It's Brett Conolly's Fault

Connolly in his natural habitat, not scoring.

There have been times this season when it seemed as though the sun revolved around the Earth. Early on, the Bruins' power play wasn't just the most dangerous offensive force in the NHL it was the only thing keeping them in games. They were blowing two goal leads and third period leads all over the place and their penalty kill was abysmal. The first two months or so, we had a bizarro Bruins and it looked like Don Sweeney's first season as general manager was going to be an utter disaster. The Chara window had closed. Blow up the team at the trade deadline and rebuild around Bergeron, Krejci, Pastrnak, and Rask.

But then, the Bruins figured things out. Their structure tightened. Kevan Miller came back from a stretch of healthy scratches at a much higher level of play. Even without Chris Kelly, the penalty kill fixed itself and is now as good as it has ever been. Colin Miller has been making steady progress. Brad Marchand has taken a big step forward as a goal scorer. Spooner is getting better every game. Vetrano, Ferraror and Tyler Randall are all contributing. Rask, after a shaky start, is now, back in his usual spot as an elite NHL goal tender. The team can now trust Gustafson. Krejci, before his most recent injury, was shredding opponents in the offensive zone, and Patrice Bergeron, along with everything else he's called up to do for this team, is the leading scorer and taking another big step towards the Hall of Fame. And the power play is still the most dangerous offensive force in the NHL.

But the Bruins are still only a wild card team, and with the East as ridiculously tight as it is, very vulnerable. They are fourth in their division and seventh in the conference with 3 or even 6 teams within easy striking distance. They're 5-4-1 in their last 10 (as of this writing), but 3 of those 5 wins came in their last 3 games. They blow leads. They are inconsistent.

And it's Brett Connolly's fault.

Even in the controlled space of sports, there is still enough chaos that both blame and accolades are impossible to definitively distribute, especially in team sports. We can make educated guesses, but there is still luck, there are still decisions beyond a player's control, there is still the schedule, the referees, the surface of the ice. Simply put, there is only so much any player, even the greatest players can do to influence the outcome of the game.

But Brett Connolly was brought to the Bruins to score. After eye-popping numbers in juniors, impressive numbers in the AHL, and one hell of a snap shot, it looked like Brett Connolly was about to make the transition to being a goal scorer in the NHL. Probably not a 40-goal scorer, or even a 30 goal scorer, but definitely a 20-25 goal scorer. That's why the Bruins got him last year in their attempt to make the playoffs. But right now he has 6 goals in 43 games and the gap between goal 6 and goal 7 continues to grow. Frank Vatrano has 6 goals in 30 games. Tyler Randall 4 in 20. Pastrnak 4 in 14.

The job of the General Manager is to present the head coach with an array of talent and most often that includes a mix of top players and role players. Top players use their talent to contribute in all parts of the game, whereas role players are expected to do well in specific parts of the game and hold their own in the others. So even if Connolly were just level with Jimmy Hayes (who, it should be noted, got 40% of his current goals in a blowout of the Senators) or Matt Beleskey, at 8 goals, both of which I think we'd still consider as under-performing, the Bruins could easily be second in their division or even their conference. A team can struggle when top players aren't contributing, but also when role players fail to fulfill their roles, even when they play well in other aspects of the game.

Which is why I feel doubly bad for calling out Brett Connolly. Not only is it rare for blame to be reasonably affixed to an individual player, but he has actually been playing pretty well. He is winning puck battles along the boards. He is playing well in the defensive zone. He is getting opportunities. But when you go through the Bruins' recent personnel moves, extrapolate the various players' roles, and look at their stats, Jimmy Hayes at 10 goals and 11 assists for 21 points seems OK, even if you want to see his +/- a bit better, and Belesky at 8 and 14 for 22 is lower than what we'd like but not catastrophically so, especially when he's sitting on a +10, and the B's haven't gotten much from Talbot and Rinaldo, but I don't think they expected much from either one of them.

In short, if you imagine what Don Sweeny saw when he looked at his roster this summer, and what he expected to get from every player on that list, really only Connolly is not meeting the expectations.

This is mostly good news, especially given how the Bs started this season. They are in the playoff structure, have sorted out the problems caused by adopting a new system, have maintained the success of their power play, and Brett Connolly (or anybody else) isn't dragging the team down despite his struggles with his particular role. And if the Bruins want to make a deal before the trade deadline, assuming no injuries, they know what they need; someone to make up for the 10-15 goals expected from Connolly that haven't materialized. And, it should be noted he could always turn his season around, go on a hot streak, and land the 20 or so goals the Bruins expected from him.

Though the Bruins don't necessarily need to do anything, I think the “healthy scratch” is under-utilized coaching tool that might do Connolly a lot of good. First off all, given how much of playoff success is drawn from, if not based on, the health of key players, I'd like to see Julien use the healthy scratch as a way of preserving the health of players in general. Second, I don't think it would be that difficult to re-frame the healthy scratch away from punishment for poor play and towards a learning opportunity. You can see things watching a game that you simply can't playing a game. Third, it matters who is also in the booth with you. From what I've seen, Connolly's biggest problem might be his spacing, that he is not quite in the right place to cash in on his opportunities. Loui Erikkson is very good at being in the place to score goals, so maybe giving Connolly a two or three game break with one of those games with Loui Erikkson with him to talk through spacing around the front of the net is exactly what he needs to break out of his goal scoring slump and help the Bruins secure a playoff berth. And you know, it probably wouldn't be that bad of an idea to check his hand.

So, where do the Bruins go from here? What does the rest of the season hold? Have you been watching the season? Did you think the Capitals were finally going to pull it together? And what happened out West with the Kings and everybody else? And what happened to the Canadiens? Sure, Price going down is big, but as far as I know, Markov is technically not injured. And how are the Penguins so bad? And what the hell happened with John Scott? And how the hell do the Bruins, the Claude Julien Boston Bruins have the best power play in the league, by a wide, wide margin. I'm not much of a fan of prognostication in general, but anyone who says they know what's going to happen to any team in the NHL this season is lying to themselves.

Luck Denial in Sport and Society

I don't know exactly when the tide turned for my assessment of the series, probably game three or four, but the phenomenon was distinctive and persistent enough that coverage of game seven between the Bruins and the Candiens featured a highlight reel of Bruins hitting the post. Though you won't hear it from any players or coaches, and now that the series is over, any mainstream journalist, or even most fans who want to put a good sportsmanship face forward, the Bruins lost to the Canadiens because of bad luck. Frankly, the fact that they took the series to a game seven while hitting the post 13 (13!) times shows just how much better, overall, the Bruins are. And the posts weren't the only bad luck. There were another half dozen times the puck ended up on edge or slightly offline and a Bruin ended up missing an easy goal. And the luck didn't just prevent the Bruins from scoring. A blocked shot lead to a breakaway and a Canadiens goal. A puck flipped into the neutral zone made through gloves and legs to land for a breakaway and another goal. The third goal in game seven really encapsulated the entire series for the Bruins. Chara was perfectly positioned in the two-on-one. He forced Pachiaretti to the side of the net and Pachiaretti just kinda flipped the puck towards the front of the net (probably the best play he had) and, of course it bounced off Chara and in, stretching the lead back to two goals. Chara did everything right and the Canadians just happened to score. Story of the fucking series. As much as it sounds good to say there's no such thing as “puck luck,” that's all it does, “sound good.”

Beyond public perception, there are very practical reasons for luck denial, for coaches and athletes. You can't practice for it. You can't train for it. You can't trade or draft for it. You can't strategize for it. By definition, there is nothing a coach or athlete can do about luck and so any attention paid to it distracts from the aspects of their craft they can actually do something about. For professional athletes, not mentioning, discussing, or complaining about the role of luck in an outcome isn't just about sportsmanship; it's a professional performance strategy.

But luck doesn't just affect sports. It also, affects, well, everything. Anything that involves a convergence of phenomena beyond your control is luck. To provide a personal example, there is a long list of decisions other people made and events I had no control over (some of which weren't so positive), that culminated in me being able to pitch my novel directly to Denis Johnson at Melville House. At any point in that chain of events, something could have happened to prevent me from that moment. That doesn't remove the work I put into the novel and the preparation I put into the pitch, but it does mean I can't, logically, claim 100% of the credit for whatever happens with my book.

As in sports, with luck in the rest of life, comes luck denial. In fact, one could argue our economic system, restrained-profitism operating within a democratically administered meritocracy, is built on the denial of luck. To put it simply, acknowledging luck means super-rich assholes have no justification for being super-rich. The base of profitism and the justification for the unequal wealth it creates is that through hard work and talent the super-rich, deserve their wealth. If you acknowledge that maybe some of their wealth was the result of phenomena beyond their control that ended up benefiting them, then the entire structure of contemporary capitalism comes crashing down.

