The Bruins Rnt Guna Win

With their loss to the Penguins, the Bruins are officially eliminated from the playoffs, and at the moment they're losing 2-0 to the Thrashers. Liz and her friend John are at the game. Earlier today I went out to lunch with her and she tried to convince me to go. Other than the fact that I was wearing bright pink-and-purple plaid pajama pants (I was only planning on dropping the tickets off), I just didn't have it in me to go to another game. Barring a miracle (read: kickass seats), the Penguins game will be the last one I'll go to in a while. By the time the season starts next year, I'll be away at college, and because the nearest places I applied were in Toronto and Minnesota, home games will be rare. It's strange to think about.

Eric Frede is saying right now that the Garden is "lacking energy" during this game. On that note, the best part of the Penguins game had nothing to do with the game itself (outside of Kessel's goal). It was when they showed a Cam Neely montage. It started with big hits and various scenes of him screaming at someone, spitting blood with every word, then moved on to show some of his better goals. Everyone in the building, including all players on both benches, were completely captivated by it. If only the Bruins took more than entertainment from that, we wouldn't hate them so much.

You have to look at the other side of things, though. Tim Thomas has been the only person who has looked like he cared for the whole season. When the rest of the team sucked and was barely skating, he kept them in the game and never gave up. To show our appreciation, we gave him the 7th Player Award. Then he let in a soft goal, and people started booing him. Infuriated, I started in on a loud, obscenity-laden rant about how angry I was and how much people suck, which caused the booers in my section to quiet down (I don't think I intimidated them so much as there were children around and they anxiously wanted me to stop). These were probably the same people that, seeing that the Bruins would show your text message on the jumbotron, texted them "the bruins r guna win" when they were down 3-2. Sigh.

After the game I went home, but Paula stayed after with a couple of people to wait for the players (don't even ask). They met Andrew Ference, who was apparently very nice, friendly, and dorky. She mentioned the video that I showed her when he was first traded here in which he talked about DDR and Guitar Hero, and he enthusiastically replied that they used to have intense Guitar Hero battles up in Calgary. He gave some guy his stick, then went into the parking lot. He then came out on a bicycle and rode away into the night. With the effort he's put in on the ice, him calling out Dave Lewis, and his apparent dorkiness, he's well on his way to becoming my favorite Bruin.

With the Flames' insane play as of late, the Avs playoff hopes are all but over. It feels awful to admit it before they're mathematically eliminated, but I'm not hoping much anymore. That being said, I'm still watching, and I'm still pissed off that Marek Svatos is on the fourth line. The fact that he deserves better, though I believe it, can be argued against. But what I think most people can agree is that he's much more useful in a scoring role. His biggest contribution will be his offense, so he should be given the opportunity to score. I know he's been given that opportunity, but later in the year he showed flashes of being able to sustain his production. If you're not going to put him on the top two lines, at least put him with Tyler Arnason again and give him a chance, for these last few games, to show that he can contribute somehow.

The Bruins just lost in the last 20 seconds to the Thrashers. I've heard from a few people that they're not going to fire Dave Lewis. That would be a huge mistake. Even my crazy grandmother knows he's bad, and she's my version of Bill Simmon's mother- if she knows something, clearly it's big news. Except that she's also completely insane. One time, her electricity bill was about $5 higher than she thought it should be, and, assuming the man who lives beneath her was stealing it, unplugged every appliance in her apartment to catch him. That woman knows Dave Lewis isn't doing his job. He should take a page from MacT. I cringed reading what he made the guys do. That means he's doing his job.

Unrelated to hockey, the Phoenix FSN station, which broadcast the Avs game the other night, had commercials running for The Eric Byrnes Show, which nearly gave me seizures. Outside of anyone on the Yankees, he's my least favorite baseball player. The animosity stems back to the 2003 ALDS against the A's, and has in no way dimimshed since then. I loathe Eric Byrnes maybe as much as Daniel Briere, though Eric Byrnes is actually an asshole. I can't believe that people like the guy.

