Bruins/NHL Playoffs Talk

Make sure Nutty's playing as you read:



I am psyched this year like I have never been before. Psyched and mortified, but mostly psyched. I have an odd feeling about this team, after having watched nearly every single game: hope.

Every time the Bruins have landed a top seed in recent years, there's always been a stench of overachievement all about them. The playoffs would arrive, the smoke and mirrors would dissipate, and an exhausted bunch of losers would fall to the Canadiens. I can't lie: this thought has crossed my mind several times once the Habs were confirmed as the Bruins' opponent.

But this time really is different. The B's have literally no weaknesses. They can win with the neutral-zone trap, and against it; they can win 1-0 over any team you can imagine; they can win in a track meet; they can overcome your clean checks, and they can overcome a Hanson Brothers-style brawl too, as they proved last week against the Habs. They have one of the NHL's best offenses, with three lines that can carry a team's scoring for the game; they have its best defenseman, in certain Norris candidate Zdeno Chara, and a front four that can absorb any offense in the league; they have its best goalie, in near-certain Vezina winner Tim Thomas, recent winner of the Jennings Trophy for fewest goals against on the season (despite Manny Fernandez's best efforts to blow it for him).

In short, there hasn't been any overachieving. It's not like their breakout players shouldn't have broken out; Phil Kessel, David Krejci, Blake Wheeler, Milan Lucic... these guys were all SUPPOSED to do exactly what they're doing. It's not as if Chuck Kobasew scored 50 goals or some bullshit like that. In fact, given that Lucic and one-time 30-goal scorer Patrice Bergeron have only been themselves the past couple weeks, I would say they underachieved. They could be rolling three lines full of 20-goal scorers, and they're not. How about that.

There's just no formula for beating this team. None. Your best bet is to a) hit them as hard as you can and HOPE that they, against their track record, don't feel like hitting back, and b) pray to Jesus Christ himself that Thomas doesn't have "it" tonight. You require goddamn divine intervention to beat the Bruins on paper. I've never been as happy with the Bruins' depth chart as I am now.

The only player bad enough to sink this team is Manny Fernandez, a goalie who figures to not play one minute between the pipes from here on out. If he does, it means Thomas is hurt, the playoff run is over anyway, and Fernandez's performance doesn't much matter anyway. Maybe Shane Hnidy is a true weak link, but he's the team's 8th defenseman now! Of course he's a weak link. But seriously, look at how far you have to go before there's a true weak spot. You're scraping the bottom of the barrel.

On top of all that, they've got a pretty nice draw as far as playoff opponents go. At reasonably full strength, the B's have only had a worrisome amount of trouble against Washington and San Jose, neither of whom will turn up until a couple rounds in. I'm not gonna say it will be a cakewalk, not when Philly is lurking, but they've set themselves up nicely for a long run.

I wouldn't be totally stunned to see them lose earlier, but I don't see it. Doesn't make sense. This is the year.

On to the predictions:

EASTERN CONFERENCE

(1) BOSTON VS. (8) MONTREAL

Last Thursday's old-time hockey exhibition was a good indicator of the sort of bush league nonsense we can expect Bob Gainey to pull over the next week and a half. But that kind of crap can distract the Habs as much as the Bruins, as their loss indicates. And although the B's went without a win against the Habs last year, and still managed to take the Habs to a seventh game, the Bruins were a disciplined, bring-the-game-to-us type of team even at their worst. Montreal is just a bunch of wandering, underachieving boobs. They're about to be thoroughly outclassed.

Prediction: Bruins in 5

(2) WASHINGTON VS. (7) NEW YORK

While I think the Rangers are a solid team, and have the potential to ride Henrik Lundquist as deep as they please, Washington is just too good at every position. Jose Theodore is merely a Flyers-caliber goaltender, but he doesn't have to be much more than that with the team in front of him. He only has to be Chris Osgood good, not Roberto Luongo good. I don't see this being much of a series, no matter what Sean Avery does.