Of course, it's never ONLY luck. Marchand dragged the entire team down. Not only could he not hit the net from two feet away, his absolutely inane snow shower penalty disrupted the Bruins momentum right when it seemed like they were going to start dominating play (again) in Game 7. Barkowski played like a rookie and for the first time all season, looked out of place in the NHL. Subban and Price carried the team on their backs until Pacioretti and Vanek got it going late in the series. But just because it's not ONLY luck, doesn't mean we should ignore the influence of luck in society. By far, the best metaphor for the general role of luck in our society is John Scalzi's essay on “Easy Mode.”  To summarize, those of us lucky enough to be born straight, white, American men (last I checked we didn't pass some pre-birth test that allowed us to choose our parents) play the video game of life on the easy mode. You still need to work hard to succeed, of course, and if you do, you will deserve much of whatever reward comes your way, but the undeniable fact of life is that at some point you will benefit from good luck.

Good luck and bad luck tend to even out you say? Over the course of time, you'll have just as much of one as the other, you say? Two things. One, not really an argument a Bruins fan is willing to hear at the moment. From Game 4 on, I just kept assuming there was no way the Bruins' luck could stay that bad. It did. One might argue that the Canadiens had their own bit of bad luck with Price's injury, but that really doesn't balance anything out, as it does nothing to benefit the Bruins. Two, if you flip a coin and it comes up heads, what are the odds the next flip will come up tails? 50%. How about if you flip it again and it comes up heads again? 50%. What if you flip it a million times and each time it comes up heads? 50%. Luck is like a flipped coin. Yeah, a lot of the time it “evens” out and most of us probably experience just about as much good luck as bad luck, but there is just no reason to believe the effects of good and bad luck will even out, or that there will be a zero sum gain, or that your bad luck now will somehow compensate whoever lost out because of your good luck in the past. I mean, Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy four times (FOUR TIMES!!!) and yet, his array of good and back luck have allowed him to still be insanely wealthy, despite, four (FOUR!!) bankruptcies.

Even though it is an illusion, and there is no real way to ensure the most talented and hardest working are always rewarded, I think the meritocracy can be a net gain illusion. I believe society has a whole benefits when talent and hard work are rewarded in some way. But that's not what we have now. How do we solve luck denial in society? It starts with raising the minimum wage. The best way to acknowledge that shit beyond our control happens, while also rewarding hard work and talent, is to ensure the lowest members of society, still live safe, physically comfortable, lives of dignity no matter what mistakes they've made or how flawed they appear. The point is not that everyone is equal in terms of wealth, but that no one in the world's richest country, for whatever reason, is forced to live in or near squalor. Once the floor is raised, acknowledging that nobody is 100% responsible for where they end up in life, the negative repercussions of our illusion of meritocracy are essentially eliminated without meaningfully affecting the positive elements of the delusion. Talent will still be rewarded. Mistakes and failures punished. There will be rich and poor. All it would mean is the people at the top wouldn't be quite so astronomically rich, which is fine by me, since they don't really deserve it anyway.

Since I started with hockey, I might as well end with hockey.

On Brad Marchand: I can't think of a worse performance by a professional athlete that I've ever seen. Not only could he not hit the net, he consistently turned the puck over at the offensive blue line, and took stupid penalties, and did not, get in any opponents heads. He made bad decision after bad decision and played so poorly, not even Bergeron and Smith could hoist him to some level of competence. Along with “Another fucking post!” I think “Just dump the fucking puck in!” was my most frequent furious exclamation. There were other players who underperformed, but I don't think you could look at how Lucic (who had a wrist injury), Iginla, & Kreijci were as actively detrimental to the team. They were points when they were dumping the puck in, forechecking for a bit and then losing the puck. It would have been wonderful if Marchand's play lead to that. Yes, Rask needed to make a couple more big saves, and yes, Barkowski was generally out of sorts, but when you look beyond the posts for reasons why such a good team could lose, it's hard to look anywhere else but Marchand.

That said, I'm not sure trading him this off-season would make sense, if for no other reason than I can't imagine his trade value being very high. If the Bruins don't think he'll help them win another Cup, they would probably get the most value for their trade by giving him a chance to score some goals in the regular season before trying to move him. Then again, if the right deal comes around, as it did with Sequin, I wouldn't be surprised if Chereli made the move.

On PK Subban: I have never had a high opinion of Subban. He is unbelievably talented, but, in recent years, even in his, ugh, Norris winning year, I believe he has diluted his talent through diving, cheap shots, reckless hits, and whining to the official. As good a skater as he was, he never seemed to have his head enough in the game itself to truly be a great player. Shockingly, he cut out a lot (but not all) of those shenanigans in this series and was a force of fucking nature. The Canadiens would have lost four in a row if Subban hadn't played at the level he played. I mean, he looked ridiculous calling for the puck by jumping up and down on the ice, or rather, he would have looked ridiculous if he wasn't 100% right and 100% scored on the hockey equivalent of calling your shot. He still didn't deserve the Norris when he won it and he can still be a reckless, dangerous (ask Vanek about that), and cowardly player, but he showed some actual growth and actual maturity in this series and if he continues to mature this way, he will be an exciting player to watch.

On The Bruins Next Year: There's a reason why they won the President's Trophy and there is every reason to believe they will be an elite team next year. Of their core, only Chara is really aging out, and he had another Norris Finalist caliber season, and even if he loses another step Denis Siedenberg could easily become the Bruins' top shut down defenseman. Rask will still be Rask, Bergeron will still be Bergeron, and Kreijci will still be Kreijci, while we expect to see continued improvement from Krug, Bartkowski, Smith, and, pleasant surprise of the playoffs, Soderberg. And Cherelli proved he will make big moves (Sequin last year) if they make sense, and simpler, safer, prudent moves, (Meszaros at the trade deadline) if those are what's available. Logically, there is just no way to argue against the Bruins being Stanley Cup contenders again next year. Unfortunately, logic is one thing and luck is another.

Why the Bruins Won Everything in March

The Bruins have locked up the Eastern Conference with four games remaining in the schedule and have a solid shot at the totally-meaningless-but-I-guess-kinda-better-than-nothing President's trophy. Though it was formalized on Saturday's win over the Flyer's, with the waning of the Penguins, the Bruins have been the best team in the conference (and probably the league) for several weeks now. They only lost once (ONCE!) in March and put together an almost unbelievable string of games. Here's why they were able to do that.

They're Relatively Healthy
The boring fact of the elite teams of the NHL is they tend to distinguish themselves from each other based on how healthy their stars are. When an announcer talks about “playing well at the right time,” that is generally a narrative-biased explanation for the fact that Patrice Bergeron had a punctured lung and a dislocated rib by game 6 and Jonathan Toews did not. For the last month and a half, the Bruins have been relatively healthy, with only Dennis Seidenberg (who had the courtesy to suffer his season ending injury before the trade deadline) and Adam Mcquaid missing serious time. For the last month of the season, for a Stanley Cup contender, only missing two major players, and missing them in such a way that the team has the resources to compensate is about as healthy as can possibly be. Professional hockey is a war of attrition determined, too often by luck, and for the last month, the Bruins have been very lucky.

They Have a Legitimate Power Play
The Bruins have been the best even strength team in the NHL for a few years now thanks to a successful system (more on that later), a couple of top notch shut down defensemen, and a few top notch three-zone forwards, but, even when they won the Stanley Cup, their power play hindered them. Given their even-strength excellence, I've never believed a top ten power play was required for them to be successful, but it couldn't hurt. So what changed between then and now, where they're scoring at a third-best 20.8% clip. Unlike the top two teams, Pittsburgh and Washington, the Bruins don't have a sniper to bend the power play curve. Rather, they've had success because they run two fundamentally different power play systems.

Most teams have two power play units, but very few teams that I can think of, run distinct systems based on those units. The Bruins first unit has a pretty simple strategy, stick two monstrosities in front of the net and move the puck around enough to get a decent shot so the mythological beasts can fight to stuff in a rebound. By sticking Chara and Lucic in a power-I in front of the net the Bruins first unit throws down a physical challenge very few teams will be able to meet. And the result is that shut-down defenseman Chara, has ten (TEN!) power play goals. The second unit is an entirely different story all together, using puck motion to create passing lanes for lay-up goals on the side of the net. A system which requires an entirely different strategy to defend against. And then you add in the fact that, because of their overall defensive structure, they can have four forwards on the ice without undue risk of a short handed goal (they've only given up six all year), and the puck moving ability of Torey Krug and the three-zone skill of Bergeron and Kreici and the increased chemistry between Soderberg and Eriksson and you have a dominant power play without the typical NHL superstar on the best even strength team in the league. If there is any one of these particular points terrifying other teams, it is this one.

