Our Cup runneth over... all over

Lord Stanley’s Cup spent its first day in Boston getting ferried around the city in a baby carriage, posing for pictures with fans, napping with exhausted Bruins [team stats] captain Zdeno Chara — then partying into the evening at a waterfront bar. “We’re going to Tia’s!” a stoked Dennis Seidenberg told the Track shortly before Chara and Andrew Ference loaded the Stanley Cup into a baby carriage for the short walk from Chara’s Union Wharf condo to the Marriott Long Wharf bar. “It’s different,” said Dennis,

of partying with the Cup, “but it’s fun!” The Holy Grail of Hockey arrived in the Hub early yesterday morning along with the conquering rink kings, who took a red-eye from Vancouver. After making an appearance at the Garden, the Cup went home with Chara, the team captain and the first to get custody of the ice chalice. “I think I keep it about two days,” Chara told the Track. (According tradition, everyone on the championship roster gets to spend some quality private time with the Cup.) Lincoln Wharf resident Therese Russo was on her way to the dentist yesterday morning when she got the surprise of her life. “My neighbor came home with Lord Stanley hanging out the back window of his car!” she said. In front of his building, Chara posed for pictures with every fan and signed every autograph — including one for a lady who insisted that the disbelieving defenseman sign the inseam of her shorts! — then headed upstairs with the Cup and a security guard. “About an hour later, he came down in a T-shirt and Adidas sandals,” said Valerie Umana, who works at Regan Communications, in the same building where Chara lives. “He got on his bike and rode off to get his beard shaved.” At Firicano’s Barbershop on North Street, Richie Firicano did the honors. “It was about 2 1⁄2 months worth of growth there,” he said. “He had had enough of it. Mission accomplished, time for it to come off.” Like the rest of the team, Chara went unshaven during the playoff run, but by yesterday afternoon most of the hairy hockey hunks had lost the facial fuzz. Mark Recchi and Chris Kelly had the Barbershop Lounge on Newbury Street do the honors, but Chara returned to his neighborhood haunt for the shearing. “We had to bust out the heavy-duty clippers to take it down before I could put a blade to his face,” Firicano said. Z was so happy to lose the beard, he invited Richie and the rest of the barbershop crew over to his house to have their picture taken with the Cup. We heard he also invited the postman up for a private viewing, and later in the day some of his teammates arrived and they were spotted on a roof deck hoisting the trophy for crowds that had gathered below. After those festivities, Chara hit the hay for a few hours then rallied to load the Cup into a baby stroller, and he and Ference hit Tia’s, where they met up with teammates Recchi, Patrice Bergeron, Nate Horton, Brad Marchand, Milan Lucic, David Krejci, Shawn Thornton and Tuukka Rask. We heard baby B Tyler Seguin was also in da house, but he may have gotten broomed due to the fact that he’s underage. “It was pretty crazy,” said Tia’s server Kevin Estrela, who saw Chara, Ference and the Cup arrive at the waterfront watering hole shortly after 5 p.m. “I don’t think anyone in here had a clue it was coming. But when you see a 6-foot, 9-inch Slovakian guy come in with a Stanley Cup, you put two and two together.” The guys spent a few hours eating calamari and drinking champagne on the Tia’s patio before heading out to Stella in the South End for dinner, with their new best friend, a 2-foot, 11-inch guy named Stanley. File Under: B Cup. As expected, Tim Thomas [stats] is the hottest thing to come outta Boston since, well, Tom Brady [stats]! Ex-Bruin-turned-marketing guru Cleon Daskalakis reports that his phone was “ringing off the hook” yesterday with offers for the 37-year-old Conn Smythe Trophy winner. “I was going to go out to Vancouver for Game 7, but I decided I should be in the office (yesterday) if they won, and boy was I right,” the Celebrity Marketing cheese told the Track. “The phone has been ringing all morning with endorsement deals for Timmy.” Daskalakis said he couldn’t discuss anything until he discussed them with Thomas, but added, “I promise I won’t put him in panty hose . . . Unless it’s a great deal. Then, Timmy, we’ll have to talk.”

