BOSTON (Reuters) – The Boston Bruins, fresh off a dominating 5-2 win to tie their NHL playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks, now face one of the toughest tasks in hockey — to close out the series on the road.

Game Seven in Vancouver on Wednesday will be the 16th time a Stanley Cup final series has gone to a deciding seventh game. In the 15 earlier series, the home team has won 12 times.

For that reason, Boston head coach Claude Julien sounded cautiously optimistic at best after Monday’s win. Canucks counterpart Alain Vigneault was calm and relatively breezy, despite the pounding his team received.

“We’ve got to be hungrier than we have been the last three times in Vancouver, and want to put some pucks at the net and get hungry around that net area,” said Julien.

In their three series losses to the Canucks the Bruins have scored only two goals and been shut out twice. Their home wins, by contrast, have featured 17 goals.

“We’re willing to bring it to Vancouver with us, because that’s what it’s going to take to win,” said Julien.

Vigneault said the Canucks season-long effort, which earned them the top seeding and home ice advantage throughout the playoffs, was about to pay dividends.

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, on a third trip to New Hampshire in a month, on Saturday said he would announce a decision on running for president soon, after one last discussion with his family.

All the major elements of a campaign — fund-raising, organization, and boots on the ground — are in place for a final decision, Huntsman said during a stop at the Manchester, New Hampshire Harley-Davidson dealership.

“We need to check the family ‘box,’ to sit down with the family one last time,” said the father of seven Huntsman, 51, who resigned in April as the U.S. Ambassador to China. “You will be hearing something shortly.”

Huntsman will be absent on Monday from the first major debate of the election cycle, when seven White House hopefuls will square off in a nationally-televised event from Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Republican said that he did not originally qualify for the debate by reaching a certain threshold of support.

Huntsman’s plan on Saturday for an afternoon of manly photo-opportunities — riding a borrowed Hog to the annual Laconia Motorcycle Week rally — was quashed by heavy rain.

“A meeting with some 75,000 riders is perfect for anyone who wants to get name recognition. But I’ve been a biker for 40 years. I love riding,” said Huntsman, dressed in leather jacket, faded jeans and heavy boots.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It is unlikely the Federal Reserve will need to craft another round of extraordinary support for the U.S. economy despite a string of recent weak data, participants at the Reuters 2011 Investment Summit said this week.

Ten of 13 summit guests said the possibility of a so-called QE3 program is extremely unlikely. They also see 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields set to climb higher in the coming six months, coming off current historic lows.

Under the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing, known as QE2, the U.S. central bank has bought a total of about $600 billion in government bonds since November. That has pumped liquidity into financial markets, helping to drive up stock prices and, some argue, commodity prices as well.

QE2 is scheduled to be completed at the end of June.

But recent economic data has been weaker than expected, with initial jobless claims rising, the jobless rate creeping up, retail demand lackluster and manufacturing slipping.

More key economic numbers are due in the coming days, with attention focusing on a possible decline in May retail sales, due to be released on June 14.

The U.S. economy grew by only 1.8 percent in the first quarter and is forecast to grow by about 2.5 percent in the second quarter, which ends June 30.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It is unlikely the Federal Reserve will need to craft another round of extraordinary support for the U.S. economy despite a string of recent weak data, participants at the Reuters 2011 Investment Summit said this week.

Ten of 13 summit guests said the possibility of a so-called QE3 program is extremely unlikely. They also see 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields set to climb higher in the coming six months, coming off current historic lows.

Under the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing, known as QE2, the U.S. central bank has bought a total of about $600 billion in government bonds since November. That has pumped liquidity into financial markets, helping to drive up stock prices and, some argue, commodity prices as well.

QE2 is scheduled to be completed at the end of June.

But recent economic data has been weaker than expected, with initial jobless claims rising, the jobless rate creeping up, retail demand lackluster and manufacturing slipping.

More key economic numbers are due in the coming days, with attention focusing on a possible decline in May retail sales, due to be released on June 14.

The U.S. economy grew by only 1.8 percent in the first quarter and is forecast to grow by about 2.5 percent in the second quarter, which ends June 30.

BOSTON (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney has remade himself in a second run for president, with a leaner campaign apparatus and a message focused with laser-like precision on the nation’s economic problems.

But the “Mormon question” still remains for the former Massachusetts governor: are Americans ready to put a Mormon in the White House?

Surveys suggest American voters are more accepting of the idea now than when Romney staged his first presidential run in 2008. But at the margins, many remain suspicious of Mormons.

A Quinnipiac University poll this week found voters less comfortable with the idea of a Mormon president than having a leader of any religion other than a Muslim, or an atheist.

“The fact that less than half of voters have a favorable view of the religion is likely to be a political issue that Governor Romney … will have to deal with,” said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut.

Romney has closer ties to Mormonism than other Mormons in U.S. politics, such as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Jon Huntsman, his possible Republican rival for the party’s presidential nomination.

