After two periods of play the Boston Bruins have upped their lead to 4-0 over the Toronto Maple Leafs. Jake DeBrusk has two goals on the night. Excellent.
Hold that lead! Go Bruins!
Tag: Boston Bruins
1-0 After One
The Bruins are up 1-0 over the Leafs after one period in game one of the first round playoff series.
Here’s hoping they keep things up.
Go Bruins!
NHL Playoff Predictions
The first round of the NHL Playoffs start tomorrow. It’s time for my pointless, stupid predictions post. As is generally the case with pro sports these days, I have not been following the league as a whole that much, just my home town team. That means most of these predictions are very close to blind guesses on my part. Therefore I will also include a flip of a coin prediction and when it’s all over we’ll see if I was better at picking winners than randomness.
Are we ready?
As always, we will start with the Eastern Conference.
Panthers vs Lightning. The battle of Florida… in hockey… ugh. Nothing like cold weather spots in Florida. The Panthers had the better regular season, but I am optimistic that their luck is running out. I am going to pick Tampa Bay. It will probably go seven games, but the Lightning will come out on top. I promise this pick has nothing to do with the Panthers bouncing my Boston Bruins in the first round last year. Really. It has nothing to do with that. Now, which team does the coin pick? The rules are the higher seed (Florida in this case) is heads and the lower seed (Tampa Bay) is tails. It’s tails. The coin picks Tampa Bay.
Bruins vs Maple Leafs. I live in Boston. I root for Boston teams. There is no way I am picking against my Bruins. That’s a given. Beyond that, the Leafs have a killer offense, but it will not be a match for the Bruins defense and goalies. Sorry, Leafs fans. It’s going to be yet another in a long line of Boston wins over Toronto. Nothing personal, friends. The Bruins will just have your number again. The coin flip is heads so the coin picks the Bruins too.
The Rangers vs the Capitals. I hate both of these teams. I hate the Rangers more. That’s not why I am picking the Capitals this time though. The Capitals have been playing playoff intensity games for a while now. The Rangers breezed into the playoffs. The Capitals fought their way in. I think the momentum will carry the Caps through the first round. Probably not too far beyond that, but I’m looking for a serious upset here. The coin flip is tails so it also picked the Capitals. I see a pattern developing here.
Whalers vs Islanders. Okay, Robert. Stop calling the Carolina Hurricanes the Whalers. It’s not funny anymore. Then again… both of these teams were the parent club of the AHL team I used to have season tickets for. The Lowell Lock Monsters. Both teams pulled out on us and left my minor league team hanging. Due to that I can honestly say I friggin’ hate both of these teams. I want to pick the Islanders here, but they are from New York and I can’t pick a New York team without feeling gross about it. I’m considering it… but I think I am picking the Whale this time, even if it is painful to do so. The coin flip picks the Islanders though. Finally it picks the team I didn’t pick.
On to the Western Conference…
Stars vs Golden Knights. I don’t know. I really don’t. I want to pick Vegas but… no, I am going to pick Dallas. I could go either way with this one, but let’s officially pick The Stars. The coin flip picks Vegas.
Jets vs Avalanche. Again, I could go either way with this series. My gut is telling me to pick the Avs for the upset, but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it. I am going to pick The Jets and I will probably kick myself for doing so. The coin is tails again so it picks Colorado. That coin sure does love the underdogs, right?
Canucks vs Predators. Okay, I am going to pick an underdog this time. Nashville will take this one in an upset. As silly as it is to have an NHL team in Tennessee, I foresee a Vancouver choke coming. The coin flip agrees with me as it comes up tails for the fifth flip in a row.
Oilers vs Kings. Last but not least. I have always like The Kings. I haven’t always liked the Oilers as they beat my Bruins in the Cup Finals in both 1988 and 1990. Eventually something happened (I don’t know what) and I started to like them too. I am going to pick The Oilers this year. Sorry, Los Angeles. Edmonton is going to beat you. Nothing personal, it’s just business. Hockey business. The coin flip finally comes up heads so the coin picks Edmonton too.
There you have it, folks. My stupid, pointless, blind, uninformed predictions for the first round of the NHL Playoffs. It’s Stanley Cup tournament time. The best post season in all of professional sports. The games start tomorrow. The Bruins take on The Maple Leafs tomorrow at 8:00pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time.
Go Bruins!
NHL Trade Deadline Day
Happy NHL Trade Deadline, everyone! Is this a National Holiday in Canada? It should be. It should be here in the US too. We shouldn’t have to work while monitoring the internets to see if our teams picked up any new players.
The Boston Bruins appear to have snagged a depth forward from Minnesota. Pat Maroon. I don’t know anything about this guy except that he seems to have one three of the last five Stanley Cups? WhatWhatWhat???
Granted… one of those cups was with St Louis… who beat the Bruins in the final. That kinda pisses me off. Dude better score seven goals in the first game he plays for us. Seriously.
I’m not expecting much from Boston today. They don’t have much to trade away, assuming they want to keep the current roster in place. There are rumors of them dealing one of the goalies… I don’t want that. We have an ace goalie tandem right now and I don’t want to screw with that.
