Bs v Hawks: The good, the bad, the ugly

I save the best for last, so we'll start with:

The Ugly

:28 into the game, Marc Savard took an awkward hit, tweaking his knee, went down and didn't return. Word from Julien is he'll be having an MRI today. This is so very not good. 3rd key player to go down in 3 games. Are the Bruins jinxed? If anyone knows a good protection charm to put on the remaining players, now might be the time to get that done.

The Bad
Obviously #1 here is the 5-2 loss. But let's be a little realistic. This is a Franken-Bruin team against the top team in the league. That they scored 2 goals was a blessing if we're going to be honest about things. #2 is that Tim Thomas was pulled after the 4th goal, a 65' wrister of Duncan Keith's that rang in and down off the crossbar. My first thought after that goals was, better pull Tim, and sure enough Coach did. Whether it was a mercy pulling, or a sending-a-message pulling, I don't know. But Tuukka managed to keep the Hawks to only one goal in the remaining period in a half. Sometimes I wonder if Timmy has a Vezina hangover. Sidenote: my 5 year old niece thinks it's cheating by catching the puck. Oh I have much to teach her. Morning lessons in goal-tending commencing in 3.... 2.... 1.

The Good
My favourite part.  Where to start. Let's start with what we all know is my favourite: The return of Milan Lucic.

Now, listen. You can't expect a guy to miss 18 games in a row, who has played a total of 10 (now 11) games this season, and jump back on the ice his first game and kick ass. Yeah, he was rusty. Yeah his hands looked a little heavy. Yeah he wasn't quite back in the groove. But the point is, he's back in the lineup, and with Mark Stuart and Andrew Ference out, despite not being a defenceman, Looch's presence is needed, desperately. No one's afraid of Adam McQuaid or Johnny Boychuk. For what it's worth, Looch had 16:23 of ice time, 5 hits, and was a -2. Considering how the game ended, that's a successful return.

Good #2: Satan scored his first goal as a Bruin, and his first goal in 6+ months. Am I the only one who finds hilarious irony in the word "Satan" being above the #81? No? Good.

Good #2a: Blake Wheeler once again had a multi-goal game, scoring off of Johnny Boychuck's rebound, and figuring in on Satan's goal. If it's not Wheels with the multi-goal games, it's Krejci or Boychuk. I'm liking this new trend. Welcome to the new guard.

Good #3: Johnny Boychuk's first NHL fight, vs Hawks tough guy Colin Fraser. A continuation of Derek Morris' first-period fight with Fraser. JB, however, got the point across a little better than did DeMo.

I'm really starting to love JB. If he's not breaking glass with his slapshots, he's breaking faces with his fists, or sending crisp passes up ice. This guy's a keeper, and giving how our D is dropping like flies (dear God, please don't let Chara or Wideman go down, please please please), he should figure to be in the lineup for a while still. Here's hoping Julien keeps him even once Ference and Stuart are healthy.

Don't forget the Frozen Fenway tonight, the marquis game being the Battle of Comm Ave with puck drop at 7:30 pm. That should be a great atmosphere. It should be around 18°F with snow at when the Eagles and Terriers take the ice. They're college kids, they can take it! Go Eagles!

Up next for the Bruins are the witless/winless Rangers. Unless you count that last time they played the Bruins. I mean for God's sake, the THRASHERS beat them last night. If the Bruins can get their game a little back on track, and re-group with Savvy out (or, miracle of miracles, with Savvy back on the ice having nothing more than a teeny tiny minor tweak), there's no reason this team can't be beat. I mean it's the fucking Rangers, c'mon.

Figuring shit out

I haven't really known wtf to say about either the 'Hawks or Leafs games yet. I mean, Krejci was amazing in the Hawks game, and wow that building is quiet during play. It only really got loud if there was a good play, a hit, or a goal.  Then in the Leafs game, the B's came out hard, and the Leafs seemed pretty willing to keep giving them the puck. But yeah, I'm gonna blame the past two losses on Stuart, Wideman, Morris (HALF THE D-CORPS!) being out. I'm not going to finger point any particular player and say step it up... OK yes I am. Marc Savard, step it the fuck up already. This time last year you had 29 assists. Right now you have 8. You gonna let Big Joe outshine you like this? That's so not right.

There's also a little something that's been nagging at me. Three games Schenn sits out, the Leafs handily win two. His first return he plays 19:44, the Leafs lose. Second game, against the B's, he played 10:48, and they won. Stats don't tell all the tales, and his physical play was definitely up to par (I particularly liked watching he and Sobotka go at it (btw, it's Suh-boat-kuh, not Soh-bot-kah)), but it's little things like that that make me curious. Can one defenceman make that much of an impact on a team's W/L record? I know THREE can. Or the absence of three.

