Tag: Hockey

NHL First Round Playoff Predictions

The first round of the NHL playoffs kick off tomorrow and I am freakin’ scared. My heroic Boston Bruins ran away with the regular season this year and shattered records left and right. The last time a team did that in the regular season was the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019. How did they fare in the post season? They were swept in the first round. Yup, Robbie is scared.

Here are my very illogical predictions. Also there will be coin flip predictions because I haven’t a clue what I am talking about. The higher seed is heads and the lower is tails.

Eastern Conference

Bruins vs Panthers: Guess. Go on. Guess. The Bruins, babie. Coin flip? Heads. The coin (which is actually just Siri) picks The Bruins.

Maple Leafs vs Lightning: As much as it pains me, I am picking Toronto. Mostly because the universe requires them to lose to Boston. The coin flip is tails so Siri picks Tampa Bay. I can dig that.

Whalers vs Islanders: I want to pick the Islanders, I really do. I just don’t see The Whale losing this one. Coin flip? Tails. Siri picks the Islanders.

Devils vs Rangers: I really don’t want to pick the higher seed in every series, but I think I have to. I’m going with The Devils even though I am still pissed at them for pulling their AHL affiliate out of Lowell. Siri/coin? Heads. The universe picks New Jersey too.

On to the Western Conference where I don’t know jack about anything.

Avalanche vs Kraken: Based on nothing factual I am picking Seattle. Why? Because The Avalanche are the reigning cup winners and it’s Seattle’s first ever playoff appearance. Go Kraken! The coin, however, picks Colorado.

Stars vs Wild: In the epic battle of teams with one syllable names, I have no idea who to pick in this series. I’m going to say The Wild, only because I’ve actually been to one of their home games once. The coin flip agrees!

Golden Knights vs Jets: I want to pick The Jets but I can’t. Vegas is going to take this one. The coin flip agrees.

Oilers vs Kings: I want to pick the Kings, but I won’t. I’m picking The Oilers because they are going to win. Once again, the coin flip agrees. Edmonton might be my pick for the West. Unless Seattle kicks major ass.

So there we have it. My shitty picks for the first round of the 2023 playoffs. I don’t give a rats ass about any of them, just so long as The Bruins win the cup. Oh please, Bruins, win the cup.

Bruins Record Season

They did it! The Bruins beat Philly last night to establish a new NHL record for wins in a season with 63. Amazing. Granted it’s pointless unless they win the Stanley Cup, but let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

As an added bonus, David Pastrnak scored a hat trick which brought his total up to 60 goals for the season. The last Bruin to hit the 60 mark was Phil Esposito in ‘74-75. He’s the only other Bruin to get there, but he did it four times, including getting over 70 once.

Two more games until the playoffs start. I’m ready for the real thing now. Stanley Cup or bust!

Cats and Sports

First, pointless pictures of cats:

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Second, sports:

We listened to a chunk of the Bruins game on the radio in the car today. They beat the Penguins, a likely first round playoff opponent, thanks to a Pastrnak hat trick that put him over 100 points for the season. Glorious.

Right now I am watching the Red Sox. For the second game in a row they let the Orioles build a huge lead early and then started clawing their way back. They fell short by a run in game #1. Here in game #2 they train 8-6 in the seventh but are rallying. I’m not going to call this glorious, but it is pretty fun to watch.

Presidents Trophy Winners

The Boston Bruins beat the Columbus Blue Jackets last night and clinched the 2022/23 Presidents trophy, which is given to the team that finishes the regular season with the best record.

Yippee.

It’s nice and all, but the Presidents trophy is literally the most useless award in sports. Who cares if you have the best record in the regular season. What you want is the best record in the post-season. You want that Stanley Cup. Anything else is irrelevant. Sure, having the best record in the regular season guarantees you will have home ice advantage in every round of the playoffs, but it’s also sort of a jinx as the winner rarely wins the Cup. Given the choice, I’d go into the playoffs as a low seed if it ends with the Stanley Cup.

