Bruins Game 68 Recap: A net gain!

Wins like this one would probably mean more in the postseason, where your “standings” mean nothing and picking up a win in overtimemeans your team gets to live to play another day. But for a regular-season game, this was a top-notch victory. Unlike their southern neighbors, the Lightning have no issues putting together a team or drawing a crowd to watch it. Under these conditions, the Bruins and Lightning battled for 60 scoreless minutes. Then Brad Marchand ended it in overtime. Quite the thriller, I’d say. Maybe the best game the Bruins played all year? Close, at least.

It’s really nice that the team is beginning to peak in March instead of October like they did in some seasons. It gives you confidence that they can keep this up into May, or even June? That sure would be nice. The Bruins attempt to “keep it up” Thursday night at home against the Hurricanes. Tune in!

Bruins Game 67 Recap: That was, uh, something.

What we saw Monday night was not a pretty victory. It was not a clean victory. But it was a victory and it got the Bruins into the running for the division lead on Tuesday night. Never thought we’d be saying that, huh? Well, the Habs’ collapse is our gain folks. Claude Julien passed Art Ross to take control of the franchise’ all-time coaching wins record. Congratulations, Claude. Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand continued looking really good. Jaromir Jagr even passed Gordie Howe on the all-time league scoring list, so it was a decent night for both sides.

It was very nearly a bad night for the B’s though, they scored four in the first and then seemed to lose it the moment the Panthers switched goalies to start the second period. The blew that lead in the third and you feared that maybe they wouldn’t hold on in OT, but somehow they did. And I was starting to hate 3 Vs. 3 overtime, too. Silly me. Lee Stempniak scored the OT winner, making me feel even smarter for liking the way that overtime ended.

The next B’s game is tonight, in Tampa, for the division lead. The Lightning also played on the road tonight, so there isn’t a rest advantage there. The Bruins can take 1st place with just a single win Tuesday night, so tune in!

Bruins Game 66 Recap: It’s the effort that counts.

Just kidding! There’s no “effort” column in the standings. Plenty of it was shown on the ice tonight though, and that’s…… nice? I can appreciate it, anyway. The Caps are definitely the toughest team in the east, maybe the toughest one in the whole league? The Bruins managed to survive them though, even down a defenseman after Alex Ovechkin managed to drive Kevan Miller into the boards face-first and injure his shoulder. Thanks for that, Alex. At least it wasn’t his head? We can only hope.

Anyway, the B’s scrounged a point out of this one at least, so it’s not a total loss. After a game like that one, two points would’ve been nice. But one, at least, helps. Now the team heads down to Florida to play the Panthers and the Lightning back-to-back.  I don’t think I need to tell you that a series like that is pretty big. The first game is Monday night, tune in!

Bruins Game 60 Recap: Ow.

Take talk of “scheduled losses” and cram it. I hate that sort of talk. I hate losing too, and I really hate losing at home to a team like the Blue Jackets. That win on Saturday against the Stars was impressive, yeah. But then the Bruins fell back into that old annoying habit of playing at their worst when you’d least expect it. Why are they so bad at home, anyway? I can’t find a reason.

So maybe a few questionable replays by the officials aside, the Bruins didn’t really look very good at all. The Jackets pulled away towards the end and made the end of the game feel almost unwatchable. Now you really have to worry what’s wrong with the team going into the trade deadline. Personally, I can’t think of any area of immediate improvement that they need. More scoring? More, uh, depth? Um…. uh……. something?

Anyway, the next game is Wednesday against the Penguins, who are also scraping for a playoff spot as it would happen. Will the Bruins recover enough to knock them off? We can only hope!

Bruins Game 57 Recap: Boy, They Did Everything Right But…

The Bruins sure tried hard tonight. The first period was ugly, no doubt, but they showed effort afterwards and managed to recover from those early jitters to give Nashville quite the contest. The problem being, they didn’t score tonight. Pekka Rinne’s had his share of troubles this year, but managed to shut the B’s out For Sixty Minutes and cost the Bruins a game they could’ve possibly won. What great timing. I don’t like that, but I have to accept it!

