Phil who?

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out.

Welcome back, to that same old place that you laughed about.

Well the names have all changed since you hung around,

But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.

Yeah we tease you a lot cause we've got you on the spot, welcome back.

Kessel: Oh hey Marco, great to see you buddy!

           Good luck tonight, haha, you'll need it.

   Sturm:  Bereiten sie zu sterben.                          
(Prepare to die)                       

 

Bruins and Leafs win, Lucic out with high ankle sprain

I'll be honest. Wednesday night I was exhausted and didn't stay awake past Milan Lucic twisting his knee awkwardly after getting his skate stuck in a rut. I'd been watching the Leafs half assed, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention. When I went to watch it later on the Tivo, I discovered I'd recorded the only available feed - from SunSports. Fail. No commentary on the Leafs win since I'm not a sado-masochist and can't watch the morons on SunSports. So here's what I know, I won't expound on what I don't or paraphrase from other peoples' writing.

The Bruins won all 4 road games, bringing home a majestic 8 points, putting them in 1st place in the Northeast Division. The return of Milan Lucic, and having Savard with the team on the roadtrip, and on the ice for the last 2 games, indeed infused the team with the jump and energy they needed to get it done. David Krejci had a monster of a shootout goal, and I'm disappointed in Savvy for not potting one, considering he and Shane Doan are apparently the 2 best shootout shooters in the NHL (keep your remarks about Timmy helping Savvy cheat to yourselves).

The bothersome bit about the Bruins' game was mentioned in paragraph 1, line 2. Milan Lucic caught his skate in a rut, fell awkwardly, twisting his knee in a manner that knees are not meant to be twisted, then made the most awkward hop off the ice I've ever seen, and was helped down the runway to the room in order to be checked out. However, Chiarelli just addressed the media prior to the morning skate and informed them that Looch has a high-ankle sprain, and will be out for a month. I'm not the greatest at math and dates and shit, but I'm fairly sure this all but eliminates Milan's chances of making the Canadian Olympic team.

Looch, Looch, Looch. Baby take care of yourself. You're having a run of bad luck with the injuries. Your fans are rooting for you, and I hope I speak for everyone when I say get well soon. And watch out for ruts.

Bruins @ Thrashers - picture time!

Before we get into the photos, I want to congratulate the Thrashers on finally being an AWESOME team. That was an intensely great game of hockey last night. It might not have seemed it because the crowd just wasn't there, but props to the fans who did show up. That might go down as one of my favourite hockey games of all time. I'm really pleased and pleasantly surprised to see the Thrash coming into their own finally, and see them playing the way I knew they could all along. That said, I'm still waiting for Kari to return until I really start paying attention to the games. Fucked up? Probably. Will Kari even stay on the team? Who knows. But you know how I roll and where my loyalties lie. But well played, Atlanta Thrashers. Very well played.

These are only the first round of photos I was able to dig up. There were more obviously, but I based these on either the Bruins doing something awesome, or the absolute HILARITY of the fans in the background. Considering it sounded and looked like there was only about 200 people in the building, and 100 of them were Bruins fans, these pictures are high-quality entertainment. I shall point out my LOLs. The good photos are from Reuters. The shitty ones are from AP. All rights reserved, blahblabhblah.

LOL: Looch stripped Bogo of the puck in his first day back on the job.

LOL: Is that a wookie in the crowd over Little's left shoulder
(our left, his right)? And/or Johny Candy's ghost???

LOL: There is very little in this world I love more than a fan
giving a hockey player the finger. And this guy goes all the
way with a double-salute. What is he, a disgruntled former
Ottawa fan? Is the nice older lady behind Z smiling at him?
Is that my Aunt Donna?!

LOL: The look of "this isn't happening, I didn't
see it, la la la they didn't score" on the guy over
Wheels' shoulder. Also, A Krejci goal celebration! WIN!

LOL: There are so many I don't know where to start. I love the lady
in the front row trying to use her Jedi powers (or Harry Potter
protection spells) to keep that puck outta the net. The other big LOL
here is that I was praying Bergie did not go into the shootout. I
picked Ryder, Krejci and Wheels. I was 2/3 right. And lookit that,
Bergie deked Pony right out of his net, AND his jock. That
goal was a thing of beauty. Shame Wheels pulled the same
move and whiffed on the open net.

LOL: The dismay of the three Atlana fans in the audience, and Tuukka with
his best QB pose EVAR (4th-and-2 what?). What's even funnier is that he
was stumbling at the time, and falling backwards, so mad props
to the photographer of this one.

Also funny, I was talking to one of my friends as it went to the shootout (ok, talking is a stretch. I was just saying "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT" but whatever, it's communication), and look, the B's aren't really known for their prowess on the shootout (I keep typing that shoutout. Hilar!). And uh, hello? Kozlov, Afinegenov, (can't spell that to save my life), Kovalchuk? This was disaster waiting to happen. I told my girl that someone better make sure all the milk crates in Philips were tied down.

