BOSTON — It’s been more than three months since the last championship parade in Boston, and the city is getting antsy.

Sure, the Red Sox won the World Series last October. And the New England Patriots earned their sixth Super Bowl victory in February.

But since then: Nothing.

And Boston’s sports fans are counting on the Bruins to end the interminable title drought.

“It definitely lights a fire under you to see the other teams in the city bring home their championships,” defenseman Brandon Carlo said as the team prepared to face the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Final. “We want to be a part of it.”

It wasn’t too long ago that Boston was a sad sack of a sports city, with the Patriots the joke of the NFL and the Red Sox mired in a dynasty of disappointment that would stretch to 86 years. The Celtics won far more than their share, but they endured the longest championship drought in franchise history from 1986-2008.

The Bruins went from Bobby Orr’s two championships in the early 1970s until Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron brought the Cup home in 2011.

If that doesn’t seem like a long time ago, try telling that to the newly spoiled Boston fans who have grown up with the Belichick-and-Brady Patriots and a Red Sox franchise that has won as many championships in the past 15 seasons as it did in the previous 100.

“It feels like there’s been a little bit of a gap in there,” said Carlo, a Coloradan who is 22 years-old, and has only been in the city for three years. “The way things have gone for Boston, we’re looking to be like the other teams.”

And now they have their chance.

The Bruins are at their strongest heading into the Cup final, with a seven-game winning streak that includes a sweep of the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Goalie Tuukka Rask has allowed more than two goals just twice in the past 13 games, and he won the last two playoff clinchers with a shutout. Brad Marchand is the leading scorer remaining in the playoffs.

And, with the Celtics done, the Patriots in the offseason and the Red Sox still recovering from their early season championship hangover, the Bruins have the city’s attention.

“We want to be considered the best game in town. Why wouldn’t we?” coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We have some serious competition.”

Cassidy said he has developed a relationship with the other coaches in town, and he reached out to the Patriots for advice on how to handle the long layoff between series. The Celtics practice facility is next door to the Bruins’; on the morning of an NBA playoff game, Cassidy wore a Celtics shirt to his media availability.

When he took the podium for Wednesday’s news conference, Cassidy looked at the unusually large crowd and said, “Red Sox off today?” (They’re on the road.)

The Bruins have also noticed the difference when they’re out and run into fans around town.

“You do see how the city rallies around you,” Bruins forward Jake DeBrusk said. “I grew up in Edmonton, and we only have one sports team. To come in here, and there’s four sports teams and they’re usually pretty good, in the playoffs or in the hunt or winning.

“It’s very lucky to be playing here,” DeBrusk said. “Ever since I’ve gotten here I fall in love with the city. To see the teams win around here, and how the people supported it, it’s very special.”

PASSING TIME

The Boston Bruins think they’ve found a way to stay sharp for the Stanley Cup Final while waiting a total of 10 days between games.

The Eastern Conference champions will hold a public intrasquad scrimmage on Thursday night, and coach Bruce Cassidy said he’ll try to maintain a regular game-day schedule so that the players will get back in the routine before the opener of the championship series on Monday.

“We’ve got some ideas we bandied around. We came up with this one,” Cassidy said on Tuesday, the Bruins’ fifth day off since sweeping the Carolina Hurricanes in the East finals. “We’ve had good practices, but this will be a little bit different.”

The Bruins needed seven games to dispatch the Toronto Maple Leafs in the opening round, then had one day off before starting the second round against Columbus. They finished off the Blue Jackets in six games, and had two days to rest before Game 1 against the Hurricanes.

But that series ended Thursday, and the Bruins didn’t even find out their opponent for the final until Wednesday night, when the St. Louis Blues eliminated the San Jose Sharks in six games.

Cassidy said last week he would reach out to other teams to get pointers on how to handle long layoffs. Among them: the New England Patriots, who routinely have a first-round bye, in addition to a two-week break before the Super Bowl.

The Bruins coach said on Tuesday that he touched base with all of the teams in town, as well as some of the Boston players from the 2011 and ’13 teams that went to the Final and other NHL coaches who have had long breaks. But he declined to share their advice.

“We’ll take what we thought was relevant to us and go from there,” Cassidy said, acknowledging that a seven-game series is different than preparing for a Super Bowl. “In the first game, we want to be good. We want to be sharp. We want to be on time. We want to win. But we have a bit more luxury than say a one-and-done.”

The scrimmage will be two, 25-minute periods, with two officials on the ice. But some rules will be ignored in the interest of situational drills and keeping everyone healthy.

