Bruins Push Through NHL Failures

Brad Marchand celebrates his goal with teammates (2/25/12)

The Bruins' Brad Marchand celebrates his goal against the Senators with teammates.

This past weekend, the Bruins finished up their 6 game road trip playing the Sabres on Friday and the Senators on Saturday. Once again, the NHL failed to properly discipline players for their dirty hits that caused two Bruins to be benched from injuries. Luckily, the Bruins were able to fight through all the bad calls and non-calls to get 3 points in the standings out of the two games.. One point for going to overtime against the Sabres and losing 2-1 in a shootout, and two points for beating the Senators 5-3 in regulation. So, the Bruins are still in the process of getting their game back, but they’re definitely progressing. Unfortunately, their going backwards in terms of being healthy. We already had Nathan Horton out with a concussion and Rich Peverley our with a sprained MCL.. Now Johnny Boychuk is day-to-day with concussion symptoms, and Joe Corvo is in the same boat with headaches (his head hit the boards hard.. I hope it’s not a concussion).

So, it’s going to be tough going forward with all of these Bruins dropping like flies, but hopefully we’ll get some help from the players we just got through trades at the deadline today. From the tiny amount of information that has come out so far, it sounds like we picked up defensemen Greg Zanon and Mike Mottau, as well as forward Brian Rolston.

Tim Thomas makes one of his famous unorthodox saves (2/25/12)

Bruins goalie Tim Thomas makes one of his famous unorthodox saves.

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NOTE: Below are my notes for these games.. I’m not going to fully write everything out because the videos tell the story.. I just wanted to get this posted to express my disgust with the NHL.

Bruins at Sabres:
-No score in first period.. Zdeno Chara had a shot off the crossbar.. looked like it went in.
-Seemed like we were the better team, playing well.
-Sabres score with about five minutes left in the second period.
-A few minutes into the third period, Chara scores from the blue line on a power play.
-A few minutes later, David Krejci had a great redirect on a shot from the point by Dennis Seidenberg that had Sabres goalies Ryan Miller beat, but was just wide.
-Sabres win shootout with their fourth shooter (after each team scored once through the first three shooters on each team.. the scorer on our team being Krejci, who had a great shot.. watch the video below to see).

Here’s a video of the Bruins/Sabres shootout:

Here’s a video recap of the Bruins at Sabres:

Here’s the NHL’s longer video recap of the Bruins at Sabres: http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?hlg=20112012,2,912

Here’s some pictures from the game:
http://bruins.nhl.com/club/gallery.htm?id=28050&location=/photos&pg=1

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Senators goalie Alex Auld allows a goal by the Bruins.

Bruins at Senators:
-The Bruins had a lot of good scoring chances and plays, coming as early as 30 seconds in.
-About a minute later, the Bruins had a defensive breakdown and the Senators scored.
-A couple minutes later, Zdeno Chara takes a shot from the blue line.. Patrice Bergeron gets the rebound and scores.
-About eight minutes in, the Senators’ Jason Spezza hits Chara after he had already passed the puck away.. So, Chara turns around and gives him a TINY shove.. and it’s a penalty! Wow.. I want a new NHL disciplinarian and all new refs!!
-About 13 minutes in, the Senators get a breakaway, but Tim Thomas makes a big save.. which he would do more of throughout the game.
-With four minutes left in the first period, Chara steals the puck, circles around the player he took it from to get by him, and makes two quick dekes to get by two more players, handling the puck like a forward. He then passes ahead to Bergeron, who passes to Brad Marchand.. he takes a great long shot and scores.
-Four minutes into the second period, Adam McQuaid takes a shot from the blue line.. Carter Camper (called up from Providence Bruins) gets the rebound, takes a backhand shot, and scores his first NHL goal!
-The rest of the period we had a bunch of good scoring chances and Thomas made some big saves.
-Three minutes into the third period, the Senators’ Chris Neil puts a huge dirty hit on Johnny Boychuk, who didn’t see him coming. If you look at the video you’ll see that Neil aimed for the head AND his feet left the ground. I now realize that Chris Neil somehow manages to be a dirtier player than P.K. Subban, Alex Burrows, Matt Cooke, and even Brad Marchand combined! This hit was so intentionally dirty it was almost criminal! And I love how after Neil destroys Boychuk, he acts like he, himself, is hurt so he doesn’t get beat up.. Chara was right next to him in like one second ready to kill him.. but Chris Neil is a bitch, so he acted hurt. I also love how he didn’t get a penalty or any kind of discipline at all. Great job Brendan Shanahan (NHL’s disciplinarian)!
-A couple of minutes later, the Senators are at it again with another dirty hit. This time it was Joe Corvo facing the boards and Kyle Turris bashing Corvo’s head into them. He should definitely get disciplined for this.. he did everything worthy of getting suspended.. he aimed for the head AND left the ground AND came from behind! Yet he gets no suspension?! What the fuckin fuck Shanahan?!
-A few minutes later, Thomas made couple big saves real quick, then got totally shoved down by one of the Senators, resulting in a penalty.
-Two minutes after that, at the end of the power play we got, David Krejci had a great one-timer on a rebound and scored! It was now 4-1 Bruins.
-I was so happy a few minutes later when Chara got to kick Neil’s ass.. No, Neil and Senators fans, you did not win the fight, Chara just lost his balance, but he kicked your ass! Watch the video again (below) and you’ll see.
-They say that a three goal lead is the most dangerous in hockey because you start to sit back. Well, we did slow down a bit.. and allowed the Senators to score with four minutes left, then again two minutes later. Just like that, it’s 4-3 Bruins.
-So, the Senators pull their goalie, but with 20 seconds left, Bergeron steals the puck and scores an empty-netter from 125 feet away to seal the deal. Bruins win 5-3.