On the plus side, nobody died so at least the Bruins can bring the same roster to Dallas on Saturday night where they face the Stars and some loser whose name escapes me. Tune in!

Bruins Game 56 Recap: Loui Loui

I don’t like seeing the Bruins playing so sloppily against a team like the Jackets, I’ll admit. Columbus are scraping the bottom of the standings and who knows when that’s going to change. So maybe the Bruins shouldn’t have taken this one all the way into overtime.

But hey, they won. I can live with that. Tuukka Rask was back to being good (oh, was he) and Loui Eriksson played like a man who wants a new contract in OT by getting right to the net and dunking the puck in to give the B’s their third win of this six-game trip. With this team, I’ll take what we can get. Adam McQuaid was back tonight, and looking healthy. The B’s being in peak condition is of the utmost importance for this roster making the playoffs.

The next game is Thursday night in Nashville. The Predators probably can’t expect to do any better than a wild card right now, but that might be more a result of the division they play in than anything else. It’s sure to be a competitive one, tune in!

Bruins Game 54 Recap: I will accept that.

Yeah, I meant to recap Tuesday’s game. But, uh. I forgot. Don’t blame me! It was a game better off forgotten. The B’s had an awful lot to make up for tonight if they wanted to keep the attention of the city of Boston, with Spring Training almost here and, uh…… curling being on television? Yeah I don’t know. So they needed to beat the Jets tonight, no question about it.

To their credit, they sure did beat the Jets. The first period was a little shaky, they played distressingly like the team that lost on Tuesday night. They blew two leads and boy, that wasn’t much fun to watch. Then Brad Marchand scored a highlight-reel goal and sudddenly, suddenly things were okay! The Jets started playing like the confused, desperate team and the Bruins took advantage to carry the last two periods. Winnipeg pulled their goalie with five minutes remaining for some reason and the B’s ended it awfully early. What a treat! I liked that.

The next Bruins game is Saturday afternoon at 2:00 against Minnesota. The Wild… aren’t having such a great year. Hope the Bruins can “capitalize” and all that!

Bruins Game 50 Recap: Well, we’re back, I guess.

Between you and me, I didn’t like that very much! The Bruins blow a late multi-goal lead against a bottom-five team and lose in overtime. At home. What the Hell happened? Someone ought to tell me. They appeared shaky through the game, sure. It never seemed quite like the Bruins had the game sewn up until a quick flurry of goals early in the 3rd appeared to change things around. Then they failed to hold that lead and who cares what happened afterwards? I mean, they got a point but who really cares?

The Bruins try again on Thursday against the Sabres, whom they have blown exactly zero leads against this season. Tune in. Do it.

Bruins Game 49 Recap: Well thank goodness for the All-Star break, I guess.

Eeek. Why let Jonas Gustavsson even get into uniform if he was in that sort of condition? Why do anything? After a loss like this one, I don’t even want to think. The Bruins swapped goalies like it was a preseason scrimmage and it didn’t do any good. They limped past the unofficial halfway mark (49 is a lot more than 41, after all) and just sort of collapsed. I don’t want to analyze that. The funny part? They scored the first goal. That’s kind of nice.

Now Gustavsson has a week to recover and the rest of the team has a week to, I don’t know, also recover. Third game in four days, folks! I don’t think anyone felt too well after that. Wish it hadn’t ended this way but at least there’s another game next Tuesday. Let’s look forward to that.

Bruins Game 48 Recap: Sorry about your football sport I guess.

So the Bruins nearly got screwed over, they gave up a goal that a coaches’ challenge failed to overturn but managed to salvage a regulation win late in the 3rd. Nearly got caught in the same ‘ol trap there. Things like that suck. But Brett Connolly got one into the Flyer net with less than two minutes remaing and the Bruins escaped late penalty trouble to win in regulation and take all of the points. Boy, does that feel good.

The next Bruins game is….. well look at that, today against the Ducks. Anaheim isn’t looking so great this year but that Pacific division is wide open folks. The B’s, meanwhile, are just four points out of first place and might want to take advantage of that fact. Tune in! I want you to.