15 minutes left in game 1 between the Bruins and the Lightning and the Bruins are not winning. Nope. Tampa Bay scored three goals in 85 seconds and, while they have gotten one goal back, the Bruins haven’t been able to catch up.

This is not the game one I was hoping for.

On the upside of the Boston sports Universe, the Red Sox have a six run lead over the Yankees in the ninth inning. We’ve got that going for us at least.

Cook out/kid’s sleep over party/mini-birthday party for a certain soon to be 10 year old girl.

It was supposed to just be a little family thing, but after mowing the lawn and cleaning half the house and my lovely wife, Jen, getting all of the food and decorations and whatnot it feels like we’re throwing a reception for that royal wedding they just had over there in the UK.

What a day! And it doesn’t even start for a few more hours!

Oh what a relief. The Blogger outage nightmare is over for me. The missing post from yesterday has returned.

It’s over.

Thanks Blogger… Now DON’T DO IT AGAIN!

Let’s get this one in quick before Blogger craps out again…

Usually when I play this silly little game I do a half decent job of picking the first round winners and a terrible job picking the second round. This time it was different.

In the first round I got five out of eight. Not too bad, but not great either. How’d I do in round two?

The Washington Capitals vs The Tampa Bay Lightning: I saw the choke coming a mile away, but I may have underestimated the severity. The Lightning swept. The Mighty Capitals go home for the summer pretty early, once again. Pretty soon I’m going to have to start calling the San Jose Sharks the Capitals of the West, instead of the other way around. I picked this one correctly.

The Boston Bruins vs the Philadelphia Flyers: It does not erase last year’s tragedy. Not at all. Not even a Stanley Cup championship will erase that memory… although it will make it a shit ton easier to deal with. The Bruins did what they failed to do last year and swept the Flyers, making them look really bad in the process. Q: How many Philly goalies does it take to win a 2nd round game? A: At least one more than they had against the Bruins. I picked this one correctly.

Over to the West…

The Vancouver Canucks vs the Nashville Predators: The Canucks have a very high choke quotient, but they were playing against the Ringo Starrs of the second round. Nashville was just happy to be there. They made a series of it, but Vancouver was just too much for them. I picked this one correctly.

The San Jose Sharks vs the Detroit Red Wings: The Sharks almost blew it. They almost blew it in 2010 Bruins fashion. Detroit just couldn’t stretch their come back magic through game seven and after blowing the 3-0 series lead the Sharks hung on to win it in seven. The undisputed kings of NHL choke have somehow managed to survive once again. Maybe I should pass that choke crown over to the Caps after all.

So, after the first round I was 5-3. Now after two rounds I am 8-4. I believe that’s the best I’ve ever done. (but who knows, my memory is crap)

Now we move on to the third round, starting as always with the Eastern Conference…

The Boston Bruins vs the Tampa Bay Lightning: Obviously I am picking Boston. Duh. I refuse to pick against my team. Having said that, I am somehow less worried about Tampa Bay than I was about Montreal or Philadelphia. That’s not to say I’m not scared, because I am freakin’ terrified. Have you seen the Lightning’s forward lines? Holy Crap! And Dwayne Roloson, my former college classmate? (we were never in any of the same classes, but we did go to UMass Lowell at the same time for a semester or two. No I never met him.) How awesome is it that a goalie who is older than I am has his team in the Conference Finals. This series will be tough. The teams match up well. Go Bruins

The Vancouver Canucks vs the San Jose Sharks: Damn… which traditional choker do I pick to choke the least and win? I not so long ago promised myself that I would never pick San Jose again, but I think maybe the whammy is finally off of them. I think maybe this is the year they wait until the finals to choke. I am picking San Jose. Both teams survived blowing a 3 games to none lead in a series, Vancouver in the first round, San Jose in the second, but I think San Jose is going to put the lessons learned against the Red Wings to work for them and I think they are going to take this series and get themselves to the finals.

So, my picks for the cup finals are Boston and San Jose. Please, please please, oh mighty hockey gods, make this happen!

Go Bruins!

Blogger went down for about 24 hours or so… are we back?

I have my dashboard, but I do not have yesterday’s post… I tried autoposting from Posterous but it hasn’t crossed over yet and it is showing in my edit posts list.

