Sports Redux: Party Like It's 1925

1925. Coolidge was President. The New Yorker debuted, and The Great Gatsby was published. Yogi Berra, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcom X were born. And the Bruins had a nine-game winless streak.

History may not repeat itself often, but for the Bruins, it has. Last night's loss to Montreal, which at least earned them a point for the shootout, matched their longest losing streak in 80 years. Goalie Tuukka Rask, whose grandfather might actually have been alive in 1925, summed it up:"I don’t know whether to cry or laugh here." He could have laughed about the fact that the B's once again outshot their opponents (47-25 in this case, which is insane), played harder, and dominated most of the offense. But then he'd have to cry about the fact that, once again, either the foe's goaltender was playing out of his mind, or his teammates (in the immortal words of Bob Cousy) couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a handful of rice.

The Bruins jumped out to a 2-0 lead, their largest margin since...we're going to say 1942. Mark Recchi scored on a power play (if you've just started following hockey, a power play goal is what happens when you spend a period of time on the ice with more skaters than your opponent which doesn't end with booing from the home crowd) late in the first, and Blake Wheeler added a goal in the second. But Montreal evened it late in the second with goals from old friend Glen Metropolit and just plain old Roman Hamrlik. The Habs' Brian Gionta scored the only goal in the shootout. The B's may or may not have been using sticks on their attempts.

Claude Julien, who's probably just about out of ways to describe losses to the press without swearing in French, says the team is trying to stay positive. "You don’t have a choice. You don’t get out of this by just quitting and saying that we don’t have answers." Guy should write for LOST. Also, apparently Quebecois swears tend revolve around religious blasphemy and not bodily functions. Just in case you thought we didn't do any tangential research.

The Bruins have five more games to slog through before the league takes a couple weeks off for the Olympics. (Incidentally, the first Winter Olympics were held in 1924. So it's all coming full circle.) The way things are going, we fully expect them to go on a run so their momentum will run out.

Apparently, there's some big football game happening this weekend, and fortunately we have celebrities to tell us who's going to win. The starting lineups for the Puppy Bowl have been announced, so you can start wagering on that.