Prediction: Caps in 5

(3) NEW JERSEY VS. (6) CAROLINA

While it's widely known that Carolina stinks on ice, that knowledge is nowhere near as wide as Martin Brodeur's ass. The Devs are struggling; the magic is over. Carolina, meanwhile, is hotter than anyone, and just as well-built as the Devils. They're a little too trendy a pick, but it's for a good reason.

Prediction: Canes in 6

(4) PITTSBURGH VS. (5) PHILADELPHIA

I really, REALLY hate to say this, but I don't see the Flyers NOT getting into the Pens' heads this year. Marc-Andre Fleury has been a mess, the defense is a sieve at best, and Sidney Crosby is like fresh fish to the scummy likes of Scott Hartnell and Mike Richards. Regardless of Philly's preposterously persistent porosity problems in the pipes, I don't see Crosby + Malkin + Nobody Else putting a dent into them. I definitely don't see Pittsburgh taking a Game 7 from them.

Prediction: Flyers in 7

WESTERN CONFERENCE

(1) SAN JOSE VS. (8) ANAHEIM

I don't get why everyone's in love with Anaheim. Jonas Hiller is going to shut down the best team in hockey, is he? Just because the Ducks have pedigree? Give me a break.

Prediction: Sharks in 4

(2) DETROIT VS. (7) COLUMBUS

Columbus is the most annoying team in hockey. They have Rick Nash, and that is literally it as far as actual scoring talent goes. What, I'm supposed to be enthralled by the offensive exploits of R.J. Umberger?!? Give me a break. All they're good enough to do is delay the inevitable for no good reason.

Prediction: Wings in 6

(3) VANCOUVER VS. (6) ST. LOUIS

The Blues are the biggest story of the NHL season. From perennial playoff team to perennial doormat and, in the absence of their best players (Paul Kariya, Erik Johnson), have made the biggest leap of anyone. Not only did they sneak into the playoffs, but they have an eminently beatable Vancouver team as their opponent! I have literally no idea how Chris Mason and the Blues did this. And despite my pro-Vancouver sympathies, I can't help but root for St. Louis to take down the weakest of the six division winners.

Prediction: Blues in 7

(4) CHICAGO VS. (5) CALGARY

I can't think of one good reason to root for a team that blew a 13-point division lead over the phoenix-like rebirth of the Chicago Blackhawks. A fun team to watch and a fun team to root for.

Prediction: Hawks in 5

SUBSEQUENT ROUNDS

EAST
BOSTON over Carolina
Because the Canes never put up much of a fight against the B's this year.

PHILLY over Washington
Because it wouldn't be the Flyers if they didn't piss you off.

BOSTON over Philly
Because by now, Biron will be tenderized and ready to eat. And because fuck the Flyers.

WEST
SAN JOSE over St. Louis
Because the dream has to end eventually.

DETROIT over Chicago
Because the Hawks aren't quite THAT good.

DETROIT over San Jose
Because the Sharks always do this eventually.

FINALS
BOSTON over Detroit

They've shown they can beat Detroit, and by a lot, too. If it were the Sharks, I don't think I'd have the same amount of faith in a Bruins victory. But a matchup with Detroit, a team craftier than it is talented, strikes me as a lot more favorable towards the Bruins.

Bruins In Playoffs, Look For Real, Have BEST COMMERCIALS EVER

When I post about the Bruins, there's usually some kind of apology attached. Not now. After living an entire lifetime ashamed of my cheap, uncaring hockey team, this is the first time I've ever been proud to be a fan of the Boston Bruins. This, this moment right now, is the greatest moment in the franchise since the '72 Cup finals.

No, not the B's having the top seed in the East... I'm talking about these commercials.







I award this series of ads 5 Ranger fan shoes out of 5.

Well, Back To Talking About How Versus Sucks

I'm in Boston. NESN is televising the Bruins/Canadiens game, so I get to hear the dulcet tones of Andy Brickley. (For the last time this season, from the look of it.)

