Tell me if this sounds familiar…

Congrats to Tim Thomas for showing some recognizable Vezina form last night. Okay so it’s been two months since I’ve written last. I took turns going around on other people’s blogs trying to get my point across there (which never actually goes well). Probably a big reason for not writing is that every other blogger out there has been doing a good job covering the issues. Or maybe there just haven’t been enough issues worth talking about…

If you told me at the end of last season that the B’s would have month-long spans without showing many sparks (beyond dominating at “Kesselmania,” what a joke that was), I would have slapped you across the face with a salmon like you had just tucked in your Bruins jersey. But now that this team has done everything in its power to muffle the momentum from last post-season, let’s take some time to reflect.
Everyone knew coming into the season that this team was good. This includes the players. How many times have you looked across the sports spectrum and seen a team whose downfall was it knew it was good? This has struck the Black and Gold harder than a slapper from Big Z and what we’ve been watching during this past stretch is the team trying to skate it off. Well, there are some times when you just need to head down the tunnel for 5 minutes and tape it.

Example: Maybe it’s just me having a man-crush on Tim “The Tank” Thomas (or hating people for thinking Rask is the second coming of Christ), but I think the biggest non-story for the B’s so far has been the battle for time between the pipes. Tuukka is a gifted goalie and could be headed for a hall of fame career, but look at Thomas’s personal stats outside of the first 5-10 games. There was a stretch of seven games before Timmy sat out with an injured blocker hand where his GAA was hovering around 1.7 and he could only go 50/50 in those games. Boston turned it around in a high-scoring game in Pittsburgh where Thomas may have had the most underrated performance of the year (next to the 2008-2009 All-Star game, but they can’t give the MVP to a Bruin in front of a Montreal crowd). That conference match-up saw Timmy stop not only a breakaway from both Crosby and Malkin, but also a 2-on-1 from – you guessed it – both Crosby and Malkin.

So why were the B’s 7th in the East going into last night? Besides a lackluster offensive effort, the defense has taken a beating. When your defense is taking a beating (or anyone for that matter), they look for nights where they only have to provide 100% effort rather than stretch for the extra 10%. Those nights, unfortunately for TT, have been with last year’s Vezina in net. Welcome to a team that knows they’re good. Welcome to a team that knew they had a top goalie with a top performance in net last night and waited for the 3rd period to stop Ottowa from shooting and put a couple in the net themselves.

Hopefully, last night’s performance was just a big F you from Thomas to the rest of the team. Hopefully, the attitude of ‘your most important player played a 60-minute game, maybe you can play more than 20-minutes’ will rub off on the rest of the team going into the pre-winter classic stretch. If the same team that’s been playing for the past few months shows up New Years Day, the game at Fenway may do more to harm their popularity than promote it.

Either way, I’ll see you at the ball park!

Congrats to Tim Thomas for showing some recognizable Vezina form last night. Saturday night's game was the second time this season the Bruins have come back from multiple goals down to tie it in the third before going on and clinching two points in the shootout. The latest heart attack game was even more intense, calling for two goals in the final 1:28 of regulation. If you watch a replay of the game, try your hardest not to pay attention to Jack Edwards in a classic Jack Edwards moment, and look at the faces of the Sens fans. Priceless.

While Thomas did come out and make some amazing saves, one goal that beat him five hole and another that sneaked by his left pad as it lost coverage of the near post still tell me he's got a little bit of rust to shake off. He'll do better if he's alternating netminding duties with Rask, as this rotation with Fernandez at the beginning of last season really brought the best out of him. Doing this may help Timmy get on the NHL Network's top five saves of the night, like he is below:

A Whole New Team

(Sorry for such a gap in between posts. It's tough devoting the time I want to posts now that I'm working. Then again, I don't think I want to be unemployed again...)