The Olympic Break
The Olympic break gave both Iginla and Eriksson a chance to get their legs back; for Ignila, that meant a bit of a breather and for Eriksson it meant getting his reps in after returning from his concussion. The energy Iginla came back with turned his line into a true top line and they have been dominating opponents ever since. Eriksson's improvement has, not only added more depth by improving the Bruins third line, but also, I think, played a role in Carl Soderberg's recent successes. A chemistry has developed between the two Swedes that was not really there with Eriksson on the Bergeron line. The result being that once again, there is no break in the Bruins forward lines. There is skill and grit on all four lines and now, all four lines are playing well.

The Bruins System
Third man high, three-zone center, protect the house, support your teammates, weak-side defender pressures the puck at the blue line. At this point, there is pretty much one vulnerability in the Bruins' team system; a cross-ice stretch pass, but since they know that, it isn't much of a vulnerability. If someone makes a mistake, there is always someone else to cover him. And both Rask (who is playing at Vezina levels) and Johnson (who is playing far better than any back up has a right to) are good enough to make up for nearly every time mistakes compound into a serious scoring chance. Over the last month and a half pretty much the only goals the Bruins have given up have involved the occasional long pass and the bad bounce amidst the chaos in front of the net. At this point, enough Bruins have been playing the system that it is second nature, and the system is intuitive enough that newer players have fit in perfectly.

But along with the strategic system, there is a powerful team character. It leads to Chris Kelly, who is pretty goddamn good in the face-off circle, to play wing, to Gregory Campbell staying on the fourth line and making less money than he otherwise would, to David Krejci working the point on the power play, and for every player to stand up for every other player. If the Bruins can win another Cup or two in the next five years and continue their overall success, one could argue Claude Julien is one of Boston's greatest coaches, if not one of the NHL's greatest coaches.

The Schedule
It should also be noted that the Bruins won a lot of games they were supposed to win. Florida twice. Carolina. Phoenix twice. Minnesota. Washington is a cusp team that “needs” points, but they are still below Boston in the standings, and the same goes for Montreal, Philadelphia, and New York. All four are better teams than those previously mentioned, but all four are still, not as good as the Bruins. Chicago was diminished. And Colorado has come back down to Earth. Not losing in March was still pretty fucking amazing, but the Bruins also benefited from a schedule that happened to set the table perfectly for them.

Perfect Hockey
Oh yeah, also they haven't been making mistakes. Like any mistakes. And the few that happen, are almost always taken care of by a teammate. It's fucking relentless.



Looking Forward
Given all that, it's hard not to be optimistic about the Bruins chances in this post-season. From what I've seen, the only real concern is Chara. Since the Olympic break, Chara seems to have lost a step. Thus far it hasn't been a problem, but against the Penguins, or even in seven games against the Canadians, having your top shut down defenseman a step too slow could cost them the series. Hopefully, with the Eastern conference now sewn up, they can give Chara (and Bergeron and Kelly and Campbell and Krejci...) a few days off to hopefully recharge his legs a bit.

But baring that, and assuming the Bruins stay healthy, at this point, there is no good reason not to expect the best.

Watching Game 7 Against Toronto

Most nights I work in the evening, usually getting home between 9-9:30, which means, most of the time, I don't watch live sports. Before we got DVR with our cable package, for Sox and Bruins games, I would watch the two-hour replay at midnight, getting reading and writing done during the commercials. Despite my best efforts, over the years I learned how to triangulate time left in the games, time left before 2 a.m. and the score to know who was going to win and whether or not the game would go into overtime. And, of course, every now and then NESN wouldn't edit the relevant score out of the scroll and I would see who wins a few minutes into watching the game.

I still watch Sox in 2 rather than recording the game because the nature of a baseball game can be expressed in a two-hour version of itself, but generally, I record Bruins games, especially during the playoffs when they are not necessarily playing on NESN. The challenge though is that the games don't always show up in cable queue, making scheduling a recording a pain. Game seven against Toronto was not listed in the queue even the early afternoon of the day of the game (Damn you, RCN!), so I asked my partner to record the game for me. Having a life of her own that pretty explicitly involves as little sport as possible, I wasn't too upset when I got home from work to find she had started the recording late, roughly at the beginning of the second period.

As Game 7 was broadcast on NESN, I had a brilliant idea. I would watch the first period on Bruins in 2, set the replay to record in case my live recording didn't get the whole thing, and then watch to the end of my live recording, thus, enjoying the entire game. I thought it was a pretty clever way to watch the entire game. Then the NESN scroll during the replay advertised ticket sales for home games 1, 2, and 3 of Round 2, telling me the Bruins won game 7. Which marked the beginning of perhaps the strangest spectating experience of my life.

In some ways, it was nice to be able to watch the game knowing it wouldn't be the last of the season. Sure, the major emotional content of the game was removed, but I could enjoy it without stress. And when the Bruins scored first, I just sat back prepared for the Bruins to coast to victory over the over-achieving Toronto Maple Leafs. So when the third period with the Bruins down 3-1, I nodded my head at what would be an impressive third period. But, of course, the Bruins have been a strong third period team for the last four years, and the Leafs are young and Phaneuf had struggled all series. Coming back from two down in the third period seemed totally reasonable. And then...time ran, as it does. And then...Toronto scored again, making it 4-1. And then...time ran, as it does. And what started out as totally reasonable, making up a two-goal deficit, over the course of a third period, became unbelievable. At one point I even wondered if somehow, through some inexplicably absent minded mistake, NESN ran the wrong scroll.

It felt like perpendicular trains of thought running both towards and away from each other. The fundamental fact was being stretched by the particular facts I was watching as if it were on the rack. To be honest, and here is one of the stranger sentences I'm going to write, the only other experience I've had that has produced as strange a mental state, was reading poems by Cesar Vallejo.

Midway through the third period, Nathan Horton scored and I thought this was the beginning of the comeback. Remarkable enough to comeback from three goals down with less than ten minutes. And then the time just kept ticking on. Rather than being frustrated, discouraged, and a little sports-depressed, I watched an event go from remarkable, to amazing, to miraculous, to unfucking believable. Lucic with 1:22 left and Rask on the bench. Bergeron with :55 left to tie with Rask on the bench. And then it was just waiting for the overtime winner, which, because he is the best, had to be Bergeron again.

For all the intensity of emotion in sports, there isn't much of a variety of emotions. So not only was the experience weird in and of itself, its very existence was weird. A random arrangement of events made possible by modern technology, through the diligence and/or negligence of other people with an unprecedented event at its core. It is the kind of event you don't want to waste and for me, that means writing this post.

What We Learned From the Toronto Series

I haven't written about the NHL playoffs yet, because, until some of it actually happened, I didn't really have much to say. As has been the case for the last decade or so, the team whose goalie plays the best and who has the most healthy stars, will win. Just look back the last few years and you'll see. Because you cannot predict injury and because goalies sometimes just get hot in the playoffs, there is absolutely no way to know how those two key dynamics will play out. I wondered if the compressed season might have affected the teams making the playoffs because the normal attrition of an NHL season would not have winnowed the less deep teams, but in the end it was the Rangers, Senators, and Capitals and not the Jets. Only the Islanders (at least in the East) could be described as a “thin” team.

Before moving on to what we learned from Boston's series with Toronto, I do think it is fascinating that half, HALF the teams in the Eastern Conference playoffs were from the Northeast Division. Four out of the five teams and the fourth of those teams, Toronto themselves had the same number of points 57 as the Southeast Division winning Capitals. This is fascinating (vindicating) because the entire Northeast Division made changes in the off-season to be more like the Bruins. Last year only two Northeast Division teams made the playoffs. Clearly, the Bruins are on to something.

What We Learned from the Toronto Series
We actually didn't learn that much about the Bruins during the series. We already knew their power-play is awful and that they lack scoring and have struggled with inconsistency. We knew they are resilient, Tuukka Rask is a big-time goalie, and, in a just world, Patrice Bergeron would win a Hart Trophy some day. We knew their fourth-line is a huge asset and they have depth on defense. In short, we saw the same Bruins we'd been seeing, with varying results, for about three years. However, we learned a lot about the Leafs, some of which should be reflected this off-season.

