Back to it

Okay I think I want to get this going again to give myself a place to vent about things other than taxes this busy season...

Mostly Bruins posts will be coming, as they are something worth talking about this season. I think my only issue this year will be finding things to gripe about, because this team is looking pretty good as the season winds down. The team listened to me and stuck with Timmy (like I said) and Tuukka hit his sophomore slump (also like I said-which start last year playoffs rd 2). They got rid of Wheeler (like I said) who was about to break the league record in offsides per season--a record previously held by none other than Blake Wheeler. And despite Savard being out for who knows how long, they have found the back of the net.

But I'm sure I'll think of something...

The Anti-Climatic Summer of Baseball

In mid-June, I finally recovered from the punch to the gut that was the end of the Bruins season. I'm slightly okay with the fact that Boston has met the same fate as the '04 Yankees, and that this town of annoying pink-hat fan-dom knows what that kind of embarrassment feels like. But ask me if I had my choice between the Bruins advancing a round and Boston getting what's been coming to 'em, I'd 100% of the time take the former.

When I finally got around to watching baseball--July 4th is good for that; there's nothing more American than Tim McCarver and Joe Buck calling a Yankees game on Fox; that and the hot dog eating contest--the regular season was basically over. The Yankees had surged to the top of the A.L. East. The Red Sox had begun there 2nd-half downward spiral a month early. And the success of Tampa Bay was leading many in the Nation to question whether or not Boston would even be in contention for a wild card spot.

How did this all get missed? Where did sports fans go instead of to America's Past time?

1. Lakers/Celtics Final: The Lakers and the Celtics are two of the most polarizing teams in the NBA (add Miami to that list now): You either love them or hate them. Even if you are so-so about one of them, your feelings are extreme about the other. This means you're not watching Darnell MacDonald man centerfield at Fenway. You're watching basketball.

2. World Cup: Despite the US being the only (and therefore, the biggest) fair-weather soccer nation in the world, ESPN/ABC jammed world cup coverage down our throats. Even if you didn't enjoy watching the games played accross a perfect green pitch on your 60" HD, it was better than watching Manny DelCarmen give up 5 runs in the 8th inning.

3. Recessionary Baseball: The MLB has taken advantage of fans for a while, making it harder to pay to go to a game that you are probably going to enjoy more watching from home in the A/C with a cheap beer in your hand. Even if you get a good deal on scalped tickets, you're blowing $60-80 on food an drinks by the 3rd inning. The only problem with this concept is that when baseball teams are mediocre, the only way they get attention in their town is by making it affordable to go to games. Without people getting their thrills at the old ball park and without a local team in contention to top their division, TV ratings fall drastically. The advertising dollars go towards America's Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance. And the summer of sports turns into a countdown to football training camp. (BTW: anyone going to Pats camp this week?)

Let's face it: Baseball is the sport of summer. Just not this summer.

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.