Let’s see what happens.
Happy Trade Deadline Day, everyone! Go Bruins!
Hockey is Stressful for Me
I knew the Boston Bruins had a game today but I didn’t realize until the last possible moment that it was a 1:00 game. I took a vacation day today without realizing that it was an actual holiday (not one that I get off, but still a holiday) and the Bruins often play day games on holidays. Nice!
I watched the first period while eating my lunch. The period ended with the score tied at one. As the second period was starting I was going to write a quick post about how the Bruins have been bad since the all star break and they didn’t look all that great today. They haven’t been bad, it’s just Dallas has been better. Right as I was opening my laptop to write the post Dallas scored to take a 2-1 lead. Damn it! I don’t want to write a hockey post now. Blah. Just as I had made that decision, Boston scored to tie the game at two. WOOHOO! Go Bruins!
The mood swings I feel while watching hockey are unprecedented in human existence. I have similar mood swings when I watch baseball games, but the nature of the game is different and they are much less intense. The playoffs are close, but the chances of the Red Sox making the playoffs any time soon are too slim for that to be a consideration.
Let’s go, Bruins. Let’s get back to those pre-all star break winning ways, shall we? M’kay?
My Favorite Sports
What are your favorite sports to watch and play?
There was a time…
There was a time when my social life more or less consisted of watching sports. I’d say 50-60% of what I did with my free time involved watching sports. There was a period in my life where I had a partial season ticket package (10 games) for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League, a full season ticket package (40 games) for the Lowell Lock Monsters of the American Hockey League, and then during the summer we split a full season ticket package for the Lowell Spinners of the New York Penn baseball league (I think it was about 50 games and we went to half of them). At the same time I used to follow the Lock Monsters on road games because there were six AHL teams in New England. I would go to road games in three of the other five locations. Along with all of that, there were playoff games for the Bruins and the Monsters. One AHL season saw me go to maybe 50-55 games. Crazy.
Now? I still follow hockey and baseball closely, but I rarely go to games in person, and I have a tough time fitting actually sitting and watching games on television, or listening on the radio, into my busy schedule. I still hang on every goal and every run, but I miss tons and tons of every season.
So the answer to the question, what are my favorite sports to watch? Hockey and Baseball. The Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League, and the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball. Those are my favorite teams. I also follow some NCAA hockey but my old school, UMass Lowell, is seriously crappy this year so they are tough to follow. There is a minor league baseball team in Manchester New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats who are in the Toronto Blue Jays system, but I haven’t been to a game there since 2007. This year I am hoping to get to a game and maybe follow them on the radio a little bit. We will see.
Lost
The Bruins lost 4-3 in overtime.
I guess I wasn’t the jinx today. They blew this game without any help from me.
Unrelated, I’m watching my second episode of Deep Space Nine tonight. Season five episodes four and five. In both episodes a post-religious human being mentions god. Bashir sees Jake alive and says thank god. O’Brien realizes he can’t stop whatever is possessing his wife and says god help me.
These star fleet human cats are supposed to be atheists living in an atheist society that’s a few hundred years removed from religion. As a fellow atheist, though not a Federation citizen or a Star Fleet officer, I’m a little bummed out by the references. Like… hast society come up with new sayings yet? Come on, writers. Let’s get creative, shall we?
Back to the original subject, the next Bruins game is Friday. Hopefully no one will jinx them. Fingers crossed.
Bad Luck Charm
The Bruins lead the Wild 2-1 half way through the third period.
I want to listen to the end of the game on the radio but I’m afraid the Wild will score twice within seconds of me tuning in.
It’s happened before. I’ve been the Bruins’ bad luck charm. If I don’t listen and they hold on to win then they should thank me for staying way.
Or something like that.
The Streak is Over
The Bruins beat the Sharks tonight, 3-0.
Our long national nightmare (aka the Bruins three game losing streak) is over.
What a relief!
November’s End
I can’t believe it’s here, but we’re just over three hours away from December. Another year, another winter, another season of me wishing it were summer again. Ugh. It was cold enough in the cellar today during the work day that I turned on the little space heater for the first time. Again… ugh.
My Star Trek Deep Space 9 rewatch has reached the first mirror universe episode. The first one is a classic. All of the 10000 that followed, including the ones in Discovery demonstrate the law of diminishing returns. They just get dumber and more boring as they go. Again, again… ugh.
Side note, I am watching DS9 on the Paramount app on my AppleTV. It’s an ad-supported plan. It’s been so long since I’ve watched commercial television that I forgot the wonder of the mute button. Thankfully the AppleTV remote has one. Every time a commercial starts, I hit mute and… sigh of relief.
Change of subject, the Bruins have lost three straight games. Tonight they look to end the losing streak in a match up with the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks are pitiful this season. This is just what we need. We are up 2-0 after two periods. Again, just what we needed.
I have had two crappy nights sleep in a row. Here’s hoping that a good DS9 episode and a Bruins win will be followed by a rare good nights sleep. Fingers crossed.
Inside the Red Head's Head 