As Jack Edwards loves to say - Two U's, two K's and a big fat W.

I'll keep looking for more photo o'hilarity for you. Thrashers fans, you keep it funny. There may not be a lot of you, but I salute those of you that show up and make the game more entertaining.

Also of relevance to Thrashers fans, tickets for Casino Night are now available! The event will occur on 01/10/10. Someone please buy me a ticket so I can come mingle and meet all of you?

Wides hits 100 and other Bs @ ATL / TOR observations!

Congratulations, Dennis Wideman! 100 NHL points. And way to pick up your O. Mikey Ryder, my fantasy team thanks you. Milan Lucic looks awesome out there. There's been a few missteps, but on the whole, looking good. Coach, thanks for taking my suggestion to put Wides back with Ference.

Um. BOTH Thrasher goals left me agape. My jack was slack. Very, very impressive.

This would be SUCH a better game if there was a roar of a crowd. DURING the game. This is a GOOD hockey game. Sigh.

Awesome. A 4 on 3. Say it with me now, lovelies. FIRE. WAGON. HOCKEY!

Seriously this game really needs a roaring crowd. This is intense. It's just not the same without the OOOOOOOOOOHs and AAAAAAAHHHHHHs.

OK I will do a summary of both games tomorrow because a lot of things blew my mind. Like Blake Wheeler whiffing on an open net in the shootout.  And the Thrashers tying it up in the last minute. I SAW THE PITTSBURGH GAME FLASH BY MY EYES ALL OVER AGAIN. Then it went to the shootout. The SHOOTOUT! I cussed for about 2 minutes straight. I told a friend of mine someone better make sure all the milk crates are strapped down, just in case. But Tuuuuuuuuukks!

Anyway, I was watching the Leafs score on my computer, and WHOAH! up 3-0 in the first! Then the Leafs turned back into the Leafs and went on to lose to Carolina 6-5 in the shootout.

I'm getting a good feel for what it's like to be a fan of the Leafs.It's not much different from being a fan of the Caps in the early 00s. Funny, that.

The B's took out Big D

My personal 3 stars of the game (having not seen the official ones):

1. Marc Savard - two awesome goals, great PK work, a lot of hustle and instant chemistry with Mike Ryder proved to work to his advantage. And Savvy is now 1 goal away from 200 career goals. Who was hoping for a hat-trick? This girl! And apparently Coach, since he had Sav out at every opportunity in the last 5:00.

2. Tim Thomas - do I really need to explain why?

3. This one was hard, so I'm awarding a two-way tie to Andy Ference and Matt Hunwick. Andy for his hustle, great forecheck, endless work on each PK shift, throwing the hits out like rubbers at a bachelor's party, and just irritating the Stars in general. Matt for basically the same reason AND trying to play goal when Timmy was caught out of net. Once a year it seems one of the D-men doubles up as unprotected goalies, and I think they should starting giving extra hardhat consideration for that. Particularly considering THEY'RE NOT WEARING CAGES.

Now that those are out of the way, onto the game.

Obviously I'm not going to be the first person to say BEST GAME OF THE YEAR despite that 7-2 blowout over the Canes. But with Bergeron taking the first penalty of the game :18 into the 1st, my heart sank. And then... and then... THEY KILLED IT! With APLOMB! And as the seconds ticked by I stopped wanting to chew my nails and throw things. I wouldn't let myself be optimistic though. I kept checking the time, I kept checking the PK time, but most of all I really liked watching the boys playing in the attacking zone most of the night. I'm thinking the NHL's "Event Summary" stats are somewhat incorrect as they're listing Ference with 1 hit and Hunwick with 0, and I saw them hit a lot more than that. This was an awesome, hit-filled game played with confidence, played with consistency, and played by the Bruins everyone is used to seeing play. I was also very impressed with Johnny Boychuk, who did NOT impress me too much in his first NHL game, but this time out, he made well-timed plays, had some nice hits, was a lot more calm and collected on the blue line, and was only caught out of place once or twice. Very worth noting - NO ONE on the team had <10:00 TOI, so no bike riding for anyone last night.

In the end, the boys in black and gold walked (flew) out of Big D with the TKO. And Timmy's first shutout of the season. Well done, boys. Keep it up in Phoenix.

I was going to post some photos, but neither Getty nor AP have any really great ones. What's up with the weak photo representation there, photographers? I'll put up flickr feed on the sidebar to rep the fans that are picking up the slack of the professionals.

Lastly, I don't get anything out of this, no discounts or anything, but Chowdaheadz has a new Bruins shirt. I ordered one last night, and at the low-low price of $12.99, you should consider it too, cause how wicked cool is this?

Click the image to go to the purchase page.