Roberto Luongo full of hot air

Tim Thomas understands what his job is, and it does not involve public-relations work for Roberto Luongo. Of that and not much else we can be sure as the Bruins [team stats] skate into tonight’s potential Stanley Cup elimination game at the Garden. Seldom has so much been made of so little after Luongo simply made clear that he was playing for the right team when he whined Saturday about not having heard Thomas say anything “nice” about his play. Playing goalie for a team that has produced more whine in these

finals than Ernest and Julio Gallo, Luongo’s comments seem right in line with the way the Vancouver Canucks have approached things from the start. They have played and acted (particular emphasis on the word “acted”) as if they are the Montreal Canadians of the west. They’ve taken more dives than Greg Louganis, cried wolf more often than Little Red Riding Hood, and whined louder than a rain-soaked alley cat. Having said all that, they’re also up 3-2 in the series, so they must have done something “nice.” That Thomas, in the opinion of Luongo at least, failed to make due note of that may be true, but don’t the Canucks have their own PR staff? Thomas does a lot of things for hockey, but he’s only paid to do them for the Bruins. If Luongo needs a publicist, he should call George Regan. “I guess I didn’t realize it was my job to pump his tires,” Thomas said yesterday. For a guy who claims not to be paying attention to what’s being said and written, Thomas’ reference was an aptly worded direct response to Luongo’s comments a day earlier when he said, “I have been pumping his tires ever since the series started. I haven’t heard one nice thing he had to say about me. That’s the way it is.” Well, yeah it is. You want your tires pumped, go to First Foreign Auto in Arlington; they’ll do it for free. But if you’re waiting for Tim Thomas [stats] to do it at the same time you’re trying to wrestle the Stanley Cup out of his hands you’re barking up the wrong goaltender. “I mean his whole career has been like that,” Bruins defenseman Dennis Seidenberg said of Thomas. “He started over in Europe, then came over here and became a star late in his career. Ever since, he’s been outstanding and proving everybody wrong, so I don’t think that (criticism) is a big deal for him. “I mean he’s been bailing us out every game, making huge saves for us. There is no reason for us to think about whether he did something wrong or right. It’s just something known for him to be great.” Apparently not always, in Luongo’s opinion. After Vancouver’s 1-0 win in Game 5 on Friday night, Luongo claimed he would have made the save Thomas did not on the contest’s only goal. It came off a rebound from the backboards that sent the puck onto the stick of Maxim Lapierre, who dumped it behind Thomas after he’d charged out more from the net than Luongo would have. “It’s not hard (the save) if you’re playing in the paint,” Luongo sniped. “It’s an easy save for me, but if you’re wandering out and aggressive like he does, that’s going to happen. He might make some saves that I won’t, but in a case like that we want to take advantage of a bounce like that and make sure we’re in a good position to bury those.” As verbal shots go it didn’t exactly rank with Mike Tyson saying after a quick knockout victory, “Lennox Lewis, I’m coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!” Luongo not only left Allah out of the Stanley Cup finals, but Thomas’ children, too. Tire pumping, or lack thereof, is far down the trash-talking food chain. That being said, in hockey there is supposed to be some sort of goalie’s union where nobody says anything disparaging about the other guy because they’re all in the puck-stopping business and it ain’t easy. Thomas noted that while at the same time dismissing Luongo’s comments about his style as something less than paramount on his mind at the moment. “I still think I’m a goaltender on the ‘union’ side,” Thomas said. “I stick with all the other goalies. In being one and knowing what it takes to perform at this level and with this amount of pressure. I understand, to a certain extent, what every other goaltender is going through. I guess that’s that. “I did hear about what he said but I don’t really want to go into that. My focus is on what I can do to help my team win going into Game 6 here. I think we’ve done a good job of focusing on the important things, which is what you can do on the ice. As a player, I think that’s your job.” In other words, Tim Thomas [stats] is not in the tire-pumping business tonight. He’s in the tire-deflating business.