Edit: Wicked Bruins Fan has a nice Dave-Lewis bashing post up. Hating him is my new favorite hobby, though I'm afraid it could get out of hand. Oh well. Obsession is a young man's game, eh?

Joe Sakic...yee

It's been a few days between posts, but for good reason. I had figured my throat hurt because I was "cheering so loud for the hopeless Bruins that my voice [was] still partly gone". Turns out I was about to become deathly ill. I tried to write a post after the first Avs game against Vancouver, but all I managed before I passed out on the couch was "Joe Sakic...yee." After that it just seemed smarter to wait.

But I'm better now; watching the New Jersey-Buffalo game, snacking on perfectly burnt popcorn, wondering what the mathematical chance is that not one of my three teams would make the playoffs (about 10% by my probably inaccurate calculations). I'm not saying the Avs are out of it. If they sweep the head-to-head games, they'll only be 3 points back. And if Calgary loses just two more games than the Avs do in their other games, then the Avs will be in. So I'm not saying they're out- I'm just saying that it's a lot of "ifs". The most important factor in them making the playoffs, in my mind, was their ability to match Calgary's record against other teams for the remaining games. Not so hard- that is, before they failed to beat the Oilers and the Flames went 4-0. They needed to match the Flames' 8 points; instead, the Avs only got 5 themselves and dropped back 3 more. It's not impossible, but it's worse than we expected. The Avs announcers couldn't even hide this, having the following exchange.
Guy One (I don't know who said what): So if the Avs lose this, they'll be seven points back. What did we...uh...what had we hoped for before?
Guy Two: (after a long pause) I think we were looking for four.
Guy One: Right, so...we're not quite there.
Awkward, disappointed, disenchanted- what happened to my stress-free, winning Avs? Their confidence is diminishing (though I still have faith that Joe Sakic can stop that) and the first Oilers' game was the last time a point came easy. I'm not criticizing their win over Vancouver, mainly because I still have clawmarks in my arm. During the action I spent my time hugging my legs to my chest, bug-eyed and muttering anxiously. Once a commercial came, I would relax a little, realize that the new tissue box was half gone, wonder if the last powerplay made my temperature go up and try not to fall asleep. That was a huge, very appreciated win. But the second game was a different story. Even in my worst state I would have questioned why Quenneville valued defense over offense against the Canucks, matching Sakic's line with the Sedins'. In the first game, he seemed to want the Stastny-Hejduk lovefest line out against them, which didn't work in stopping them at all. But the Avs won, because the Avs have the ability to win higher-scoring games. Those are the kind of games that they want to create. Instead of looking at the Canucks as 3rd in GA and feeling the need to match them defensively, why not play to your strength and exploit their 23rd-ranked offense? Even scoring two goals would have won the second game. They're a one-dimensional team. Granted, they're damn good at that dimension, but you don't want to play into it. Quenneville should have let Sakic and his line, which had been the hot scoring line, run free, rather than chaining them to defense and hoping that the Stastny-Hejduk lovefest would, in fact, be a lovefest again. The lovefest never happened, the Avs never scored, and, as defensively fantastic as Wojtek Wolski was, they lost.

Still, I have confidence in Quenneville, and faith that he'll let the Avs score some goals and be the Avs again. I don't know why I trust him, but I do. It's probably because he just looks so much like a coach.The gray hair, complete-face frown, and phenomenal moustache- he pulls off the Grumpy Old Coach look flawlessly. One can trust Grumpy Old Coach. He'll never let a player slip through the cracks effort-wise. He'll never get flustered by new situations. He'll give Paul Stastny extra ice time because he uses a wooden stick like they used to do "back in the day". He's ornery.

Craig MacTavish, on the other hand, takes a different angle. He's Intellectual Coach.Well-managed hair, brow often furrowed in thought, and of course classy glasses are more his game. He's put thought into his plan and will outsmart the other guy for sure. True? Doesn't matter. Those are the glasses of a competent man.

