Tag: Bruins

Is Iginla Coming to Boston Tonight?

Word on the street is that Calgary has scratched Jarome Iginla tonight, and that the Providence Bruins have also scratched a couple of players.

Is Jarome coming to Boston as soon as tonight?

That would be SO FREAKIN’ AWESOME!

Of course we trail Montreal 2-1 right now.

Jarome Iginla

The NHL trade deadline is coming.  It’s time for the annual, “Wouldn’t Jarome Iginla look good in a Bruins uniform?” discussions.  Whenever Calgary starts slipping the conversation inevitably begins.  He should ask for a trade for the good of the team.  The team needs to trade their best player ever for the good of the franchise.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Eventually the topic always turns to how Boston should go out and get him.

A few years ago I was fully in the do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-this-guy camp.  Now… he’s getting old.  He’s 35, which is very old for most hockey players.  He’s not going to come into Boston and light the lamp 50 times in the final month of the season.  He’s not going to show up and solve all of our offensive problems.  He’s probably not even going to be one of our top scorers.  Should we still pay the unquestionably high price to get him?

HELL YES!

When the Bruins traded for Marc Recchi a few years ago, I was insulted.  Recchi was ancient by hockey standards, and his best years were so far behind him it was sick.  Then he got here and became “The Veteran”.  He set himself up as the elder statesman.  All of the young players looked up to him.  All of them saw him as a role model.  All of them saw his Stanley Cup rings and bought in.  What happened?  Well, just a Stanley Cup a couple of years later.  That’s all.

Iginla is better now than Recchi was then.  He’s never won a championship, but most of the current roster has, so we don’t need that sort of leadership like we did when Recchi got here.  What we do have is a bunch of forwards who go through streaks where they struggle to score goals.  Iginla can assume the role of “The Veteran” and smoothe out all of those scary times when Lucic and Horton and Marchant and Seguin all suddenly forget how to score.  Look at me, he can say, I’m Jarome Iginla and I have twice hit the 50 goals in a season mark.  Learn from me as I demonstrate the wonders of hard work and consistency.

On top of that, throughout his career Iginla has been an A list power forward.  He is what Milan Lucic needs to be.  Wants to be.  Must be.  Trading for Iginla would be worth it just so he could teach Looch what he needs to learn.

People are already complaining about the possibility of the Bruins giving up Malcolm Subban.  Subban is 19, playing in juniors, and a very late first round pick.  In other words, he hasn’t done anything real yet (no offense) and he won’t be ready to contribute at the NHL level for a while.  I hear people saying three years but that seems super optimistic to me.  I say deal him to Calgary and then work your black and gold asses off to sign Iginla for a few more years.

I ask you, wouldn’t Jarome Iginla look good in a Boston Bruins uniform?

I answer you.  Yes, yes he would.

Go get him!

Goal!

Martin Brodeur is the greatest goalie in the history of professional hockey.  Last night, he was also a goal scoring machine.

It wasn’t a case of “he shoots he scores”, it was more like “he makes a save during a delayed penalty and some Whaler makes a crappy pass that banks off the boards in the New Jersey end and deflects all the way down to the Whaler’s end and goes right smack into the middle of the net”.

It was the third goal of his career.  100 years from now, some kid walking through the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto is going to see the Martin Brodeur display and it is going to list his career stats:
9 billion wins.
2 billion shutouts.
3 goals.

Note, I have watched this video but I have not listened to it.  I do not know if any hockey announcers say anything stupid or not.  You’ve been warned.

Staying with the hockey theme, as I posted yesterday, I got home from picking up the kids and put the game on the radio.  By radio, I mean the CBS radio iPhone app that streams 98.5 WBZ FM.  As soon as the stream reached my ear pods Ottawa scored.  I listened for a while feeling completely underwhelmed by the Bruins performance.  Before the second period ended I put the game on the TV.  With less than two minutes left in the second the Bruins tied the game.  Intermission started, I went to say good night to the first step child.  I then watched some of the third period and the Bruins were not the snooze inducing hockey boredom machines they had been in the second.  They had a little more life.  I had to go downstairs and do some laundry business, then say good night to the second step child, then turn out all the lights and lock the doors, then get into bed.  I had planned to listen to the end of the game while reading a little, but I was a little late.  I checked the score.  Bruins win 2-1.

This season’s shortened schedule really is an insult to hockey lovers everywhere.  The Bruins have played 29 games and we’re already nearly 75% of the way through the season.  That’s garbage.  The reason you play a long season is so that everyone can get the crap kicked out of them by life itself, and the really good teams separate themselves from the not so good teams.  That’s not going to happen this year.  I mean, the Leafs are in sixth in the East.  That’s all the proof you need!

Having said that, I don’t really see the Bruins contending for the Cup the way many in the press seem to.  They just don’t have the fire yet.  They don’t have the killer instinct.  They have lost four games in which they had the lead in the third period.  When they are good they are outstanding.  When they aren’t good they are maddeningly boring and mediocre.

The third period last night was a nice change from the recent snooze.  Let’s hope the momentum continues Saturday night in Toronto.

Go Bruins.

Bruins Question

I have a question about my Boston Bruins.

Why is it that almost every time I turn on the game, the B’s opponent immediately scores a goal? It just happened again. I came home from getting the kids at karate class, popped the game onto the radio, and BAM, Ottawa scores.

I fear our Stanley Cup dreams are slipping more each day.

It’s Cold Out

Just yesterday I wrote something about the imminent arrival of Spring.  This morning the kids and I went outside to the car and the temperature was a balmy 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  Are you freakin’ kidding me?

On Wednesday I mentioned something about my right ear being completely blocked up and therefore just about useless.  Yesterday throughout most of the day the situation was much, much better.  Then I made the mistake of absent mindedly rubbing my ear a little.  Boom, completely blocked again.  It’s still totally closed off.

The Bruins beat the last place Panthers last night.  They managed to not blow a third period lead.  Wonders never cease.  Bad third periods are becoming the norm with this team.  It’s getting worrisome.  They went the whole season last year without losing a game in which they lead after two periods.  This year they’ve blown third period leads in embarrassing fashion a whole bunch of times.  It has to stop if they plan on contending.  Go Bruins.

Four Random Thoughts

Here are four random thoughts buzzing around my pea brain at the moment.

First, continuing the Bad Sports Day for Boston from the previous post, Bruin Chris Kelly has a broken leg and is out indefinitely.

Second, My Kingdom for an DVI to HDMI adapter!  I discovered recently that most of the songs I want to record this month have already reached a near complete status that I have completely forgotten about reaching.  Unfortunately the .band files are all on the MacMini and I can’t find the cables we used to use to hook it up to the monitor, so I can’t get the files off of it!  Lunch break tomorrow includes a trip to radio shack.

Third, we learned a new downside of living on the edge of wild kingdom.  Just after we finished dinner tonight our neighborhood was engulfed in the stench of skunk.  Ah crud.

Fourth, my right ear is so completely blocked with wax right now that I am effectively deaf on that side.  This happens to me once every couple of years or so.  Where the hell did I leave that bottle of wax softener?

My wish to all of you, from your humble narrator, is that tomorrow is a better day than today was.  ‘Cause today was kind of a suck fest.