James Reimer Won't Win a Cup Unless He Fixes His Re-Bound Problem

In games five and six, we saw that James Reimer has the potential to be a dominant goalie, because he was the only reason the Leafs were able to stretch the series to seven games. Both five and six were strange games; the Leafs spent a ton of time in the Boston zone and got a ton of shots. But while Boston did not play particularly well, most of the Leafs shots weren't dangerous and not only did the Bruins end up with more scoring chances, their scoring chances were generally better than the Leafs. Only Reimer's fantastic saves won the games for them. But his glove hand was weak and he gave up way too many rebounds. Most teams in the NHL use a shoot and crash goal scoring strategy and it doesn't matter how much talent you have, you cannot lead your team to any kind of substantial success if you give up rebounds. The good news for the Leafs and Reimer is that this is a very specific skill set that he can work on in the off/pre-season for next year. Control rebounds and improve his glove hand and he could be something special. But if another year passes and he doesn't improve, the Leafs could be waiting a long time for another cup.

Phil Kessel Cannot Carry a Team

This was actually a break out series for Kessel, in that he actually scored against the Bruins. More than once. In fact, for the first time against the Bruins, he was exactly what the Leafs pay him to be; a dangerous skater and opportunistic scorer. (Despite ultimately losing, there were a lot of positives in this series.) But, after Nathan Horton scored the make it 4-2 a little over halfway through the third period, Phil Kessel needed to take over the game. He needed to double shift, demand and receive the puck, run the Bruins ragged all over the ice, and score or set up the Leafs fifth and deciding goal. Lucic saw the need and imposed himself on the second half of the third period, and, as always, Bergeron stepped up and did exactly what needed to be done for the Bruins to win. And Kessel?

The problem, of course, is that Kessel is not and never has been a take-over-the-game player and the Leafs will be kicking themselves for years for acquiring him and paying him as if he were. This is not a knock on Phil Kessel. He, like Tyler Sequin is a piece-of-the-puzzle player, a weapon, a tool, an offensive compliment to a well-rounded team. He's not the player you build a team around, he's the player you fit in for an offensive burst. Which is not to say the Leafs should ditch him in the off-season, but that they need to rethink how their team is constructed and how Kessel should fit into it. Now, whether Kessel has the maturity to understand himself as a piece-of-the-puzzle and adjust his game to win as opposed to score remains to be seen.

Remember When Dion Phaneuf Was an All-Star
Dion Phaneuf was embarrassingly bad in the series. I don't know if he had one of those lingering, hidden injuries, or he just didn't have the physical strength to stick with Lucic and Bergeron or what, but as a first pair defenseman and captain, the Leafs needed a lot more out of him in that third period meltdown. He really didn't even have to play that much better; he just needed to be an emotional and mental anchor, especially after Lucic's goal to bring it within one, to keep the Leafs from panicking, to keep them making plays in the last minute of the game and he didn't. And Phaneuf's inadequacy highlighted a general lack of depth for Leafs defensemen that played a major role in the Bruin's comeback. As I pointed out before when talking about Reimer, the Leafs gave up a lot of quality scoring chances late in the series, and one big reason why is there defensemen as a corps just didn't have the skills and depth to prevent those chances. In contrast with the Bruins, who had two rookies in the game and lost their 2nd best defenseman :37 seconds into the game, and still managed to keep the game within reach. With a lead like that in the third period, the Leafs really didn't need to do much to win the series, but they did nothing of what they needed to do, and, at least, will get a jump start on improving their already improved team.

Series Wrap-Up
As much as I want this series to be about the Bruins winning, ultimately it was about the Leafs losing. Except for game one, and isolated stretches of play the rest of the series, the Bruins did not put on a playoff performance. They picked up right where they left off the regular season; solid team defense compensating for inconsistent offense enough to get the necessary wins. A more talented team, a Leafs mentally and physically capable of weathering the storm the few times the Bruins played as well as they could, Leafs without all the flaws we learned in the series, would've moved on.

On Round Two
One of two players will determine the winner of the Boston vs. New York series. The first, and I can't even see the edge from this statement, that's how far from it I am, is Henrik Lundqvist. (See above about goalies, etc.) Since last year's round one loss to the Capitals, the Bruins have developed a unique stonewallability. It's lead to a lot of 2-1 and 3-2 wins and losses. Lundqvist hasn't been his best this year, but if he ups his game to something close to how he played last year, I just don't think the Bruins will be able to score enough goals to win four out of seven games.

The second player is Tyler Sequin. Sequin quite noticeably struggled against the Leafs, but I wonder if that had more to do with the Leafs overall team speed than it did with anything in particular Sequin was doing poorly. Unlike most teams, Sequin can't just blast around all the Leafs. Even if he is still faster than most of them, he's not so much faster that he can create scoring opportunities just by skating by opponents. The Rangers are not as fast as the Leafs, so Sequin should be able to skate by opponents. He needs to hit the net more when he shoots, but ultimately his lack of scoring this season involved a lot of bad bounces and a lot of great saves. A bounce or two his way, a more relaxed approach to scoring, and/or a few momentary lapses from Lundqvist and Sequin could easily put up 10+ points in 6 or 7 games.

Of course, neither of those players might matter all that much if Seidenberg, Ference, and Redden are out for the series. Bartkowski and Hamilton have done fine so far, and Krug is definitely talented, but all three of those young defensemen bring a different skill set to the game than the three injured veterans, a skill set far less relevant in the playoffs. Every team has a critical mass of injuries after which, they just don't have the talent to win a playoff series. The Bruins clear depths means their threshold is higher than most and it's still there. And three of the six starting defensemen, including, in Seidenberg, a player who would be the number one just about anywhere else, might be it.

Random Fall Sports Thoughts

The books I've been reading to blog about recently aren't coming out until later in the winter, I've got a whole big thing about election reform in the works, but I think we can wait until we've all caught our breath a bit (either from wailing in rage or smugly smirking when making eye contact with other liberals, which takes a bit more oxygen than you might assume), and well, I wrote about tomatoes two weeks ago. (Probably six weeks too late to be useful, but well, it's out on the Internet. Just bookmark it.) So my post this week is a slew of random sports thoughts from the past couple months.

The Biggest Loser in the NHL Lockout is Your Boston Bruins

Think about the state of Boston sports in early October. The Reds Sox were, well, you know. The Celtics hadn't started playing and the scab referees were sowing chaos all over the NFL. If the NHL season had started on time, the Bruins would have been the most popular team in New England. Not only would they have been the only professional team actually playing an actual version of their sport, but their season was packed with story lines. How would Tukka Rask handle being the official number one goalie? Would Tyler Sequin compete for the scoring title? What would Nathan Horton's capacity be? Would Doug Hamilton make an impact? Would Patrice Bergeron finally, finally, be recognized as an elite NHL player? And this before any games are played. Unless something went horribly wrong, the Bruins would make the playoffs, mostly likely winning their division again, and, if they stayed healthy, their young stars continued to improve, and their veteran stars (Krejci, Lucic, Bergeron, Chara) played liked stars, would be legitimate Stanley Cup contenders. All hockey fans are the losers in this stupid, stupid lockout, but if there is one organization that lost a major opportunity, it is our own Boston Bruins.

How Did the Sox Get Farrell So Easily?

When the Red Sox first showed some interest in John Farrell, last year, the Toronto Blue Jays demanded Clay Bucholtz in exchange for a meeting; Jays get Bucholtz, Sox get a conversation. I think everyone; fan, player, coach, owner, wanted John Farrell to come back and manage the Sox once Tito was run out of town, it was just a matter of when. At the beginning of the season, before Armageddon hit, I would have assumed Valentine would stay his two years (which would have lined up with the end of Farrell's contract) and unless he won a World Series, be politely replaced. So when the bubonic plague swept through the second half of the Sox season and Valentine was fired, the Jays must have known the Sox were desperate for Farrell. This is not a knock on Mike Aviles, I'm just shocked the Jays would settle on one player. Maybe they know something the Sox don't. Maybe it was just that they knew they weren't going to keep Farrell after the end of his contract and figured they'd get that part of their club settled quickly and easily. Who knows what they're reasoning is, but the Sox have to feel a lot better about their resources this off season since they had to spend so little on Farrell.