I still don’t see yesterday’s post anywhere. Regular readers (meaning me and… well… no one, as far as I can tell) know that I did in fact post yesterday. It was something about not having a Bruins or Red Sox game to watch and something else about not having posted any kid pictures dating back to February. That post was made, right? Right?

It better come back. It better.

I will take a shot at posting the drafts saved on my phone. Maybe they will post with yesterday’s date. We’ll see.

ADDENDUM: The date and time do not cross over with the post. Blogger treats it as brand new. Oh well.

I know this is looking way to far ahead, but….

Game seven between the Red Wings and Sharks is underway with the Sharks up 2-0 after one period.

Who do I want to win this one?

If it comes to it and the Bruins get past Tampa Bay and go to the cup finals (huge if) they would probably match up better against San Jose. Detroit kicked our ass this season. There is also the good story of Joe Thornton vs his old team.

So I should probably want San Jose to win.

But….

If the Red Wings win tonight the Bruins will no longer be the last team to blow a 3-0 series lead. I can’t understate the importance of that possibility. Also, how great would it to see an original six match up in the Stanley Cup finals. Coincidentally, Boston’s last cup win was over an original six opponent, the New York Rangers.

So I should probably be rooting for Detroit.

But what I should really be doing is not looking ahead any further than Saturday’s game one against Tampa Bay.

Cautious optimism is key. I don’t want to mess with our Bruins Nation’s karma.

Go Bruins!

ADDENDUM: Crap. This was written during the blogger downtime on 5/12 at roughly 10:00pm. I was hoping it would file with that time stamp. I wonder if I can edit it?

ADDENDUM ADDENDUM: Sweet! Under post options you have the option of setting a date and time for the post. >whew< Now I have a post that was written on 5/12 showing as written on 5/12. Now if my post from the morning of 5/12 would just be so kind as to come back.

The Red Sox are off tonight after losing again last night. The Bruins don’t start their next series until Saturday night. Not that I watch the Celtics at all, but even the Celtics are done now.

What Boston sports team am I going to be able to complain about tomorrow morning? What to do?

Last night I went to my step daughter’s elementary school chorus concert. It was Disney themed and the kids were great. My only beef is with the teacher. Most of the songs were sung along with pre-recorded music, as if it were karaoke. There were a couple of songs done to piano accompaniment, but only a couple. The last few songs were actually sung along with the actual movie soundtracks. The kids were getting tired and the voices were getting quiet and you could hear the Disney character’s voice singing too. Huh? C’mon teacher, if you can’t cut the piano part that’s fine but find some one who can. Don’t just stroll over to Newbury Comics on route 28 in Salem, NH (you’re welcome) and pick up the movie soundtrack on CD and have the kids sing along. The kids aren’t going to learn anything if they can just mumble along and let the CD carry the melody. Sheesh.

Speaking of my step daughter, her birthday is next week. There is a kids party this weekend and a family party next weekend. I will be taking pictures, but that reminds me that I still haven’t posted the pics from my step son’s birthday back in February to the other page. I haven’t put up anything from Easter either. Slacker!

The waiting continues, hockey fans.

We still wait for the start of the Eastern Conference Finals series between the slimy Tampa Bay Lightening and the heroic, majestic, demigodlike, Boston Bruins.

At least we know when the series is going to start now. Saturday. That marks a full week without a game for the Bruins, and a little more than a week for the Lightening. Game two will follow on Tuesday. What’s with the extra day off?

The West is still going. Detroit has come back from down 3-0 to force a game seven. As we know (boy, do we know), only three teams have blown a 3-0 lead in NHL history. It seems awfully strange to me though, that after waiting 25 years between occurrences there have been two series in two rounds this year when a team was down 3-0 and forced a game seven. Is it easier now than it used to be, or are we just dealing with teams who can’t help but choke. Probably the latter.

In other news, the Red Sox went into last night’s game with a 17-18 record. They had a chance to finally get up to a .500 record. They were down one run in the ninth when Adrian Gonzales hit a homer to tie it. Off to extra innings we go…

And the Sox are still sub-.500 with a 17-19 record. They have played 22% of the season and still they are mired in mediocrity. I think it’s time for us to stop saying, “its early, they can fix this” and just accept that despite the enormous payroll and the line up full of superstars… the Red Sox just sort of suck this year.

Go Bruins!