Also: RE Boychuk's hit on Stajan... first off, Happy Birthday, Matty! Keep your head up. Secondly, yeah I can see how people would say, it was a headshot, Johnny should be suspended, but he shouldn't. Stajan had his knees bent, he was in a defencive crouch stature, his head was down, and Johnny's kind of tall. He didn't leave his feet until the contact had been made and STAJAN NEEDS TO KEEP HIS HEAD UP. Especially in the neutral zone, c'mon. That's where the greatest open-ice hits happen! I will say I'm confused why Chara didn't get a penalty after the ensuing melee, and it's always nice to see Komisarek bleeding. But that was just a game lost due to inexperience on the blue line. Hunwick, Chara and Ference can't do it all alone. Tuukka needs his guys in front of him knowing what to do.

In other news, what's the word on who's going to be in net for the Classic? Here is what I think. Timmy, I love you, I really go - GO CATS GO! - and I get that you're the current Vezina winner. But right now, last night excepted, Tuukka has the hot glove. Unless that goes downhill significantly over the next week and some, I really think Rask should start. Now maybe they can switch off halfway through? But that makes it more of a ... "we're not so serious about the 2 points as we are the novelty of being in Fenway." It's a tough decision that'll have to be made. And we'll see over the next 5 games who plays their way into the spot. But man I'd hate to be either of those guys right now.

Pictures later. I have windows to cover with insulating film (YAY SNOW!).

Classic Preview: Painful

I'm not really sure what to say about last night's game. Was it an awesome game? Absolutely. It would've been a lot more awesome if the Bruins actually played the last 20 minutes of the game, but what can you do? Dennis Wideman was out for the third due to his super-human shot-blocking and penalty killing in the 1st (place your bets now: lower body pays out 3:1, broken foot pays out 5:1) so the D was shortened to 5, but that's still not much of an excuse for the Flyers having the puck in the attacking zone for most of the 3rd. There were just too many mistakes in that period.

On top of that, what the fuck was up with the refereeing? Who paid those refs off? They better not be the guys calling the Classic, cause there were about 8 bullshit calls, starting with Vladimir Sobotka's goal that was called dead. That was a goal. Period. The puck was clearly across the line before the goal came off its posts, and before the whistle was blown. The goal post wasn't knocked off until the puck hit the back of the net, and the whistle wasn't blown until the puck had circled the inside of the cage and was on its way out again. Vladi made sure the 2nd one counted, but the loss of that first goal was a blow to the team, and helped create a mind-set that the calls were not going to go their way.

"No goal" my ass.

Goal love = goal.

Add into that, Danny Briere under-arming David Krejci's stick and taking him for a ride and not getting called, Marc Savard getting smacked in the forehead with (I believe) Hartnell's high stick and not getting called (listen, say what you want, but something made his helmet move, and it wasn't his own glove because the helmet moved before he grabbed his face).

Can someone explain to me why the play was called dead when the Bruins sent Tim Thomas to the bench for a 6th attacker during the delayed call for the 5-on-3, giving the B's 6-on-4 once Savvy hopped the boards and came out. The B's sent it tape to tape 5 times in their own zone, and when Savvy touched the puck, the play was blown dead. What the fuck? The substitution player touching the puck is the only reason anyone can figure why the play was killed, that or the Flyers not attacking the play. But it makes no fucking sense. It was a game of blown calls.

But blown calls can't be used as excuses. It happens. All the time. Instead of evaluating the use of the trapezoid and head shots, the GMs and the powers-that-be in the NHL need to start evaluating refereeing, and the lack of consistency, especially in big games (which last night was not, I will admit), but if there's shitty refereeing in the Classic, against the Bruins, the blue-collar B's fans will rise up as one and riot, and force the NHL to evaluate the quality of game-calling.

My personal favourite moment of the game as watching David Krejci shake his glove like he was about to drop it and go after Danny Briere after Briere dropped his stick in the first, challenging Krejci. The look in Dave's eyes was one of ... well I've never seen him look like that, and I've seen all his games since he made the show. He had one fight in the Q (Rimouski, if you're keeping count, and that was v. Kyle Doucet), and one with the P-Bruins v. TJ Fox - two guys I've never heard of. Then again, I don't follow WC teams. So who's to say. But in 174 NHL games, Krejci hasn't had a single fight. Last night, Briere almost pushed him to breaking that record. I would love to see Krejc take on Briere. I'm pretty sure Krejc would make St Danny wear his ass as a hat.

So yeah, the Classic should be great. I'm willing to bet that it'll be the first classic with fighting and blood. And I'm also willing to go out on a limb and say, given the cold, and the physics of cold and glass... if Lucic can get enough velocity and speed, and catch him just right, Looch is going to knock either Hartnell or Pronger through the glass. Who wants in on that bet? Just remember, the colder the ambient temperature is, the tighter the skin cells become, and the higher the chances of the slightest contact causing a skin-split, and gushing blood, even from the smallest cut. This year's Classic has a high probability of being the most classic Classic to be played. It's definitely the biggest rivalry of the three played thusfar, because the Flyers and Bruins HATE each other. Let the blood-lust begin!

I'm gonna rip some stuff out of last night's game because of their interesting-ness, and post them up on YouTube in a bit. But here's one for the books: Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley ran into Lucic during the 2nd intermission, and he said this was the kind of game he was dying to play. Everyone keep their fingers crossed that Looch is raring to go on the 1st, because it won't be very Classic without Big Bad Looch.

It's beginning to look a lot like hockey!