Goal of Bruins is to bottle up the Lightning

The Tampa Bay Lightning resemble the Montreal Canadiens in some ways, but they are definitely a notch above the Bruins’ archrival.

Up front, they are loaded with talent in Vincent Lecavalier, Steven Stamkos, and leading scorer Martin St. Louis. When the Eastern Conference finals begin Saturday night at TD Garden, the Bruins must find a way to clamp down on their opponent’s top offensive threats.

“With every skill player, you’ve got to take time and space away and just try to be hard on them, don’t make it easy,’’ said Bruins defenseman Dennis Seidenberg.

“Be hard in battles, try to win those puck battles along the boards, because that’s where they create stuff and get their chances from.’’

It actually might help the Bruins to have played the Habs in the opening round because it gave them seven games of experience negotiating the briar patch that was the neutral zone.

“The first round was a really hard challenge,’’ said Seidenberg. “The second round, we seemed to jell a little bit more and just play better hockey. Now, the third round, the anticipation is bigger, obviously, and everybody is getting ready and we’re looking forward to getting the next one started.’’

The biggest lesson they learned was to not force anything.

“You never want to force plays, and we did that the first couple of games, especially against [Montreal],’’ said Seidenberg. “We’ve just got to choose our spots where we want to be aggressive, where we want to go right back at them or when we want to just regroup and come with speed. It’s a mental game.’’

Seidenberg said players such as Lecavalier, who has 12 points in 11 playoff games, need to be respected.

“He’s obviously very skilled, he’s a former 50-goal scorer,’’ said Seidenberg. “He’s very solid on the puck, he’s strong on the puck. He’s a big body and he protects the puck well along the boards and just creates plays off of that.

“I’d definitely say top 10 [in the league]. All those guys are in the upper [tier] of forwards. So it will be another challenge.’’

Seidenberg said St. Louis, who is Tampa Bay’s top scorer with 13 postseason points, poses a different kind of threat.

“His work ethic is unbelievable,’’ said Seidenberg. “He works like crazy. He’s small and has a low center of gravity. He’s really shifty and smart and he sees the ice really well.’’

As for Stamkos, Seidenberg said, if you follow the puck, it usually finds him.

“He knows how to shoot the puck and he knows where to be,’’ said Seidenberg.

Because of the long break, Game 1 might need some time to take shape.

“Both teams are definitely rested,’’ said Seidenberg. “It’s tough to say if it’s going to be a waiting game or if it’s going to be an up-and-down game.

“We’re trying to play our game and we’ll just have to wait and see what they’re going to come with. They’ve stuck with their system and they’re very patient and we just have to play our game against their system.’’

Much has been made of the Lightning’s 1-3-1 neutral zone scheme, but Bruins coach Claude Julien didn’t sound overly concerned.

“I don’t think you want to certainly put your whole game plan around that,’’ said Julien. “The bottom line is, you’ve got to find a way to get through that. And at the same time, what they’re very good at is when they force you to move the pucks in deep, they’ve got a defenseman there who just grabs it and shoots it right back out.

“So it’s about us getting through that and making sure we give ourselves an opportunity to still have the puck in the offensive zone.

“Our game plan is not going to change a lot. There are going to be some small adjustments here and there, but our game plan should be good enough and we should be confident with it that we know it can continue to bring us success.

“As far as their neutral zone [scheme], it’s very similar to Montreal’s and we were able to get through that one.’’

Julien acknowledged that the Lightning have a more potent offense than anything the Bruins have faced so far.

“Every team you play has got some players you have to keep a close eye on,’’ said Julien. “[Claude] Giroux and [Daniel] Briere in the Philly series, the [Mike] Cammalleris and [Brian] Giontas [in Montreal].

“You’ve just got to make sure you know who they are and you’ve got to make sure you know when they’re on the ice and what they’re capable of doing and hopefully they’re thinking the same way about our players.

“We’ve handled other teams pretty well and we’re going to have to handle those guys just as well because we plan on having success.’’