Versus is also televising the Bruins/Canadiens game. But they are also also televising the fantastic Capitals/Flyers game, currently tied at 2-2 after two periods.

Naturally, since Bruins/Canadiens is on locally, and is therefore blacked out as a national broadcast due to NESN's territorial rights, Versus is sending us the Caps/Flyers game. After all, the people who run Versus and the NHL are logical and rational, and realize that blacking out hockey entirely due to local restrictions is antiquated, short-sighted, and stupid.

Oh. My mistake. It's a bunch of cowboy dickbuckets trying to stay on top of an abused cow.

Fuck you, Gary Bettman. Fuck you in the face.

Time To Break Radio Silence

I have been protesting the Bruins, in my own inimitable and irrational way, all season long by posting barely a word on them. This despite having watched almost each and every one of their aesthetically displeasing attempts to set the NHL record for overtime losses (the OT loss being the NHL's embarrassing version of an A for effort). I've also resisted, time and again, the frequent, burning urge to defecate dedicate myself towards the noble goal of filling the internet's Bruins-blogging vacuum. I'm moved to celebrate this team, and I stifle every such movement as soon as I can.

Why is that? I'm a hockey puck. I love the Bruins. LOVE them. I should be clogging your bandwidth with unreadably brilliant hockey posts. Nothing would give me greater joy than to see the Bruins win the Stanley Cup. I'd trade all three Patriots Super Bowls for a Cup. I'd see the Celtics embarrassed in a four-game sweep by Atlanta next week, wearing the disaster like a cape, if it meant the Bruins could win it all. I mean that.

In a perfect world, I would have been at tonight's instant-classic Game 6 in person. I would have paid any price. I would have snatched the ticket out of a Habs fan's grubby Canadian fingers (in a peaceful and sterile fashion, of course) to be there. And it would have rocked my balls off, because I love hockey like nothing else.

But it's not a perfect world.

Much as I love the Bruins, I also hate them passionately. Because with every ounce of success the Bruins achieve, and every iota of joy I derive from that success, I'm forced to remember that Jeremy Jacobs is out there, somewhere, benefiting from that success. And that makes me want to puke.

Cackling, arrogant, ragingly Dickensian piece of shit Jacobs, together with his worthless, Rosemary's Baby-type demon spawn of a child, Charlie Jacobs, combine to form a Voltronian of pure evil that goes unchallenged as the very worst ownership group in professional sports. Nobody comes close.

There are many owners, like James Dolan, who beget losing out of their own ignorance and arrogance. There are many others, like Donald Sterling, who maintain a manageable and profitable level of non-talent and sub-mediocrity that persists to the point where the team's fans KNOW that success will not come. Still others, like the vile Jeffrey Loria, dismantle potential juggernauts in order to maintain an even his bottom line.

Jacobs, however, enjoys dismantling 100-point teams in order to go from Filthy Rich to Filthy Stinking Rich. His destruction is never a matter of the bottom line... always the TOP line possible. I cannot think of a single owner in sports who has cried poor, in the face of top-5-leaguewide profits, to the same self-immolating extent that Jacobs has. And no owner I know of, apart from the gutless, cowardly pukes who threaten relocation, has purposely and needlessly destroyed his own fan base more effectively than Jacobs... and then had the gall to wonder, in the media, why he gets no fan support. (Read the Charlie link above. Really.)

Jeremy Jacobs is a man who allowed ALL of his unrestricted free agents to leave town for nothing prior to the 2004 lockout. He did so in order to make sure he wouldn't be on the hook for anyone's paychecks upon re-entry. Of course, the league negotiated a 25% pay cut across the board for all talent under contract, so Jacobs tore the team apart for absolutely no reason. The team still hasn't recovered from this landmark act of fiscal lunacy.