Ortiz and Ellsbury

I like the Ortiz contract. Well, I don't like any professional sports contracts, but when you take the real world absurdity of all professional sports out of the picture, I like the Ortiz contract. Are the Sox probably overpaying him? Well, they're not really paying for the next two years. There was some strong evidence last year that Ortiz could be worth something like that, but there was also some strong evidence that he is one tweaked knee away from uselessness. This contract pays Ortiz for his career and all but guarantees he'll retire in a Red Sox uniform, so we can all begin fantasizing about Tek coaching pitchers and Papi coaching hitters. In terms of Ellsbury and trade rumors and the occasional absence thereof, what we can know for sure is that nobody in the league has much confidence in his durability, but in a very weird way. He is just so talented, that his trade and contract value is massive, except that, for some reason, he keeps get season ending injuries. The economics of trades make it almost impossible to accurately evaluate a trade involving him. If he stays with the Sox through the off-season and if he extends his contract with them, his stability here might come as much from this impossible value calculus as it does from his value as a player.

A Tale of Four Teams

I work on Sundays, so I don't get to see many Pats games over the season. Usually, I use NFL Game Center to keep track of what's happening, and even though the display is only color coded lines across a field, if you have a good sense of what football looks like, you can get a lot out of that data. It's not complete, but there's enough information to draw some conclusions. The Patriots seem to field four different teams. First is the front seven on defense which, lead by Vince Wilfork (Pro-Bowl at this point), are ranked 7^th in rushing defense and have forced 7 fumbles (2nd), have only given up 3 rushing touchdowns, and only one run of more than 20 yards. They've also come up with huge plays, like Wilfork forcing the fumble against the Cardinals and the sack/fumble of Sanchez in over time. Then there's the secondary. Maybe they still haven't quite figured out the bend-don't-break pass defense. Maybe they're still too young to handle NFL style offenses. Maybe Patrick Cheung, talented as he is, doesn't have the ability to lead the team needs from him. Maybe, they just don't have Super Bowl caliber talent. Whatever it is, the Patriots are way down at 28^th in passing defense giving up an average of 8 yards a passing play and 281.1 passing yards per game, with a 65.8% completion rate good for 6^th worst in the league. Aqib Talib (when he can play and more on him later) might be a piece in the puzzle kind of player, providing just enough raw talent in the secondary for the scheme to come together and the pass defense to radically improve. But even if he only moderately improves the secondary, that might be enough for another ring.

The offense seems to be just as divided. There's the no-huddle offense (NFL Game Center indicates when a play is no-huddle) which is, in standard Patriots fashion, tearing defenses apart and there's the huddle offense which seems to stall out, usually on really important drives. Maybe Josh McDaniels doesn't have a complete grasp on the talent at his disposal. Maybe the no-huddle just keeps defenses off their feet. Maybe the players execute the no-huddle plays better. But, of course, you can't run the no-huddle all game. At least one sports writer thought they looked worn out by the end of the Denver game. (Of course, by then they'd already scored 31 points.) One of the problems the Patriots have had over the last few years is managing the clock; keeping the ball in situations when it's best to slow the game down. Having an actual running game (which, man, is that pretty sweet) will help, but they still need to be able to huddle, walk up to the line while the clock ticks away, take a breath, and execute enough plays to sustain drives. Without at least being mediocre that this, it's hard to see them winning another Super Bowl this year, no matter how well the rest of the season goes.

On Aqib Talib

I don't know if he'll be the missing piece that makes the Patriots defense championship caliber, but, he won't tear the team apart. The big risk of volatile players is that their behavior will lead to team wide conflicts, but that hasn't happened with the Patriots. Whether the high-risk player has worked out or not, none of them have brought the team down with them. This probably part of why they were able to get Talib for basically nothing. The Bucs were done with him, other teams didn't want to risk it, and the Pats knew he'd either improve their secondary or he wouldn't. Another reason why Bellicheck should be talked about as an all time great.

The Big Gap in My Sports Fall

Finally, a major part of my sports Fall will be missing this year. For the past eight years, the Lewiston Maineacs, a Quebec Major Junior Hockey Team, played the Friday after Thanksgiving, so I was always in town to see it. The whole fam would go and then I would go out with my friends afterward. High quality hockey with a dose of hometown nostalgia. Alas, for a whole host of reasons, the Maineacs were dissolved (right before they were due for a playoff run) and the arena hasn't found a replacement for them. The AHL Portland Pirates will play a few games there over the winter, but not on this particular night. I think Lewiston is a great fit for a junior team, and, assuming the overall economy begins to improve and Lewiston hockey fans have learned a little about the cycles of Junior Hockey, a team, maybe from Eastern Junior Hockey League (which already has a team in Portland), should be successful.

Will the Big Three Come Back? And a Couple Other Sports Thoughts

Of the four major American sports, basketball is my least favorite (which drops it to around 6^th or 7^th in the world of sports in general, but still puts it higher than just about anything else on TV) but it was damn near impossible not to become emotionally invested in the Boston Celtics this year. Everyone kept knocking them down and they just kept getting right back up. And not just dragging themselves to their feet to stagger through another round. They got back up to the Eastern Conference finals (more on that in unpacking the titular question) and went seven games with the Miami Heat, in the course of which, their play demanded Lebron James put it one of the great performances in NBA playoff history to beat them. They proved that great coaching and great team play can still beat the greatest individual talents the sport has to offer, if said great team could muster a few more points from their bench players.

But the question on everyone's mind of course, as the Heat fans gave the Celtics a standing ovation in the closing seconds of game 7 is, is this the end? Is “The Big Three” era coming to an end? There were points in this season (say, before the All-Star break) where this was an easy “no,” but, with the playoff performance the question is a lot more complicated, and is, I think, leaning ever so slightly towards, “yes.”

First of all, I think it's important to remember that if Avery Bradley was healthy the Celtics beat the Heat in six games. Maybe five. He would have guarded James most of the time, and by the playoffs, he had developed into an elite defender. Not only would he have added his own abilities, he would have eased the burden on Paul Pierce, who noticeably faded as the series wore on. Much like in their re-match with the Lakers when Kendrick Perkins went down, it wasn't poor play from the Big Three that accounted for a loss, but the absence of a key supporting player. The same thing could be said for the Heat, of course. If they had lost the 12 or so points Chalmers provided, they would have lost series. (And while we're on the Heat, if Chris Bosh didn't suddenly turn into a 3-point shooter in game 7, the Celtics would still be playing. I mean, seriously. What more could we ask from the Celtics defense than to force Bosh to take 3s as the shot clock expired?)

On to signing or not signing Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to new contracts. Let's start with Ray Allen, because I think the possibility of his contract is more complicated.

First of all, it depends in his ankle. If he gets out of ankle surgery and doesn't believe he can consistently make jump shots, I assume he'll retire. But even if the ankle comes back healthy, the Celtics would have to be concerned about his ability to stay healthy for an entire season, given the ankle, the bone spurs, and his age. I think we can safely assume that Ray Allen can no longer contribute effective starter minutes. But coming off the bench? If Ray Allen's ankle is healthy after the surgery, I think he can be an major contributing factor off the bench. In 12 minutes or so per game, we could expect about 12 points or so from Allen, but more importantly, a fresh Allen at the end of games could be huge. He could only average 6 or 7 points a game, but if those points come in the fourth quarter to close-out games, they will be major contributions to the team's success. And you don't have to run around to make free-throws.

The question is whether a future Hall of Famer and the greatest pure jump-shooter the game has ever seen is willing to take a 1 or 2 year contract that reflects that role. Because it will be a pay-cut. And it might be only a 1 year deal. Personally, I think a Wakefield-like contract makes a lot of sense for Ray Allen. In a diminished role, he could continue to contribute for a 2,3, or even 4 years, but any game and any season could be the last. The rolling contract that Wakefield had, could be a perfect fit.

During the playoffs, Kevin Garnett proved he is still an elite player and if the Celtics only sign one of them, it's going to be Garnett. The only question is the contract. Is he willing to accept that, as every year passes, he becomes more and more of an injury risk? Is he willing to take a pay-cut in order to help his team fill the gaps in their roster? What is most important to him, being a Boston Celtic or being a high paid NBA star? As with Allen, I think there is a contract in here that makes sense, probably for two-years and probably for less than what he's getting paid now.

There is another reason for sports fans to root for The Big Three coming back next season; we could see professional athletes make a decision based on something other than how much money they'll be paid. There is an amount of money that makes sense for the Celtics to offer Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and there is a chance other teams will offer them more. Unfortunately, we may never know all the details that will ultimately go into the contract negotiations, but if two players who have embraced a team identity the way Garnett and Allen have can leave Boston for more money in the waning years of their careers, we'll have the final definitive confirmation that professional sports has become the same soul-crushing corporate culture as the rest of the world.

About damn time.

