B Squad Comes Up Empty

The Bruin's B team came up short against the Devils last night, lossing what was surely an emotional game for coach Julien 3-0.
Manny Fernandez made his Bruins debut giving way to Tuuka Rask at the halfway point. Fernandez gave up one goal on 15 shots, Rask allowed 2 goals on 19 shots.

The highlight of the night for Bruin's fans was the Jeremy Reich / David Clarkson street brawl. Clarkson took an early upper hand landing several hard shots, but Reich remained on his skates, landed some heavy punches and ended up sending Clarkson to the dressing room bleeding from his temple.

It's only Pre-Season, we sure seem to be carrying on with the we may loose the game but your going to bleed to win attitude that has been dormant in Boston for years, worst case scenario for this year is we go down swinging.

Pre-Season Starts off with a win

The Bruin's started the preseason off with a 3-1 win over the NY Islanders in Newfoundland Canada last night.
The squad was split, with this group having a little more muscle meaning the likes of Murray, Kessel, Bergeron were left in Beantown.
The boys threw down four times last night in an attempt to show the fans that they refuse to be walked on as they did last year.
Hat's off to the Big Z for throwing down for the first time as a Bruin. He looked as if he wanted to throw down with the Isles resident weassel Chris Simon, but Simon knew better and ensured he jawed from a distance until Isle new commer Kip Brennan. Chara left the game after the fight with a cut on his right hand.... nothing like breaking your hand on someone's face (OK so it was his helmet, but face sounds so much better.)

Bruins Hail to the Chief with a shutout

Tim Thomas played well, earning his third career shutout, and new comer Brandon Bochenski added a goal and two assists to power the Bruins past the Oilers. Bochenski, scored for the fourth time in four games since he was traded to Boston, and now has six points in his four games with the Bruins.
Another new comer added some desperately needed edge to the Bruins defensive corps, Andrew Ference was throwing his weight around, all 195 pounds of it. For a little guy he sure does like to hit, and his speed allows him to line you up and drop you before you have a chance to see it coming. I loved the style this kid was playing. If it moves, hit it. If it stays still, hit it harder. He reminded me of pre-shoulder surgery Don Sweeney. Never going to get the nod as an all-star, but a guy who went out there and gave 100% every night and rarely spoke a word, he simply let his play do the talking for him.
The Bruins suffered what could turn out to be the toughest loss of the season, as Bergeron went out in the second period with a lower body injury. Could have been a grion, or his hip which is reportedly been bothering him all season. The Bruins are not giving up any details other than, it is a lower body injury and Patrice is day to day.
No word on Muzz playing tonight, if he does not, he will likely be in uniform this weekend. Muzz is in NY for tonights game and will make a decision with the staff after the morning skate.
If Muzz is back in the line up it will be interesting to see what the lines will look like.
Muzz, Savy, (Sturm, Axelson, or Kessel)
Boyes, Bochenski, (Strum, Axelson or Kessel)
Chistov, Mowers, (Sturm, Axleson or Kessel)

I personally would go with
Muzz, Savy, Sturm
Kessel, Boyes, Bochenski
Axleson, Riech, Chistov
Mowers (Savy and Boyes) Donovan

With Bergerons injury the Bruins only have four centers, and I would leave Kessel out there as a winger as he seems to play better on the wing.
We shall see, should he interesting to see what Lewis does with the mix he has.

Two Down One to Go

Well two of the players we got for Joe Thornton are gone, and it is expected that the third will soon follow (that is if anyone wants him)

The Bruins pulled the trigger on a trade, sending defenceman Brad Stuart, and forward Wayne Primeau to the Flames on Saturday for defenceman Andrew Ference and forward Chuck Kobasew.
Was this a good trade? Only time will tell, we got two young players, we now haev two players on the roster who are a plus 7, (how long they stay that way is another question) the next closest player to being a plus is Brian Bochenski who is a minus one.

Taking into account that Stuart is on his way back to San Jose come July first, and that Primeau is a third line center at best, who takes dumb penalties, this trade may not seem to bad. Ference however is small 5-10 / 196 for a defensman and Kobasew has been hurt. (which I thought meant he could not be traded.) Anyhoo we now have him, and maybe there was wording in the deal in respect to draft picks or other players if Kobasew could not play. He will likely be out another 2-3 weeks according to the Boston Globe.

