Know your teammates .... Deal with the devil?

Dear Boston Bruins,

I love you very much. I have a lot of items with your names and logo on them. I support you everywhere I go. I write a blog about your team and how awesome you (most times) are, but I feel the time has come that we need to address a little situation I've been noticing far too much of late: Knowing who your teammates are.

May I present the evidence?

Several games ago, can't recall which but I want to say v Atlanta on 12/30, Blake Wheeler and David Krejci ran into each other head-on. Well, chest-on. Krejci, of course, bounced off the brick wall of Wheels, shot him a dirty look, and climbed back onto the bench.

Last night (please feel free to correct my evidentiary findings, as we all know I don't get to see games on Versus), not only did Patrice Bergeron block a shot of Dennis Wideman's (with his hand, resulting in riding the IR for 2-6 weeks), but Derek Morris attempted to cut David Krejci's head off. I only have photographic proof of one of these instances:

But fret not, dear Bruins. I'm here to help you out with simple team-mate recognition skills. If you look down at your jersey, if it's white, avoid shots and hits from the other guys in white. Same if your jersey is black, or gold. If the guy is wearing any other colour, have at him. Think of the guys in your same coloured jersey as fellow soldiers on the battlefield. While there are such things as "friendly fire," "collateral damage," and "acceptable losses," those really only apply on an actual battlefield, with guns, and life-or-death situations, which as much as it feels like, hockey is not. When in doubt, check your jersey out. Bergie, you get well soon.

In a semi-related segue, I've been thinking this over a little bit, and I almost wonder if Chiarelli didn't inadvertently make a deal with the devil. Haha, I crack me up. No, I mean it only semi-metaphorically. Chia-pet signs Satan, and two days later, the team's best player is injured, in the oddest of ways (blocking a teammate's shot with his hand??), leaving open a roster spot for when Milan Lucic returns, so as to not have to waive or send anyone down from the current roster. Think it through and tell me you don't see the irony/coincidence there. I personally don't believe there's any such things as coincidences.

But look! Looch wearing a mistletoe toque and Ference wearing a frosty the snowman toque while hanging out with sick kids! Day brightener!

Do you think they get to keep the toques???

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.