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Canucks still getting their teeth into Bruins in Stanley Cup finals

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Vancouver Canucks winger Alex Burrows’ bite on the gloved fingers of Boston’s Patrice Bergeron in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals got him a hearing with the NHL and probably should have gotten Burrows suspended for Game 2, in which he collected three points in a 3-2 overtime victory that gave the Canucks a 2-0 series lead.

Boston fans fumed over that, and they had more to stew over when Vancouver center Max Lapierre waved his fingers in Bergeron’s face late in Game 2 and taunted the Boston center, who swatted Lapierre’s hand away.

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“Everyone is trying their best to win the games. What happened on the ice, happened on the ice,” Lapierre said Monday in Boston after the Canucks’ morning skate at TD Center.

Asked if he would do it again, Lapierre said, “I’m not going to comment on that.” Teammate Henrik Sedin said that if the Bruins want to focus on such things, ‘That’s fine with us.’ He said he saw pictures of Lapierre’s gesture ‘but I get a lot of gloves up in my face as well.... There’s a lot of facewashing going on in the league.’

The juvenile behavior met with the disapproval of Bruins Coach Claude Julien.

“If it’s acceptable for them, then so be it. Certainly wouldn’t be acceptable on our end of it,” he said Monday.

“I think you know me enough to know that. Not much I can say on that.

“The NHL rules on something. They decide to make a mockery of it, that’s totally up to them. If that’s their way of handling things, so be it. Again, we can’t waste our time on that kind of stuff. We really have to focus on what we have to do. The last time I looked, we’re down two games to none, and all our energy has to go towards that.”

His Vancouver counterpart, Alain Vigneault, claimed to have seen or heard nothing.

‘If that happened in between whistles I didn’t see it,” Vigneault said. ‘I focus on the play that’s going on between whistles, so I can’t really comment on that.’

We’ll have more later and coverage of Game 3 at www.latimes.com/sports.

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ALSO:

Bruins still looking for home-ice edge

Times guest blogger George Parros on Game 2 of Stanley Cup finals

-- Helene Elliott in Boston

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