Is this what we needed? Not in my opinion, we needed a goalie. With the free agent market loking thin on goalies, Stuart may have been our only hope to landing a number one backstop.
Chairelli did free up a nice chunk of cap space, as the trade off is worth 2.4 million in cap space. Put that together with what we have in space now and the Bruins are looking at 2 million worth of room right now and if the cap increases next year to the projected 47 million, we will have 5.1 million to play with in the free agent market. This does not include the 4 million worth for Zhamnov, so in total we could have almost ten million in cap space. That would put Boston in the front running for anyone who was looking to get paid big (4-5 million a year) now are there any free agents out there worth that? The only two listed in the TSN (Cannadian ESPN, not the sporting news) power rankings are Hasek 2.08 GAA and .908 save Pct. But he is OLD and not likely to come to Boston, as he is not in need of the money and may even call it a career (for the third time) The other is Ray Emery, who may just be worth going after. He has stolen the show from Martin Gerber (who is making 3.7 million this year and we all know Ottowa has little cap space.) Emery is only making $925K so we could wave three million at him and he should come running. Chairelli knows Emery well, as he was in the mix when Ottowa drafted him, he has taken a Free agent with him already, when Boston signed Chara (even though he "officially" had nothing to do with it) So is this Chairelli's master plan? Could be, he keeps talking about cap space and moving players for little or nothing in return, only to come back and say we now have more room to move financially. Only time will tell, in fact only about four months and three weeks until the frre agent market opens up.

Are you kdding me... Ray Whitney?

Tim Thomas left us last night with this quote… "I'm not saying we didn't try [to hit Whitney]," said Thomas. "I'm just mad one guy beat us, that one guy was able to win the game. Whether that's my fault, or everyone's fault . . . it's more of an anger situation."

The first goal, was due to poor defense, the second goal was a combination of poor defense and poor goal tending. The third goal was just plain SOFT and after watching the replay at some point today, Thomas should issue a rebuttal to his statement that says…..

“Hey I have never been a starting goalie, and I have never been expected to play as many games as I have this season. The blame should go on the coaching staff and the management for not getting a real goalie, like Andrew Raycroft….. Oh wait we had him didn’t we.”

I will tell you, after watching the first few minutes of last nights game, I thought we where going to see the Bruins hand the Canes another loss. The line of Bergeron, Boyes and Kessel was flying, they nearly scored on their first shift, and at one point held the puck in the Canes end cycling for over two minutes, allowing the Canes to clear the puck, only after generating four shots (one off the post, so I guess three shots) and needing a change themselves due to exhaustion. I have not seen that much dominance from a Boston line in a long time and was actually excited to see what they would do next.

Well what they did next was nothing, they did play well throughout the game, but they could not find the back of the net, not for a lack of chances, they just could not catch a break. This line was one of two bright spots last night, the other being the new comer Brian Bochenski, and his pair of goals, giving him three goals in his first two games as a Bruin. Neither of Bochenski’s goals where very pretty they where the type of goal that a true goal scorer gets, the puck lands on his stick and he shoots it. Does he pick a corner, deke the goalie? No he gets the puck and he puts it in the back of the net. I saw flashes of Glenn Murray in the kid last night, just being a solid guy in the slot, who if you get him the puck will put it in the net.

Speaking of Muzz, he decided to give it a go last night bad groin and all. Muzz nearly put Boston ahead in the first when he ripped a puck through Cam Ward, only for Brent Hedican to scoop up just prior to it crossing the goal line. What a rocket that shot was, classic Muzz, crossed the blue line and ripped it. Muzz’s groin was evident late in the third with the Canes up 4-1, Lewis got smart and sat Muzz down to rest his groin. Then Lewis got stupid again and put him back out there for a last ditch effort on the power play. Why the hell would you sit a guy with a muscle injury let his body start to cool down and then put him back out there? We will be lucky if we do not hear today that Muzz’s groin injury has gotten worse.

