade.
But in Thursday’s showdown between the top two teams in the NHL, it came as little surprise that the bane of Canucks’ fandom those many summers ago once again reared his head on the TD Garden ice.