The Bruins post-Cup party has gone fully viral thanks to a $100,000 bottle of champagne. For those of you who still haven’t had a peak at it, voila.
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Word is it is 30 liters large. That is the biggest bottle that I have seen since the round, bowling ball, Carlo Rossi bottles I used to drink back in high school.
Somebody put together a handsome info-graphic of the evening. Somebody please start a site where one can submit their drink roster from the night before and it turns it in to an info-graphic.
What a ride this has been. Still having trouble putting it in to words.
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Last night was a dream come true for this life long Bruins fan. This still hasn’t even sunk in for me. Totally physically and emotionally exhausted. I will start posting things over the next few days.
ps. I got to touch the Cup AND, got it on video. Will post soon.
It is starting to look like regardless of how the Finals pan out, that Timmy Thomas may end up with the Conn Smyth trophy. Kesler had a lock on it up until this round, but hasn’t been the stand out that he was in the first three rounds.
As for Thomas, it’s hard not to love his style of play. His entire life he has been told how sloppy his style of play is and many believed that the Bruins got hosed when they signed him to his last contract.
I’m thinking they don’t think that way now.
As for the Burrow’s vs. Thomas battle, we’ll give it Fight of the Week, even though we didn’t really have much in the way of landed shots. I just love when goalies get involved.
This may be one of the most underused moves in hockey right now, especially since the introduction of the new interference rules.
You are going to start seeing a lot more of this next season. If the forward is coming with more speed, it makes no sense to try to lug the puck by a defenseman and expose yourself to being poke checked. The new rules dictate that defenders aren’t allowed to hold up the opposing player if they don’t have possession of the puck. Although they have started letting them get away with a touch of interference if it is immediately after the release of the puck, the incoming forward should still have enough speed to get around the D-man.
The new league disciplinarian Mike Murphy has decided that there will be no more ‘fingering’ going on in the Cup Finals and that anymore incidents will be rewarded with 2 and 10 minute misconducts.
In case you haven’t been following, Alex Burrows bit Patrice Bergeron in Game 1 and then Murphy decided to pass on the automatic suspension. Burrows then came back in Game 2 and won it in overtime. Ever since, the players have been jamming their fingers in each other’s mouths to try to draw the bite.
I personally think it’s hilarious and am loving every minute of it.
The NHL of course, will do whatever it can to kill anything that might cause some extra entertainment in the game. Sports broadcasts are loving every second of it and the NHL is even getting some good play on ESPN these days.
The Bruins advertising agency, Mullen, continues to roll out the quality advertising. Good on the Boston organization for having the balls to approve such an awesome campaign.
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Lightning blogs have already picked up on this; hopefully they use it to continue to build excitement down in Tampa.
Proving that Bruins and Habs fans can still get along.
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OK, well maybe not that much.
Strombo aka. Canadian Oprah, actually did the pretend walkaway when he first saw the jersey – a true hockey fan. He is in Vancouver promoting the EPIC better living show. Head down to check it out on Sunday folks.
As it turns out, it’s the West finals that ended up being more predictable. Top two seeds slot in where they should be, both with a good little scare along the way. In the East, it wasn’t quite as predictable with the 3rd and 5th seed set to do battle for the Eastern title.
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My predictions for the Eastern Finals:
Bruins (3)
Lightning (5)
Both teams swept their opponents last round and ended up having to sit and wait for the Western Conference to sort themselves out. The players will tell you that the huge delay doesn’t play to anyone’s advantage, but don’t be fooled folks – this is the only thing that even allows Boston to make this a series. As I had posted earlier about why the loss of Patrice Bergeron is so huge for the Bruins (Changing on the Fly), Boston has had to reform two new lines for this series and have lost their playoff MVP. It would have been tough for the Bruins to get thrown right in to a series against a team that had been rolling.
Here are FIVE reasons why this break benefits Boston:
Round 2 is always so much harder to predict than Round 1 for some reason. You could say that it’s because it’s closer given that only the strong teams have advanced from the first round, but the two sweeps that happened in the East would negate that.