A few other sports things to catch up on. Given that Patrice Bergeron won the Selke, as entertaining as it might have been, I will not be pitching a fit. He should win it a half dozen times over his career as long as he stays healthy. However, I do have questions about Karlsson winning the Norris trophy. Yes, there is no question he was the best offensive defensman in the league, but that :35 average shorthanded time on ice really stands out to me. There could be a lot of reasons for it, but it makes his plus/minus 16 much less respectable. From his point totals he was on the ice for a minimum of 78 Ottawa goals, which means he was also on the ice for a minimum of 63 opposing goals, but with so little shorthanded time, nearly all of the opponents goals had to come even strength. (Chara on the other hand had 2:55 shorthanded time on ice and a 33 plus/minus.) When a defenseman is getting points like that, you'd think the net gain for the Senators would be a lot more than 16, especially when he's not killing penalties. For a somewhat unfair comparison, in 1968-9, when Bobby Orr scored a paltry 64 points, he had a plus/minusof 65. The game was different back then, but the stats still add up to opponents scoring a lot of even-strength goals when Karlsson is on the ice. Which makes me ask, if there's a Selke for forwards, why not an Orr for defensemen?

Offensive Juggernaut

If I came back from an around the world tour and you told me Felix Dubron had 8 wins, Daniel Nava was batting .333, Jarrod Saltalamaccia had 13 home runs and David Ortiz was toting around MVP level offensive numbers (.313 batting average, 49 RBI, 18 HR, .614 slugging) and asked me where the Sox were in the standings, I'd probably guess the best in baseball and well on their way to a 100 win season. With a disabled list of mythical proportions, a pitching staff that took two months to straighten out, Youkilis and Pedroia constantly nursing lingering injuries, and playing in a division that is somehow even better than it was last year, the Red Sox are not on their way to a 100 win season. Oh, and what's up with Adrian Gonzalez? I think just about everyone was ready for an off year for the Red Sox, for a whole host of reasons, but I don't think anybody was prepared for the David Ortiz to potentially have the best year of his career, and for the Red Sox organization to demonstrate some pretty remarkable depth. What does this mean for the season? Well, the rest of the AL East is crushing it as usual, being the only division with all teams above .500, and the Sox lost a lot of games early in the season, but they still have Ellsbury coming back and who knows what Crawford can so, the Red Sox are speeding headlong towards another end-of-season playoff heartbreak. That extra wild card might be just within reach, and if they get it, they'll get their opponents ace so...it might be a tough September. Or they could squeak in, everyone could get hot at the plate, and they could steamroll their way to another championship. Ah, Red Sox baseball.

No pads, no time-outs, and, they're friends are rowdier.

Finally, do not miss the rugby sevens at the Olympics this summer. Rugby sevens might be the purest, most athletic team sport in the world. It's played at a blistering pace, the players are freakish specimens of raw ability, and the US is the defending gold-medalist. (OK, we're not going to win any medals in rugby, but, hey, we've got enough.) Though it might be a little extreme to say your avoidance of rugby this summer will test the bonds of our friendship, your avoidance of rugby this summer will test the bonds of our friendship.

The Bruins End of Season Wrap-Up

The Bruins have had an interesting season. The opening few weeks were played with a pretty horrible Stanley Cup hangover, which I told everybody to not worry about. Then for a month or so everything clicked and the Bruins were the best team in hockey. Then a long period of average play, that left a lot of fans baffled. Then they woke up for the last month of the season and secured the second seed in the Easter Conference. So here is my wrap up of the second half of the of the 2011-2012 Bruins season.

Yep, looks like 5-on-3 to me.

The Decline: I can tell you the exact moment The Bruins began their slide into mediocrity. It was a Saturday afternoon. Vancouver decided to play their back-up goalie rather than Roberto Luongo. They were the best team in the West but still felt it was important to start getting their excuses lined up, complaining about the start time of the game and adjusting, like every NHL team has to do, often several times a season, to the time difference. If there is a Lex Luthor in the NHL it's the Canucks, and since the Bruins beat them for the Cup, the Bruins have taken on the role of Superman. Claude Julien said all the right things about it just being another game, about nobody getting a Stanley Cup afterward, but the Bruins wanted this one real bad.

The decline began, after Shawn Thornton had been jumped by every Canuck skater on the ice, and a few on the bench. The Bruins rushed to his defense, as every player on every team would have done. When the penalties were sorted out, the Bruins looked up at the scoreboard and found themselves killing a full two-minute 5-on-e. It is the most inexplicable call I have ever seen. (Close second involves the definition of “distinct kicking motion.”) And Milan Lucic had been incorrectly ejected from the game for leaving the bench, which added insult to injury as the replay clearly showed a couple of Vancouver players on the bench reaching over to get a few licks in on Thornton. (The only shots I'm pretty sure they'll ever, ever take at him.) Vancouver scored. The B's never got back on their game. It was clear Vancouver could not play with the B's five-on-five so they didn't. It was the first time in a long time, the B's let themselves play the other team's game, and it set them off kilter for months to come.

Marchand was, rightly, suspended for five games. There was a string of injuries and suspensions, Horton, Ferrence, Peverly, and scattered one and two game nicks, so the Bruins entered a stretch where they almost never played with their full team, making it hard to establish the timing and flow that made them impossible to beat in December. And, though the wins weren't coming in bunches, they were still coming. A lot of teams in the league would have loved to “decline” to .500.

The Bruins were rarely definitively outplayed. Even the 6-1 loss to Buffalo. If you told me seven goals had been scored, showed me clips of the game, and then asked me what I thought the score was, I would have guessed 4-3 someone. In that game, the Bruins would play 5-7 minutes of better or even hockey, then Buffalo would score. Rinse and repeat. This made the decline so frustrating and so difficult to solve. If your team is playing badly and losing, you can do something. But if you're team is playing pretty well and losing, that's an entirely different puzzle.

The Bright Spot: While everyone was figuring out what was going wrong for the Bruins, one thing was going very, very right. Though it wasn't showing up on the score sheet, Milan Lucic turned into an absolute force of nature. Not sure what the breakthrough was, but for the last couple of months he has been bending space time. He figured out how to use his strength and speed together, and now just skates through checks. There might be two or three defensemen in the league (and one of them is Chara) who can actually, physically contain Lucic, but everybody else pretty much just has to hope his centering pass doesn't connect. He's fore-checking better, he's back-checking better, and he completely controls the space he's in. If he turns it up for the playoffs and more of those centering passes start connecting, he could be a Conn Smythe contender.

Close enough to a high-five

The Trade Deadline: It's almost time to start calling Peter Chiarelli one of the best general managers in hockey. On the face of it, the Bruins work at the 2012 trade deadline wasn't remarkable. They picked up aging Brian Rolston from the also ran Islanders, and two defensemen you probably hadn't heard of. Mottau isn't anything special, but he's a warm body at a time when depth at defense is vital for playoff success. But Brian Rolston has 17 points in the 12 games he's played for the Bruins. And Greg Zanon might be the most impressive of the three, playing a lot like a bigger, stronger, Seidenberg. And what did Chiarelli spend to get these players? Honestly, nothing. Steven Kampfer and two guys in the juniors. Three NHL players, two of which have already contributed to the recent success, for a very talented but still not mentally ready Kampfer and two guys who may not even make it to the NHL. Horton, Peverly, Kelley. Now Rolston and Zanon. No matter what happens with the rest of the season, we all owe Peter Chiarelli a high five. (And have you seen this Krug, kid playing defense? He's got some real skills. And Chiarelli traded for Kudobin too.)

The Playoffs: The Bruins aren't the favorites this year, but there's no reason to rule them out. The essentially play playoff hockey all year and despite the injuries still have more depth, at least at forward, than most of the other teams. They still have Chara and Bergeron and Krechi and now Lucic. Thomas has been improving. Caron is beginning to reach his potential, and Rolston is already contributing more than you could have asked. They haven't played well enough for us to expect a repeat, but we didn't expect them to win last year either.

A couple other things about the playoffs. Though I probably won't get to see many of the games, I am really looking forward to the Pittsburg/Philadelphia series. For the first time in years, Philly actually has a goalie (or two) they can rely on. Crosby and Malkin are healthy. Hartnell is developing into a legitimate star. And they both, really, really, want to beat each other. It will absolutely be the best first round series the NHL has seen in a while.

And, I know the Rangers are 3-1 against the Bruins, but I want to see that as the Eastern Conference finals. All four games have been tightly played, entertaining games. The absolute best of contemporary hockey. Regardless of the outcome, seven games of Bruins/Rangers at playoff speed would be an absolute joy. Hopefully, at the end of the playoffs, I'll be able to post another one of these.