A fifth-generation member of the faith whose forebears were involved in the religion from the mid-1850s, Romney is a former lay bishop of Massachusetts’ temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Allowing the United States to default on some of its debt “flirts with irresponsibility,” Richard Bernstein, a prominent investment strategist said on Wednesday.

Bernstein, who now runs his own firm after being chief investment strategist for Merrill Lynch & Co, said even a short-term, “technical” default would raise the cost of capital, making it harder for individuals and companies to borrow and threaten a “still fragile” economy.

The idea of letting the United States, which has “triple-A” credit ratings, default by failing to raise the country’s debt limit was once confined to a fringe of the Republican Party determined to curb government spending.

But a growing number of Republicans is expressing comfort with tolerating a brief default if it pushes the White House to slash government outlays and take steps to curb the nation’s $1.4 trillion annual budget deficit.

“The notion of flirting with a default on existing obligations flirts with irresponsibility,” Bernstein, now chief executive of Richard Bernstein Capital Management LLC, said at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.

“I just want the example of a default that has resulted in a cheaper cost of capital for the defaulter,” he continued. “It doesn’t happen.”

DRUCKENMILLER STIRS THE POT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stock indexes could fall as much as 10 percent from their May highs, but barring unexpected shocks should not return to a bear market, Citigroup’s chief U.S. equity strategist said on Tuesday.

“I think we are in a correction,” Tobias Levkovich said at the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York. “We’re just going to struggle along here, and there will be bouts of rallies and pullbacks.”

The strategist’s year-end forecast for the benchmark S&P 500 index is 1,400 points. A 10-percent correction from the May 2 peak of 1,370 points would put the index at 1,233.

Near midday on Tuesday, the S&P 500 was 0.4 percent higher at 1,291.20.

U.S. stock prices since May have been hit by fears of weakening global economic growth linked by Europe’s debt troubles, the tsunami in Japan, falling U.S. home prices, the high jobless rates and rising energy and food prices.

Despite those headwinds, equities still look comparatively good as an asset class, said Levkovich, who described the U.S. economy as being in a “soft patch” and not on the verge of returning to recession.

“I think equities are a better investment class right now than looking at cash or bonds, but that’s different from saying that stocks are an awesome place to be.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. corporate profits are poised to overtake the pre-recession record of 2007, but the rate of growth could tail off as margins compress in 2012, Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. equity strategist said on Monday.

At the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York, Goldman’s David Kostin said the firm continues to see the S&P 500 index .SPX ending 2011 at 1,450 points. He cut his forecast from 1,500 on May 27.

The biggest risk to that forecast is “a more significant slowdown in the U.S. economy or higher raw material prices than we are currently forecasting,” Kostin said.

The benchmark stock index fell to 1,290 points on Monday, its lowest in more than two months, extending a five-week decline on worries about a slowing economy.

Fears of weakening global economic growth reflect persistent headwinds: Europe’s sovereign debt troubles, the tsunami in Japan, and in the United States, falling home prices, high jobless rates and rising energy and food prices that have sapped spending power.

Investors and economists’ deep concerns also center on crucial policy decisions that will help determine the nation’s economic health.

Of immediate issue is the end of the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion asset-purchase program at the end of June, which has been one of the economy’s major supports. As policymakers gradually rein in stimulus measures, investors fear the world’s economies are still too weak to thrive.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The biggest risk to a rally in the U.S. stock market is that economic growth could be weaker and energy and other raw material prices even higher than now expected, Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. equity strategist said on Monday.

At the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York, Goldman’s David Kostin said the firm continues to see the Standard and Poors 500 index .SPX ending 2011 at 1,450 points. He cut his forecast from 1,500 on May 27.

The benchmark stock index fell to 1,291 points on Monday, its lowest since March 23.

Asked about the biggest question mark for stocks, Kostin cited “a more significant slowdown in the U.S. economy or higher raw material prices than we are currently forecasting.”

The firm’s S&P forecast currently assumes U.S. GDP growth for 2011 at a relatively sluggish 2.6 percent, rising to 3.2 percent in 2012, and Brent crude oil prices ending the year at $120 per barrel, rising to $140 by the end of 2012.

Against that backdrop, Goldman currently favors large-capitalization stocks over small-cap, although the strategy has not paid off so far.

Kostin said consumer staple stocks could outperform for now, and that many such firms are having success passing higher materials costs onto their users.

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.

“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”

The former Massachusetts governor fielded questions on topics ranging from the debt ceiling to abortion on his first official day of campaigning for 2012 Republican primary nomination.

Romney leads opinion polls in New Hampshire by a wide margin, and is among the top contenders nationally to win the Republican contest to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama.

But the candidate lost the publicity battle on Thursday when his campaign launch in New Hampshire was overshadowed by Republican star Sarah Palin, who swooped in as part of her East Coast bus tour to dominate local media coverage.

In addressing climate change and energy policy, Romney veered from the party’s usual skepticism on global warming, when he called on the United States to break its dependence on foreign oil, and expand alternative energies including solar, wind, nuclear and clean coal.