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As for my Round 2 predictions: 2 for 4.
Called the Canucks in Game 6, and got the Bruins winning theirs, but was massively off on the Lightning vs. Capitals series.
For those who aren’t fully familiar with the Boston Bruins, Patrice Bergeron was their equivalent of Ryan Kesler. He is their best defensive forward, their key faceoff guy, he kills penalties, he generates the majority of the offense, and most importantly, he was the guy who would change the momentum of a game that was going against them.
Sustained mild concussion in Game 4 vs. the Flyers
To say that Bergeron is a big loss for Boston is a touch of an understatement.
Although he is not the biggest loss that the Bruins could have suffered – that honor would go to Zdeno Chara and then to Tim Thomas – he is definitely the biggest loss up front.
Last year that label would have went to David Krejci, who ironically was lost in Game 3 of the 2nd Round against the Flyers. He was their best forward at the time and was responsible for generating the majority of the teams’ offense. The only difference this year is that Boston didn’t lose their best forward until Game 4, which allowed them to complete that sweep and make it through to the next round.
It has been some tough luck for Boston having lost both their #1 and #2 centermen to serious concussions. It’s hard to believe that this team is having issues filling the center position after being considered to be one of the deepest teams in the league up the middle before the season started.
A quick look at the evolution of the Bruins’ line combo’s:
Pretty funny pic that I found the other day. It’s hard to believe that Thornton never had to drop his gloves even once in such a lopsided series. No Pronger made for a dull Flyer’s team – shows how much he means to that team.
Hockey just ain’t what it used to be. The Boston-Philly series has had some good body contact, but not much in the way of the old school fisticuffs. To compensate, we have tracked down a couple of local hockey fans to help us relive the glory days.
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As for body contact with these girls, well, don’t hold your breath my hockey brethren – the Leafs probably stand a better chance of making the playoffs than you do of getting called for ‘Hooking’ one of them.
I guess you’ll have to stick to self ‘Interference’ calls.
As Pierre McGuire says – There’s no out of bounds in hockey. Boston defenseman Adam McQuaid misses his check and eats it into the end boards.
UPDATE: And I forgot – Adam McQuaid has a concussion history. He is the player that was called up by Boston and suffered the concussion in the hotel room! Apparently he tripped over his bag in the dark when he was going to take a piss. For my earlier post on this, here is the link: Player Suffers a Concussion in the Hotel
Montreal fans were correct: Zdeno Chara is a degenerate Coke addict. Air Canada executives will be meeting to address the issue and provide their opinion later this week.
I’m not here to bitch about calls or to bitch about suspensions. There is enough of that going around. I’m also not here to debate the difference between these two hits.
I think what we need to talk about is the reason for these hits.
Seven series have completed Game 3 and only two of those are potential sweeps. The Kings and Sharks are set to play Game 3 tonight while the defending Stanley Cup Champs attempt to be the first team eliminated from the 2011 Playoffs.
Will the real Zdeno Chara please stand up. Picture courtesy Boston.com.
Canucks vs. Blackhawks
Interesting to watch the Blackhawk interviews after Game 3, especially Pat Kane’s. The Hawks have looked defeated in this series since the drop of the puck. They don’t seem to have an answer for Vancouver’s depth. It is still strange to see all six of Vancouver’s top Dmen in the lineup. Not many opportunities to expose them when you are the home team with last change:
Enjoying Round 1 yet folks? We are 19 games deep and yet only 33:08 of overtime has been played so far. That should hopefully change soon. The one thing we do have is six shutouts. Some quick thoughts so far:
I smell sweep.
Sweep Candidates
I had suggested the series that stood the biggest chance of being a sweep would be the Sharks/Kings. Oh how wrong I was. It’s crazy to see that the Canucks are on the verge of sweeping the Hawks. Chicago has looked defeated since the drop of the puck. As for Vancouver fans who fear the sweep because it would result in too much time off – TAKE it if you can. Rest that fragile D-corps. Luongo will stay ready. As for other sweep possibilities, the two other candidates are Coyotes and Bruins. Interesting.
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