Bruins Udpate: I Told You So Edition

Well, I only really told you about half of what happened. I told you not to worry about the Bruins, but I didn't say they wouldn't lose in regulation again until December 6th. So why are the Bruins currently the best team on the planet? Well, I'm glad I pretended you asked.

A Legitimate Fourth Line: The Bruins play the best third period in the league, a plus 33 last time I heard. They're like a baseball team with a lights out closer. Right now, if you don't have a lead by the second period against the Bruins, the game is essentially over. On most teams, even in the NHL, the fourth line doesn't see a lot of minutes. On the Bruins, they do. Furthermore, their job is to exhaust the opposing defensemen. And Julien sticks with them even when they're on the ice for goals because he trusts the system as much as he asks his players. Which means that all of the Bruins generally have more energy in the third period than all of their opponents.

Depth and Difference: Along with just the numerical depth, each of the four lines presents different challenges to their opponents. The top line has one of the game's best passers flanked by top tier power forwards. The second line combines the best three-zone player in the game (I'm going to keep saying it) with two explosive skaters. The third line combines Kelly's speed and intelligence (The new Reichi?) with Perverley's dangerous skating and stick-handling, while Benoit Poulliot now skates his brains out when he's on the ice. And the fourth line are plenty capable of forechecking the heck out of defensemen and grinding out the occasional goal. And Paille is usually about the fastest guy on the ice when he's out. Very few teams present match up challenges on every single line.

Tim Thomas: It seems like every now and again you have to remind the world Tim Thomas is still the best goalie in the NHL. That helps. And, since we're talking about goalies, I might as well add that Rask might be one of the top 20 goalies in the league. (He just threw down a 41 save shut-out.) That might not sound like anything special, but he's the back up. That's pretty special.

The Julien System: It's about time to start talking about Claude Julien in the same terms as we talk about Bill Belichick. The games are different, so the moment by moment strategy doesn't really compare, but Claude Julien's system has lead to a Stanley Cup Championship, a President's Trophy, four straight playoff appearances, and an .616 winning percentage. Here's an example of why the system works so well. If an opponent is able to skate the puck out of his zone, and the Bruins center is in position, one defenseman backs up, while the other attacks. This makes it almost impossible for a player to skate through the neutral zone, which almost always leads to a harmless dump in. It's subtle but effective and, at least in my mind, proves the depth and success of Julien's coaching.

The Bruins won the Stanley Cup last year and returned just about everybody on that team. And though they haven't found that defenseman that Kaberle was supposed to be, and Corvo, might be, they've add players with a real hunger to succeed. And Tyler Sequin is better. All told this shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The only question is whether or not the Bruins can maintain these advantages through another playoff run. And with that in mind...

My Radical Suggestion for this Post (seriously, I'm totally like that guy from Moneyball): Start resting players now. I know we're a long way from the playoffs, and nothing is certain in sports (or, well, I guess anything), but I think there is real value to resting players as the season goes along. After the President's Trophy winning Bruins were ousted from the playoffs by Carolina, the extent of the team's injuries slowly made their way public. The Bruins were riddled, not with anything catastrophic, but with the wear and tear of playing a hockey season in the NHL. For some reason, that wear and tear hits every team differently, team to team, season to season. I'm not saying the Bruins should send out the JV team every now and again, just give one or two players one or two nights off as a way to mitigate that wear and tear. (In this sense, a mild injury here and there during the regular season, a la Chara's current leg injury could be beneficial.) Furthermore, the Bruins have two talented young players in Steven Kampfer and Jordan Caron who would benefit from a little extra NHL time. Zack Hamill is also beginning to show his NHL worth. Rotate through the line up and with 2-3 weeks before the playoffs go back to all the starters starting. So the Bruins might lose a few games they otherwise wouldn't have; if it leads to postseason victories it is well worth it.

Why I Wasn't (and Still Aren't) Worried About the Bruins

Things were looking a little grim for the Bruins. 3-7 and in last place in the Eastern Conference. Yes, that is technically worse than the Islanders. But I wasn't worried. Here's why.

The Quality of the Teams They Beat: Those first three teams were the Tampa Bay Lightning, now with a record of 8-5-2 and still sporting one of the most complete forward lines in the game with LeCavalier, Stamkos, and St. Louis. Then it was the Chicago Blackhawks who are now first in their division with a record of 8-4-3 and had such a successful and intelligent off-season that some analysts (Barry Melrose at least) are thinking about them as Stanley Cup favorites. Then, of course they beat Toronto who had won their first five games and still lead the division. The Bruins went on to beat Toronto again, dealing them their first home loss of the season, and stopped Ottawa's 6 game winning streak before beating up on the Islanders. It wasn't like the Bruins collected wins against the dregs of the league.

They Were in Every Game They Played: With a couple of exceptions the Bruins played even or better against everybody. The “frustration” that everyone was talking about last week came from not winning games they deserved to. Whether it was goalies standing on their heads, fluky goals for their opponents, bad bounces, or a few key mistakes, the Bruins seemed to end up losing no matter how well they played. (OK, I was worried very briefly, after Ottawa, despite being beaten in ever aspect of the game, were ahead 2-1 at the end of the first period.) And to all you new Bruins fans, get used to this. For whatever reason, the Bruins under Claude Julien lose a lot of games they deserve to win. They make up for it, you know, winning the Stanley Cup and all, but in the moment it is face-radiatingly frustrating.

The Only Thing that Matters is Making the Playoffs. It has not been a good couple of years for the number one team in the Eastern Conference. It's been better in the West, but the top seeds have had their share of scares. Yes, home ice advantage is nice, and yes, you'd prefer to play a lesser team in the first round of the playoffs, but there hasn't been that much of a difference in terms of overall quality between 1 and 8, especially when some teams, no matter their overall quality, match-up well against other teams. (Bonjour.) The Bruins don't need to win the President's Cup to have a good shot at the Stanley Cup, they just need to get in.

Three More Reasons: Tim Thomas is still the best goalie on the planet. Zdeno Chara is still the shut down defenseman in the NHL and his puck skills have actually improved over the last three years. Patrice Bergeron is still the best all around, three zone, 200ft x 85ft, hockey player on the planet.

The Big Question the Bruins Need to Answer: What is the difference between Toronto and Montreal? The conventional wisdom is that Montreal's small fast forwards are the primary reason why the Habs have beaten the Bruins consistently over the last few years (but not when it mattered!) and there's a lot of truth to that. They're fast enough to out-skate the defensive structure and they seem to slip under and around Chara, Boychuk, and McQuaid. The only thing is Toronto has a couple of those small, fast forwards too. In fact, they might have the fastest of them all. Phil Kessel is the NHL's top goal scorer and he calls it a good game against the Bruins if he gets more than a shot or two on goal. So why do the Bruins lose to the Habs but beat (badly) the Leafs? My best guess: PK Suban and Carey Price. For some reason Carey Price plays really well against the Bruins. And, despite his reputation for wilting late in the season (wonder what percentage of Montreal games he's played over the last few years) he is a really good goalie, something the Leafs still don't have. And the Leafs don't have a defenseman who can skate the puck like Suban.

One Final Point: Holy crap Tyler Seguin! It's still early yet, but the improvement of his play off the puck is really encouraging. If he keeps improving, he could be the natural goal-creator the Bruins need to win a lot of those games that have slipped out of their grasp in recent years. And that line of Bergeron, Marchand, and Sequin could become one of the most dangerous in the league.

The 2011 Boston Bruins Post-Season

Here is a series by series breakdown of the 2011 Boston Bruins post-season.

Montreal: Depth vs. Speed

As I said before the post-season began (and as many other people also argued) Montreal's team speed presented a major challenge to the Bruins. Even though the Bruins comfortably won their division, they had a losing record against Montreal. Early in the series it looked like that speed was in fact going to kill. But the Bruins won all three of the overtime games played, including game 7 and that difference allowed them to get past the speedy Habs. Ultimately, the Bruins dominance in OT came down to team depth. The Bruins could roll 6 defensemen and 3-4 forward lines, while PK Subban was on the ice pretty much non-stop and the Habs only really played 2-3 forward lines. So when it came time to put an extra 20 minutes on the clock, the Bruins had a lot more energy left than the Habs and that evened out the speed. In the end, the Habs just didn't have enough players to beat the Bruins in a 7 game series.