Yeah, it's shallow, but let's look at the flip side.
He pulls off no angles- bizarre Hitler moustache, bad glasses, not properly grumpy, not convincingly intellectual. Nothing. He is at best a figment of my imagination, and at worst someone who really looks that ridiculous. You'd think this wouldn't actually matter, until you hear someone question his ability and in the same breath say he looks like a cartoon character. It's strange, stupid, and somewhat merited. He's a cartoon character that hasn't done any good here. He's probably done more harm. He's like a negative coach.

So no matter how many times NESN and the rest mention that the Bruins had a hard "no puck" practice, I'm not buying into Lewis. Just like no matter how the B's fare against Ottawa (win), I'd still rather watch the Oilers (loss), and no matter how much I hate the Bruins I'll still go watch them play. I'm going tomorrow with Paula to my aunt and uncle's season ticket seats, which have a great view of the game itself. I ran into them at the last game. Or rather, they saw me decided it would be hilarious to come up behind me as I was walking and whisper in my ear "Baby, you are so hot" to freak me out. My family is completely insane. Oh well, they've got good seats for watching Sidney Crosby. Gotta love them.

Andrew Ference to Coach Bruins Next Year

Wicked Bruins Fan highlighted a Boston Herald article in which Andrew Ference suggests what we've all been thinking lately- Dave Lewis isn't coaching the Bruins right. This is a team that has all of the right components. Their defense and offense is talented and capable. Their goaltender isn't considered a star, but he's been the only good thing this year. Yet they suck, and in all the ways that leave the coach accountable. The Bruins have fallen apart in the third period, giving up leads and losing games too many times for it to be a coincidence. Lewis is supposed to be a defense-first coach (Brad Boyes even complained, once traded, that he had been held back by Lewis's coaching style), but the Bruins are one of the worst defensive teams in the league. They are 28th in the league in goals against, only ahead of Washington and Philadelphia. Tim Thomas can't be blamed for this. The B's have averaged 34 shots against per game, which is worse than both Washington and Philadelphia. Thomas is 34th in GAA, 21st in SV%, and 5th in total saves, and 3rd in saves/60 minutes. Clearly not superstar numbers, but anyone who watched Thomas this year
he's been the biggest victim of the Bruins' awful defensive play. Lewis' system doesn't work. I went to the painful Montreal game with Paula. Between dodging beer cups, cheering so loud for the hopeless Bruins that my voice is still partly gone, and trying to figure out if the section of Habs fans behind us was chanting in English or French, we noticed that the Bruins suck. More specifically, Paula pointed out, that they were poorly coached. She said that their dump-and-chase-only style of play was "like high school hockey" and that Lewis needed to be harder on them, which is the point Ference makes. He says that some players aren't working their hardest, and suggests that:

“Sometimes it takes calling people on it. . . . If it’s just leading by example, that’s great. But sometimes it takes a little harsher criticism and some brutal honesty.”

Nothing gives me less confidence in a coach than when a player says they aren't brutal enough. I would rather have players complain that the coach is a crazed Nazi who threatens their families when they don't play well than one that's too lax. If Lewis is a coach who stifles players' offensive abilities without holding them accountable so as to make a team captained by Zdeno Chara the 28th-best defensive team in the NHL, why is he still here? I don't know who would replace him, but I think at this point anyone might be better, though my mom's completely serious suggestion of Andy Brickley might not be the answer.

In other news, Tom Gilbert has given me a good idea about how to deal with this Oilers' season. Of all the teams to break their losing streak against, it had to be the Avs. I only caught part of the game, but of course it was the part in the second period where the Oilers tied up the score. The Avs got a point out of the game, but the knowledge that they only got a point against the Oilers might be more damaging to their psyche than anything else. I'm praying that they can recover from this without any further damage, and also for a Chicago win tomorrow, though I don't know if I see that happening when Calgary just beat Detroit and Nashville. There's nothing to do but wait and see at this point. The good news is that Marek Svatos scored (and might finally get put back with Arnason, which I'm convinced will help) and that the Avs still have Joe Sakic. With him there I give them the benefit of the doubt, but the outcome of tomorrow night's game against Vancouver is huge. Win, we're still in it. Lose...well, even Joe might have trouble helping them if they lose.