Congrats to the Bruins, I guess. One step closer to the post season. I don’t know about the rest of Bruins Nation, but I am ready for the playoffs. Oh so very ready.

Mostly Missed

The Red Sox game started a little after 2:00pm this afternoon. I had planned to listen to it on the radio while I worked. I got pulled into a critical meeting at 2:00 and didn’t get out to around 3:15. I had a few things to clear up after the meeting but I was just turning the game on at around 3:30 when I got pulled into a critical meeting for a different customer and didn’t get out until almost 5:30 when the game was over.

They lost to the Orioles, 9-8.

One game down. 161 to go. The statistical probability of losing 162 games this year is small, but really not small enough.

Go Red Sox!

Oh, and just for the record, the Bruins are tied at 1-1 with the Blue Jackets after two periods. Just so you know.

Saturday Morning

Just sitting at home having a quiet Saturday morning. Watching The X-Files (the space shuttle episode from season one is pretty terrible, isn’t it?) and trying to get the cats to come hang out with me.

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We won’t be going to the Hockey East Finals game tonight. UMass Lowell lost in overtime. Double overtime, I think. My brother’s old school, Merrimack College beat us. I think I’ll be rooting for Merrimack tonight. If my team can’t win it, his team should. The word on the street is that Hockey East is probably only going to get one team into the national tournament this year. I don’t remember what the reasoning behind that was, but I think I read an article on USCHO that mentioned it.

Mulder was just taking photos of an army secret thingie and he got jumped by a soldier. The camera markings were blacked out so I can’t tell what model it was. The lens looked a little similar to my father’s cheap zoom lens. It was different, but similar. Not quite as ground breaking as seeing Dad’s camera on an episode of Stranger Things, but fun nonetheless.

Hockey East Semi Finals

The UMass Lowell Riverhawks (my old school) are playing Merrimack College (my brother’s old school) in the Hockey East semi finals at the TD Garden in Boston right now. There is no score after two periods.

Boston University beat Providence in the other semi final game earlier today. Who ever wins tonight will play BU at the Garden tomorrow.

If Lowell wins tonight… should we go to the game tomorrow?

I Feel Let Down

I just signed up for ChatGPT. I wanted to have it write a blog post for me. I asked it to write something about the Bruins clinching a playoff spot yesterday. It wrote one, but all the facts were wrong. I feel like AI let me down in a big way. Well… by
“big way” I really mean “totally insignificant way.”

The Bruins clinched a playoff spot yesterday with a month still to go in the season. They are so far ahead of the pack that it’s unprecedented. Unfortunately this level of insane regular season success often doesn’t translate to playoff success. We can’t get overly confident this year.

I was hoping ChatGPT would write this up for me but of course it didn’t. Stupid artificial intelligence.

Change of subject.

We had all sorts of problems with our Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions yesterday. Our passwords suddenly didn’t work. We changed them all and then they didn’t work again. It was annoying. Jen straightened it out this morning so I am celebrating by watching Star Wars TV shows. I started by rewatching Wednesday’s Mandalorian episode, which then inspired me to find a list of Bo Katan episodes across all of the various shows. I’m up to the end of the final season of The Clone Wars now. So I am basically now watching the alternate view of Episode III.

Okay, for now I’m going to watch another episode, then I am going to make some lunch. I might make some for Harry too, if he wants.

Go Bruins.

Hockey East Quaterfinals

My old school won a playoff game tonight. UMass Lowell beat Connecticut in their Hockey East Quaterfinal game tonight, 2-1 at UConn.

Their Semifinal game should be Friday at the TD Garden in Boston. If they win that, the Hockey East Final will be Saturday, also at The Garden. If they win Friday, should we go to the game on Saturday? It wouldn’t be my first Hockey East Finals game. I went to one once. BU vs Maine? Was that it? That was the day we all decided to pretend we had Irish accents for some reason. One or two fellow spectators at The Garden that day bought the deception, though most didn’t… and I think it was still called the Fleet Center back then.

Until then, let’s go Lowell, right?