The powerless play sucked last night, and continues to spiral downward, hoping someday to meet the penalty kill (which did much better last night and actually showed a little spunk.) at the bottom of the NHL standings. At one point the Hurricanes had two shots on goal to our 0 and this was during a Bruins power play. Of course this was on the fourth power play of the night and the Bruins where already 0-3 with a measly 4 shots. Not sure what Lewis was thinking last night (well I am not sure what he is thinking any night for that matter) but why would you put Marco Strum, who just came back from a thumping to his noggin, on the power play? At least it was not PJ Axelson, but come on. Was he not watching how Bergeron, Boyes, Kessel combination was playing? Why not toss them out there on the power play for a chance or two and see what happens? It is the little things like this that are keeping the team down, Lewis is all about riding the hot hand in net (not that we have one) but he is not thinking that way with his forwards, at least not on a consistent basis.
Hannu better get the start Saturday, Thomas surely has not earned his fourth in a row.

Boston Finds Their "Closer"

That's right kiddies, Boston has found its closer. No, not the Sox, the Bruins. Phil Kessel slammed the door shut on the Caps last night in the shoot out with a slick backhander over the shoulder of a down and out Olaf Kolzig. This was Kessel’s third chance in the shoot out and for the third time he has finished it off in style. This kid is a natural goal scorer, and obviously someone who handles pressure pretty dam well.
Kudos also go out to the big Z as he shut down Alexander Ovechkin all night long, holding the flashy muscovite to only two shots, neither being of great quality. Z was on, laying Ovechkin out in the first period, lining him up from the opposite side of the rink waiting for the drop pass and timing the hit perfectly. That hit set the tone and had Ovechkin on his toes for the rest of the night, allowing Chara to create space enough for some great poke checking during the second and third periods.
Tim Thomas played well (32 saves, and stuffing Ovechkin in the shoot out) the second Caps goal may have caught Thomas out of position, however the puck took a bad hop and barely made it under a diving Chara and just past the stick of a sprawling Thomas.

New comers Brandon Bochenski and Jeremy Reich both played well , Reich getting things started with a nice little tussle in the first, and Bochenski scored on a quick writster right off the face off, showing his teammates that all you have to do is shoot, and eventually the puck will go in. Bochenski was also given a chance to shine in the shoot out, where he ripped one past Kolzig but was robbed by the corner of the post and cross bar.

Funny thing about the shoot out, the replay of Kessel’s winner showed the reaction on the bench, and not surprisingly the coach who now says he had all the confidence in the world in Kessel being able to finish off, was not even watching. He had his hand on his head and was bent down as if he was praying (“Please God, let the kid score, I need to keep my J-O-B”).

Overall First period was not so good offensively (two shots) but the team stayed tough and battled back for a badly needed two points.

The penalty killing was on last night, and the power play was a dismal 1-5 with one of those being a 4 minute power play. At least the one the connected on was one that they needed, as it tied the game and forced the OT and shoot out.

Way to go Phil, nice move, nice goal, just plain nice.

THE WAITING GAME

Well it appears that the Bruins plan to take the wait and see approach to the upcoming trade deadline. Less the blockbuster trades of Milan Jurcina and Kris Versteeg, Peter Chairelli has decided to sit an wait for the market to play out.
Reading between the lines, this says, No one is interested in paying the asking price that has been offered for the rental of Stuart or Sturm.
Unless a deal can be made with LA or San Jose, we will likely see Stuart traded away for a draft pick or two, seeing as Stuart has all but said he will play no where but the West Coast, what team in their right mind would trade for him, knowing he was going to exit come July 1st.
Sturm, on the other hand simply is not producing the numbers that he did last season, and teams are not going to give up much for his services.
The one thing the Bruins have going for them is the fact that there are not to many teams out there dangling players of either Stuart or Sturms caliber. Both have shown bits of brillance in the last two seasons, but both have also shown that they have a lot of growning to do, particularly Stuart who someday will be a dominant presence on some teams Blue line (Unforetunately not ours).
We have all been preparing for this moment since the wheels fell of our roller coaster back in December, and the time is near... less than three weeks until the deadline hits.