Looking Forward for Montreal: In some ways, I really want to like Montreal. When not whining and diving P. K. Subban is one of the most exciting players to watch. Subban is probably the best three-zone defenseman in the league after Dustin Byfuglien. I also think Carey Price is a great goalie. And when the defensive core comes back from injury, the Habs should be an early favorite to contend for the Northeast division or even the Eastern Conference. But the Montreal fans seem to boo Carey Price more than Boston fans, even when he helps a depleted team to a 7 game series against a much better opponent. Subban occasionally embarrasses himself invalidating all the nice things I want to say about him. And speaking of embarrassing themselves, Montreal's reaction to Chara's hit on Pacioretti was perhaps the most ridiculous arrangement of human emotions I've seen recently. Let's hope no one got hurt while the emergency phone lines were tied up. Then again, in the same way that Red Sox vs. Yankees is good for baseball, a vibrant Bruins vs. Canadiens is good for hockey, so maybe there is a good side to this antagonism.

Philadelphia: 54 Saves

Even though they finished higher than the Bruins in the standings, I was glad to face Philadelphia rather than Buffalo in the second round. Much like Montreal, Buffalo gave the Bruins problems all season with their good team speed, and, in the playoffs especially, I would rather the Bruins face Boucher than Ryan Miller. (Really anybody other than Ryan Miller.) Philly essentially spotted the Bruins the first game with a sluggish, totally uninspired performance. Very few teams get through an entire playoff run without a bad game or two and the Bruins were just lucky to get one of Philly's bad games.

But the Flyers came to play in Game 2 and dominated every Bruin except one: Tim Thomas. The Flyers hit harder, skated faster, passed better and won every aspect of the game except the one that counted. Thomas plays anything less than a miraculous game, the series is tied 1-1, and the entire nature of the playoffs could have changed. The Flyers never recovered. They played the next two games like a team that didn't think it could win, and, as a result, it didn't.

Looking Forward for Philadelphia: You can't win a Stanley Cup without quality goal tending. It is no coincidence that two-thirds of the Vezina Trophy finalists were in the Finals. A team doesn't need the best goalie in the league to win, but a team does need consistent quality play from the goalie. So even though Philly should make the playoffs next year, or even win the division again, Boucher hasn't shown himself to be good enough to lead his team to the cup.

Tampa Bay: The Save and the Perfect Hockey Game

I wish this series was the Stanley Cup Finals. The teams played hard, with respect for each other and the game. You know there is something good going for a team when their young superstar goal scorer shrugs off a slap-shot to the face. With the way Stamkos, Lecavalier, St. Louis and the rest of the team played, it's not hard to see why the St. Petersburg Times Forum is constantly packed. I'm not a fan of southern expansion teams in the NHL, but I became a fan of these Tampa Bay Lighting.

If Tim Thomas gets a statue outside the Garden, he posed for it in Game 5, and it would be oddly parallel to Orr's. The Bruins were holding on to a 1-goal lead, the Lightning were storming the net, and suddenly Steve Downie had the puck on his stick 2-feet from a wide open goal. Thomas dove across the net and, in a season where he made jaw-dropping save after mind-blowing save, made the greatest save of his career, getting his stick on the shot. In a lot of ways, the Bruins got to the finals on that save.

Game 7 might have been the best hockey game I have ever seen. Every other moment or so I found myself muttering some permutation of “Good play.” The game absolutely flew by, the way a really good party flies by. There were simply no mistakes. In playoff games and especially in game sevens, referees usually call fewer penalties, but their reluctance to make a call was not the reason no penalties were called in the game; there were no penalties called because there were no penalties committed. And the lone goal wasn't some lucky bounce. Roloson didn't give up a soft one, Tampa Bay didn't make a bad change, a defenseman didn't blow his assignment; it was just the one moment when the great offensive play was greater than the great defensive play. The handshakes at the end. Thomas and St. Louis meeting at center. Thomas's joyous interview at the end. Only the cup was missing from one of hockey's great moments.

Looking forward for Tampa Bay: Much like Philly, the biggest question for the Lightning will be in goal. Roloson had a good run but it was clear near the end that he was running out of gas. But with Lecavalier, St. Louis, and Stamkos, there's no reason to expect a Tampa Bay-less playoffs next year.

Vancouver: Get the Duck Boats Ready

So I've heard that if you can't say something nice about somebody, you shouldn't say anything at all, so I have something nice to say about Vancouver. Just later. Unfortunately, one of the legacies of this Stanley Cup Finals will be the on-ice and on-microphone conduct of the Canucks.

It started with Alex Burrows biting Patrice Bergeron and getting away with it, only to be followed by Maxim Lapierre taunting Bergeron the next game, after the league decided not to suspend Burrows. There's always a bit of gamesmanship in hockey, and had Lapierre stuck his fingers in say, Brad Marchand's face, it would have been one thing. But Patrice Bergeron is one of the classiest most professional players in the game. The Bruins eventually responded in kind in terms of taunting, so I don't suppose they end up completely on the high ground, but if I remember the playground correctly, despite what the teachers might say, it does matter who started it.

Then there was Aaron Rome's hit on Nathan Horton, a YouTube Video of which I will not post here, because it turns my stomach to watch. The easiest way to characterize the hit, might be through Alain Vigneault's statement—in that the hit was the opposite of what Vigneault said it was. Obviously, the coach of the Canucks isn't going to insult his own player, but the blame the victim assertion that Horton was “watching his pass” is both unprofessional and, well, factually incorrect. Right after he passed the puck Horton did glance up, and in seeing no one in front of him, put his stick on the ice, started to drive to the net, and looked back at Lucic who had the puck. Horton looked up, Rome was just too far away for him to maybe even see him, let alone expect a hit to come from him. Vigneault also called the hit “a little late.” In the NHL, a hit is late if it occurs a half-second after the player has passed or shot the puck. Rome's hit on Horton occurred almost a full-second after Horton passed the puck. “Almost twice as” is quite a bit different from “a little.” And even without that, it was still directed at the head, which is the kind of hit, I'm told the NHL is trying to eliminate. The Bruins responded with an 8-1 demolition of the Canucks.

And the Canucks started diving. It seemed like every goal mouth scuffle featured a Canuck throwing his head back as if he'd courageously taken a slapshot to the face or curling over like he'd been cut nape to par. Burrows's antics with Lucic on the faceoff.. Sedin's bending and flopping around Chara. The referees, however, were having none of it, and by game 5 or 6, the Bruins could pretty much do whatever they wanted to Canucks in these scuffles.

I don't think I need anything to add about Luongo's comments. They're going to follow him for the rest of his life.

And you'd think in Game 7, on their home ice, and with the hockey world beginning to doubt them, the Canucks would focus on playing the game, and many of them did. But twice, Canucks took blindside runs at Bruins defensemen, Higgins on Chara (and you really have to mean it to elbow Chara in the head) and Hanson on Ference. After all the work both teams put in to get where they got. It was just sad to see. (Can you imagine the tone I would have taken about this if the Bruins had lost?)

For the Bruins, the Stanley Cup Finals were about playing their game no matter what shenanigans the other team pulled. Solid team defense. Thomas making saves when that defense broke down. Shut down penalty killing (the Bruins ended up with more shorthanded goals (2) than the Canucks had power-play goals (1)). Toughness. Team depth. (How about that fourth-line in Game 7) Opportunistic goal scoring. It was about treating Mark Recchi to the perfect retirement, making sure Nathan Horton's and not Aaron Rome's name was on the Cup, and rewarding one of the greatest goalie seasons with a sip from the cup.

Looking forward for Vancouver: Vancouver has a lot of questions to answer, a lot of character questions. Even their fans, who might disagree with my interpretations of certain actions, will wonder where were the Sedin twins went, what happened to the power-play, and will Luongo recover from a very shaky performance? The only real character demonstrated in a Canucks jersey was done by the fans in the Rogers Arena who stayed through, stood during, and cheered for the awards ceremony. I'm not sure the Garden faithful would have done that if Game 6 had turned out differently. The Canucks have a very talented team, but in some ways, they embarrassed themselves in the finals.

Looking forward Boston: In the salary cap era, dynasties may be a thing of the past. But the Bruins core talent is young and under contract. Patrice Bergeron, (who I contend might be the most complete hockey player in the game right now) for example is only 27. And whenever Tim Thomas finally calls it quits, Tuukka Rask has already shown himself ready to be an everyday starter in the NHL. The Bruins will have some decisions to make in the off-season, but whatever happens, next year's team won't look that much different than the one that hoisted this year's cup. In some ways they could even be better; if Kampfer continues to develop he will contribute far more to the team than Kaberle did, for example. Repeating is no longer realistic, but if any team is poised to do it, it's this Boston Bruins team. Welcome to a new golden age.