WARNING: Video contains offensive language

When Milan Lucic won the Stanley Cup in 2011 with the Boston Bruins, he followed tradition and proudly brought the Cup back to his hometown.

But he kept it fairly quiet.

Ken Mackenzie, his rugby coach at Killarney high school in East Vancouver, received a text from Lucic that summer: “He wanted to know if I would join him, four or five former teachers, a lot of friends from his grade. He rented a boat, and took (the Cup) around Coal Harbour, up Grouse Mountain and to his church.”

As the boat slid through the waters around Vancouver, Lucic shared the magic moment with those who were closest to him.

“He didn’t want to parade it around and have anything bad happen. He didn’t want to bother anyone.”

But when the boat came close to shore at Granville Island, “A cheer went up,” said Mackenzie. “Everybody on shore was cheering when they saw the Cup. He’s a hometown guy. He lives here.”

But that can also be a problem.

He was bringing the Cup home as a Boston Bruin, to a city still reeling from the riot that followed the team’s Game 7 victory over the Canucks. And sometimes it still appears to be reeling

The Bruins lost in Vancouver on Saturday night, but an altercation followed afterward at a Vancouver nightclub.

Lucic says he was on the wrong end of an unprovoked attack by a man he did not know, and with whom he had not exchanged a single word.

“There was no reason for him to punch me but he did and that’s all I can really say right now.”

Lucic said he is pursuing the matter with the Vancouver police, but the attack has added to the bitter disappointment he has felt in his hometown since the Bruins’ Game 7 Stanley Cup win.

He said his grandparents were showered with peanuts and popcorn while attending Game 1 of the final series.

In February 2012, hooligans spray-painted male genitalia along with Canucks slogans on St. Archangel Michael Serbian Orthodox Church in Burnaby, which Lucic attends, and to which he had brought the cup.

His girlfriend complained about being “flipped off” in Rogers Arena, by Canucks’ wife, for wearing a Bruins jersey.

Lucic told a reporter after Saturday’s incident, “I have no reason left to defend my city and the people in my city. I’m disgusted and outraged that it had to come to something like that.”

Asked about the incident Monday at a practice in St. Paul, Minn., Canucks assistant general manager Laurence Gilman said that in a “rabid hockey market like ours,” players have a “very high degree of visibility” and have to be careful. “Things can happen. Unfortunately, you are not looked upon as a regular citizen.”

But behind the scenes, to the local friends and family he remains close to, Lucic is one of the good guys.

He doesn’t take his success on the ice for granted because he very nearly didn’t get there.