This is a man who allowed perennial Selke contender Dave Poulin, the biggest penalty-kill scoring threat in hockey at the time, to skip town and sign a multi-year deal with Washington... because they offered another $100K or so extra over the course of the deal. He took the offer back to Boston (ahem, ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE TEAMS IN HOCKEY) who refused to pay it. This is how the Bruins have conducted business since Buffalo native Jacobs bought the team.

This is a man who took Ray Bourque to arbitration. RAYMOND FUCKING BOURQUE!!! Jacobs instructed the vile, subhuman Harry Sinden to enumerate the ways in which the Bruins' best player, the #2 defenseman in NHL history, and the classiest human being to don the spoked B in my lifetime, was in fact lousy and overpaid. This despite running, again, ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE OPERATIONS IN THE NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE. Couldn't spare a couple bucks for the best defenseman who ever lived not named Bobby Orr. Un. Fucking. Real.

Jacobs has loosened his notoriously-tight purse-strings (and believe me, that's a man with a fucking purse) in recent years, now that a salary cap is in place. He now spends up to the limit. He apparently thinks that's enough to make up for everything. In reality, his is a life sentence without parole. I'll never, ever forgive him for hanging all those Bourque/Neely/Oates juggernauts out to dry, denying them the kind of talent boost that a Cup contender requires. He may have wanted a Cup, but only if he could get it on the cheap.

In my unbiased (ha!) opinion, he is the worst thing about the National Hockey League. Worse than Versus. Worse than the Flyers. Worse than Sean Avery. Worse than points for overtime losses. Jacobs' magnificently thorough cock-suckery has turned the 500-mile radius surrounding Delaware North's corporate headquarters into a vacuum worthy of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The guy just sucks.

And because Boston fans all grew up with built-in bullshit detectors (say what you I will, but we Massholes know when someone's shitting us), most of us know the score with Jacobs, and have scurried into hiding. See how the Garden is half full of Habs fans in the playoffs? It hasn't got a goddamn thing to do with fan apathy, or the success of the Sox and Pats and Celts. Nothing. Ticket demand being what it is around here, there's more than enough room in this town for four contenders. This city cares. We care so much, in fact, that we refuse to support the team until Jeremy Jacobs sells it.

Our absence, at great personal agony, is the only action remaining for those of us who give a damn about winning a Cup. We simply will not support the Jacobs family during its reign of terror. And rightly not.

That's why I refuse to so much as set foot in the Garden as long as Jeremy Jacobs and the Jacobs family own the Boston Bruins. Swear to God, I wouldn't accept a free ticket. And I sure as shit wouldn't blog about them for free and give them the publicity their players and front office deserve. I'd sooner eat my own penis than give a single, solitary cent to the Boston Bruins.

So... why am I talking about the Bruins?

Because tonight's Game 6 was the best, biggest, and most entertaining hockey game this city has seen since Raymond Bourque sported the spokes. And the fact that it has moved me to break my silence, in spite of all the negatives I've just discussed, should be evidence enough of what a fantastic game it was.

The third period began 2-1 Canadiens, and within 17 minutes it was 5-4 Bruins. Playoff hockey just does not come in that variety (though my buddy Ovie may beg to differ). And as a result, for the first time in the 84-year history of the Bruins and the Canadiens, the B's have stormed back from a 3-1 series deficit to force a Game 7. And for the first time in 2007-08, a season in which they'd lost all eight regular season games to Montreal, the Bruins look like the better team. That alone is worth celebrating.

Now, I'm not sold. This is a bad, bad team. They have no reliable scorers, and their goalie is a 21st-century version of Arturs Irbe. Their brand of hockey is so boring that a Boston victory, a 1-8 upset, is actually a bad thing for the NHL playoffs. And most importantly, every playoff game they host just means more money for the Jacobs family. An upset of this proportion will not undo the past 30 years of active destruction.

But it'd be pretty sweet. And if there's one thing I learned from refusing to watch games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS, it's that I shouldn't let the threat of pain deprive me of the good stuff. This right here, a Game 7 against your mortal enemy, is the good stuff.

Canadiens fold under the pressure. Bruins in 7.