Sport: Balanced Bruins

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Still ahead of the Bruins were the annual Stanley Cup play-offs — one of the silliest competitions in all professional sport. Emblematic of the world's professional championship, the Stanley Cup is awarded, not to the winner of the National Hockey League's season schedule, but to the winner of a postseason, round-robin tourney between the league's top six teams. In other words, the regular season's play does nothing but eliminate one team (the seventh). Any team, even the lowest-ranking, stands to win the playoffs. But even the addicts wanted heavy odds against the potent Bruins for this year's Stanley Cup.