This Bruins bunch has really given me a rough go the past few weeks. I can't decide if I like the direction they're in or not. Don't get me wrong; I don't think the team that was out there tonight against Nashville can win the Cup, but I like where things are going. Remember everyone: this is a Boston team that by no means was a favorite after the first few weeks of the 2008-09 season.

And then something happened. They got behind a "rough and tough and whatever gets the job done" attitude and decided they weren't going to lose in late-November/December. And that's exactly what it'll take for this new crew wearing the B to turn a 3-3 squad into the League's elites.

Some side story lines since my last post will probably end up as a turning point when Kathryn and Barry are recapping the season next spring, either positively and negatively:

Chucky's Out - In reality, this didn't shock me as much as I thought it would. Kobasew got ditched for what may only be explained as a salary dump. The Bruins get yet more draft leverage in exchange for a mediocre, overpaid forward. There is a surplus of average forwards in Boston, and if one leaves, Providence as a bunch of guys who, odds have it, will end up as other average forwards. Which brings me to my second point...

Vladdy! - The shuffling of lines that's come from injuries (we'll get to those another day) has made room for Pruins center Vladimir Sobotka to take on a daily role for the big boy club. The problem with Sobotka in his limited time in playing up last year is that his lack of a defensive game completely contradicts Julien's style. Rather than spend time honing his skills in Boston last year, he was seen as expendable and shipped back to R.I. The longer he calls the Garden his home, the better he'll get...hopefully. But if not, there's always...

P. Burgerrrr - As much as I have against guys named "Patrice," I am amazed by what he's doing this season (not just that goal he scored tonight that he worked his ass off for that everyone else is going to be talking about). After coming back from a tough injury to where he was supposed to be back at his prime last season, he by no means was a star. So while I thought he was on a downhill spiral, he has come out since scoring the lone goal on opening night as the ice time leader he was supposed to be that past few years. Let's hope he's not the only guy stepping up with the absence of Marc and Milan.

Go B's! See you tmw night in Philly!!

Great Video - Fired Up for Game 2

I just saw this video again this morning and was immediately compelled to buy tickets to tonight's game vs. the 'Canes. See you there...

The B's Are Back -- Kind Of...

As I wait for baseball games to start mattering again, I've had a lot of time to get amped up for the start of the Bruins season. For the second year in a row, I've been able to go to the home opener at the Garden ice, and for the second year in a row, I've watched the Bruins disappoint a sell-out crowd that was completely drunk with excitement (or just drunk).

A big problem for the B's last year, the lack of a consistent, go-to goal scorer, got much worse this off-season with the loss of Phil Kessel, the young-gun who looked ready to take on that role. However, when you have the reigning Vezina winner between the pipes (not to mention the Norris winner in front of him) and, oh yeah, the Jennings Trophy on display at the pre-game kick-off event, maybe you can get by without as much offense. It brought Boston the best regular season record in the East just six months ago, hopefully it will work again.

Last night, though, it was almost impossible to pick out the weakest area on the team: not because there were none, but instead too many. Of course the horrible passing and lack of speed through the neutral zone made me sick, but I don't think that did the most damage as the Bruins fell to the Capitals 4-1. The bad luck Boston has had this year (and last year against the Penguins) is opening at home against a team with a superstar forward.

Despite the individual accolades, the B's get their strength as a unit; being able to push out four effective lines and never giving up an easy side on defense. The team that took the ice last night adorning the black and gold lacked any hint of these strengths that brought so much hope to Boston hockey fans. The flaw in giving up these big holes with lack of communication and cohesiveness was that last night (like last year) they were across the ice from one of the elite players of this decade.

As much as you can hate Ovechkin (especially in the home-opener after hitting Savard well behind the play and out of a ref's sight and then making sure to wimp-out and just draw the penalty when Chara went in for a retaliatory fight), it's impossible to note that his ability of ALWAYS being open is anything less than genius. The only way to keep him (or Crosby) in check is to put a Lucic or a Wheeler on him. Without a physical player glued to the #8 on his back wherever he roves all over the ice, the Bruins don't beat the Caps--not to mention any other team.

