People say time heals, but they never say how much time.

For the Vancouver Canucks — and probably anyone who follows them — it takes a lot longer than 4½ years to ease the pain from losing the 2011 Stanley Cup Final to the Boston Bruins.

It’s only sports, only a game. We should remember that. And the National Hockey League operates in that absurd pro-sports alternate universe of millionaire athletes and billionaire owners whose worst days on the job would be like the greatest day on Earth for many people.

But within the context of this fantastical bubble, the Canucks had two chances to win one game for the Stanley Cup and were outscored 9-2 by the Bruins, who wore their black uniforms well. The only Vancouver team to win the Cup did so a century ago and you’d never know it from looking at the trophy because the players’ names are etched on the inside of Lord Stanley’s beer tureen.

So, yeah, it’s going to be a while before Canucks players remember much fondly about the first two weeks of June 2011.

“I still haven’t got there yet,” winger Alex Burrows, one of eight remaining Canucks who played in the final, said Friday on the eve of the Bruins’ annual visit to Vancouver. “When I think about it, when people talk about it, it’s still not a good feeling. We let a great, great, great opportunity slip away.”

Winger Chris Higgins said: “If I go my whole career without winning one, it will probably rub me raw for awhile. I think you have to make the best of it; the experience made me a better player.”

But the Canucks have gotten worse as a team since then. Pool all their playoff game victories since 2011 (three), and it still wouldn’t be enough to win a single series. The Bruins, by contrast, played for the Stanley Cup again in 2013 but lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in six games.

After getting too old, too slow and too tenured, the Canucks are in the tumult of a major renovation that has two 19-year-olds on the team and has included seven different rookies making an NHL debut this season.

The Bruins? Well, we’re not sure quite where they are in their life cycle. After missing the playoffs last season for the first time in eight years, rookie general manager Don Sweeney surprised everyone in the NHL in June by trading away core pieces Milan Lucic, 27, and Dougie Hamilton, 22, for futures while retaining players like Zdeno Chara, 38, Dennis Seidenberg, 34, and Chris Kelly, 35.

There are seven Bruins left from those whose names were engraved on the Stanley Cup in 2011, although Kelly is injured and goalie Tuukka Rask never got onto the ice in the final except to take a twirl with the trophy at Rogers Arena.

Boston played in Calgary on Friday night, two nights after its five-game winning streak ended with a 3-2 shootout loss to the Edmonton Oilers. The Bruins are 13-8-2 this season, the Canucks 9-10-8.