Cassidy said he may create a four-on-four situation as well as a six-on-five for a potential end-of-game, pulled goalie scenario. The checking line will face off against the top line, and players might switch teams to get the matchups Cassidy wants to work on.

Individual players, including goalie Tuukka Rask, will decide how much they want to play.

The winning team will earn … something.

“They will put something on the line,” Cassidy said. “That’s something I have to discuss with them. I think that’s important. What it is it could be something very minimal, or whatever it is they want to decide.”

Other than that, the coach said he will be happy if everyone comes out of the scrimmage healthy. He said it will be no different than practice, when players know not to check their teammates, but because of the increased stakes, he will talk to the team about it.

“This isn’t a physicality contest out there. It’s compete on pucks. It’s play with some pace,” he said. “I think we’re smart enough. That will be the message I relay to some of the younger guys: We’re doing this for a reason. But the reason is not to injure anybody.”

Fans can attend Thursday’s scrimmage for $20, and park for $10; popcorn will be free for children. Proceeds will go to the Boston Bruins Foundation.

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Copyright 2019 The Associated Press.

s0156 —– r s bx BC-HKN–Stanley Cup-Lookahead,1st Ld-Writethru (AP 5-22-2019 10:34 EDT)

Bruins, Blues meet in Stanley Cup Final 49 years in making

Eds: Adds quotes from Blues coach Craig Berube, additional photos. With AP Photos.

By STEPHEN WHYNO

AP Hockey Writer

Seeing the famous photo of Bobby Orr scoring the 1970 Stanley Cup-winning goal to beat his St. Louis Blues doesn’t bring back bad memories for Scotty Bowman.

“Not really,” the legendary coach said. “Because we didn’t have a big opportunity to win that series.”

Orr and the big, bad Boston Bruins swept Bowman’s overmatched, expansion-era Blues in that series. Now 49 years later, Boston is in its third final in nine seasons and St. Louis is back for the first time since 1970, but this Bruins-Blues rematch is a showdown between two of the NHL’s best teams since Jan. 1.

“Now it’s more level,” Bowman said. “(The Blues) don’t give a lot of room in their end, and of course their goalie’s been lights out.”

Coming off a sweep of Carolina in the Eastern Conference final, the Bruins are favored in the series that begins Monday in Boston. Goaltender Tuukka Rask is the front-runner to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. Brad Marchand is playing some of the best hockey of his career with 18 points in 17 games, and there’s a mix of veterans from the 2011 Stanley Cup-winning team and fresh players eager to get their names etched on the trophy.

“I think as you get older, you appreciate it even more, and you realize how hard it is to get to this point and advance and be thankful and stay in the moment,” center Patrice Bergeron said. “But then it’s back to work, and there’s a lot of work in front of us.”

Unlike in 1970, when the Bruins essentially just had to step on the ice to take the final, these Blues won’t go away. They woke up last in the league on Jan. 3 before winning 30 of their final 45 games to roll into the playoffs, where they beat the Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars and San Jose Sharks.

Craig Berube, who replaced Mike Yeo as Blues coach in November, said teams would rather avoid those tough times. But they’ve made his players stronger.

“We were trying to get on the right track,” Berube said after the Western Conference final-clinching Game 6 victory Tuesday. “Once we got going in January and February, I knew we had a good hockey team. Once you get in the playoffs, anything can happen. We’re here and we did. They believed they were going to make the playoffs, and we’re here.”

The Blues are still here in large part because of rookie goaltender Jordan Binnington, whose first start in January coincided with the turnaround. They adopted Laura Branigan’s catchy 1980s pop hit “Gloria” as their victory song, rallied in the playoffs around young fan Laila Anderson, who has a life-threatening immune disease, and became the NHL’s latest surprise story.

“The last couple months in the city have been crazy,” star winger Vladimir Tarasenko said. “The support is amazing. They give us a lot of power. Unbelievable.”

St. Louis is the oldest franchise not to win the Stanley Cup, and its drought is the second longest behind the Toronto Maple Leafs’. The Leafs won the season before the Blues came into the league. To finish this improbable run, the Blues have to go through the Bruins, who finished tied for the second-most points this season.

“They are a hard team to play against, a really skilled team,” Tarasenko said. “But we have a hard team, too. It will be some interesting games.”

Bowman’s first thought about the series was that he couldn’t believe how long the Bruins will have to sit out. Boston will have a week and a half between finishing off Carolina and Game 1, and even St. Louis will go six days without playing.

One benefit for the Bruins is they should get captain Zdeno Chara back for the final after he missed Game 4 against Carolina.

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Follow AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SWhyno

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More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP–Sports

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press.