But the biggest hope I can draw on is that the B's started with a home opener loss last year, they had the same struggles finding the right line-mates, and their special teams were a weakness even on a power play. Still, they found a way to prove all the doubters wrong. My guess is that it had something to do with the other trophy holder on the squad: the Jack Adams winner on the bench. Let's just hope Claude can work some magic in a season that has the bulls-eye square on Boston's back.

August Update/Millar Factor

While I had some brief fun with Ortiz last week, including adamantly booing him during his six at-bats I saw while at the Yankees game last Thursday (his first game in the Bronx since the Times article came out), there's so much more to talk about. I, unlike the Boston media, was more interested in how dominating the Bombers were over the four-game series than what Papi had to say in his press conference Saturday.

Let me just say that I am now more than ever looking forward to another sports talk radio station in Boston. If I have to hear another moronic caller on WEEI go on about how Ortiz probably never knowingly took as much as a Red Bull to help him get up to the Majors, I might go crazy. I'm sorry Big O but you are and idiot if you think that Ortiz knew any less about what he was taking than A-Rod, so stop acting like it. You are an embarrassment to sports radio.

The real issue in Boston is that there is no Kevin Millar. That is to say that there is no personality in the clubhouse. Maybe it was just the fact that they were held scoreless for 31 consecutive innings, but the visiting dugout at new Yankee Stadium this weekend looked pretty abysmal compared to years when the Sox even thought they had a chance. That's where the Kevin Millar factor steps in.

In '04, Millar's antics, which I admittedly criticized over and over again, really showed how much his team liked what they were doing. As much as I'm not the ideal employee example at the moment, I think it's safe to say that when you like what you're doing you do your best work. In '07, when the Sox won their second Series of the decade, Manny Ramirez's comic relief role was as big if not bigger than his bat. He was the Millar for the clubhouse that year.

One thing the Yankees have shown us over the past few years is that you can have the best players in the league, but without a Millar, you won't win a ring. Enter Nick Swisher. (This could have gone to A.J. with his shaving cream pies, but he's too much of a stud on the mound.) Swisher was never supposed to be an everyday player, but with his increased playing time as a result of injuries to Gardner and Nady, his personality has had a lot more time to shine. His Swish-hawk, his tweets, and his occasional home runs have given the Yankees the life they've been lacking for too long.

As I was correct about the August Sox slump in my previous post, let's see if I can go 2 for 2 on the Yanks going back where they belong, back to the World Series, and all because of the Kevin Millar factor (and maybe with some help from acquisitions of Sabathia, Burnett, and Texiera).

Justice

I've been waiting for this day ever since Alex Rodriguez's name came out in February the media as one of the players who tested positive in supposedly anonymous, research-gathering steroid tests in 2003. No more than three minutes after the story broke, every one of my Red Sox-loving friends (which is a majority, living near Boston) had some clever thing to say about "A-Roid" or "A-Fraud." Not only was Red Sox Nation already overzealous about they're run of success over the past five years, but now they had this to gloat about.

Come to think of it, I've been waiting for this ever since the Sox mysteriously had a swelling of offense to win their first World Series in 86 years. Since 2004 I've been waiting for this kind of doubt, this kind of dumbfounded response, from these Boston fans. And now I have it...

Mark July 30, 2009 on your calendar as the first day of Red Sox Nation demise. That day will go down as the day Papi was known to "disrespect" his narrow-sighted fans. How does a guy who knowingly tested positive in the same test that broke about A-Rod in spring training respond by saying he's better than that because he cares about the game, his family, and his fans? How can he still get cheered so feverishly by the Fenway Faithful? How can he get curtain-called for powering a go-ahead home run to center field hours after it was finally confirmed that his power was derived from more than "rice and beans?"

More to come on this topic later...