Results tagged “marcsavard”

Half the team is hurt. Much of the other half is brand new. But somehow, this bunch of strangers wearing Bruin black and gold managed to squeeze out a win over Nashville, 3-2. The first two goals all came from Bruins vets (Michael Ryder and Patrice Bergeron), but the game winner, Steve Begin's first Boston goal off an assist from Daniel Paille, was all n00b. "Most important thing is we won the game but it's great to get my first goal out of the way," said Begin.

Remember how awesome the Bruins were last year? Star center Marc Savard played every game of the season, and his reliable, bruiser wingman Milan Lucic was alongside him for nearly that long? Get ready to learn some new names because Savard just joined Lucic on the long-term injured reserve. The faux-hawked center, who had 88 points last season, reportedly has a broken foot that will keep him out of action for four to six weeks. Journeyman Trent Whitfield was called up from Providence to take Savard's place.

"Whatever the hex is, I guess somebody un-hexed it," said the Angels' Chone Figgins. We're not sure what that hex may be, or if it's really gone, but last night, the Angels looked like hex-free division winners. And the Red Sox looked like a team that staggered into the playoffs, mustering no offense and succumbing meekly to Anaheimorwhatever 5-0.

Rust? Nah. Nine days after they dispatched Montreal, the Bruins only needed a little time to find their winning pace, and took Game One from the Hurricanes, 4-1. And by a little time, we mean 94 seconds, which is how long it took for David Krejci to tip in an Aaron Ward shot to go up 1-0.

What a day at the Garden. A little depression, a little mania. A loss, a win. A soul-stealing episode, and a moment of triumph.

Everybody's entitled to a night off now and then. Fortunately, the NHL provides each team with a firm schedule that allows them to plan those nights off ahead. Unfortunately, the Bruins seemed to think one of those nights was last night, even though there was a game scheduled and an opponent in town.

People aren't going to the Garden to see basketball games these days. They're going to watch helpless individuals devoured by lions. Such was the fate of the Dallas Mavericks yesterday; they're a good team, not a great one, and were torn limb-from-limb by a hungry, determined, focused Celtics team. Thumbs down, Dirk Nowitzki, thumbs down.

Imagine for a moment that Zdeno Chara is standing in front of you. You are the only thing between him and a net. He's winding up for a slapshot.

The Penguins are a good team. Eastern Conference champs last year, home team of the young superstar of the NHL...it's not a bad gig. But in the 2008-09 version of the league, they're nothing but a road bump for the red-hot Bruins, who exploded again for a 5-2 win and their ninth straight win.

What were Boston sports fans thankful for yesterday?

If you're going to have a triumphant homecoming, it helps when you're playing the Timberwolves. That's the lesson from last night, as Kevin Garnett played his first game back in his old arena, and clearly illustrated the difference between NBA Champs and a miserable team, as the Celtics cruised to a 95-78 blowout.

Nothing is getting to the Bruins right now. Nothing can disturb their calm, shake their confidence, rattle their cages. Buffalo jumps out to a 3-1 lead in the first five minutes? Pfffft. Just nod grimly and get back to work.

This has been a nice little homestand for the Bruins, hasn't it? Last night, they followed up blowouts of Dallas and Toronto with a spirited, come-from-behind 3-1 win over Buffalo that launched them into a flatfooted tie for the Northeast Division lead.

Well. This is fun, isn't it?

You want to look on the bright side? OK, we'll play along. The Red Sox have a seven game ALCS winning streak when faced with elimination. There, we said it. Now all they have to do is get a sterling effort from Dice-K tonight, credible efforts from their other shellshocked pitchers, and some semblance of a competent offense, and the Sox can maybe run that streak up to ten.

He says he feels better. He says he's actually felt pretty good for a couple of weeks now. But David Ortiz must feel great today, after his season-long slump ended with a Monster shot grand slam off the hapless Rangers to spark a 11-3 whupping. It was such a rebirth for Papi that his teammates gave him the "silent treatment" in the dugout usually reserved for rookies hitting their first homer.

They worked hard enough in Game Two to go to OT. Last night, they took it a step further, as the Bruins beat Montreal for the first time since about 1982 in a thrilling 2-1 OT win at the Garden.

1-0. That's all that matters.

Today, we're not going to talk about YouKnowWhat XLII. Because there's nothing to talk about. Today, we're going to celebrate two big wins from our two local winter teams. (We will remind you, however, that we'll be live-blogging YouKnowWhat XLII starting 7:30ish on Sunday. Get your commentin' fingers in shape.)

In a sense, it's comforting. The Celtics went to battle against one of the other good Eastern teams without Kevin Garnett, and almost beat 'em. On the day of the C's' long-awaited return to national afternoon TV, the script ran eerily similar to the first game in Orlando; the Magic jumped out to a big lead, the Celtics clawed their way back, but ran out of gas at the end. Orlando's the only team to get a 14-point lead on the Green all year, and they've done it twice.

Let's say you're going to the Celtics-Timberwolves game tonight. If you're like most of the people at Celtics games these days, chances are you weren't there last year. Which is perfectly legal on your part. But there's something you should know. Most of the Timberwolves played here last year, during that long, miserable 06-07 campaign, and several of them - promising, hardworking youngsters for the most part - were sent away to make room for the Celtics team you proudly cheer today.

All right, we get it. Now we know that even if we check the Celtics score and see that they're up 14 on the Wizards with six minutes to go, we can't just take that for granted, switch back to the Lost Season 3 DVD and go to bed untroubled. We have to check again and make sure they sealed the deal.

Maybe some voters in Iowa had a tough decision to make; not so the AP NFL Coach of the Year voters, who swept Bill Belichick into the award with 29 out of 50 possible first-place votes. The other 21, we're sure, were dismayed by Spygate (why else vote against a guy whose team didn't lose?), figuring that any coach who had footage of 20 minutes of Jetball had an unfair advantage. Bill, we're sure, took the award, nodded grimly, and went back to work.

Roger Clemens is an unhappy man today. At least, his lawyer is. Attorney Rusty Hardin responded to Roger's prominence in the Mitchell Report by saying, "He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are false allegations." We remember something in the report about Mitchell requesting an interview with Clemens and being turned down. Perhaps that was a mistake.

Today has all the anticipation of postseason award announcements, with all the anxiety of a Law & Order episode. This afternoon, George Mitchell's going to go public with his steroid report. There's all kinds of stuff in there about making improvements to testing and recommendations for ways to keep this from happening in the future, but all anyone really cares about is the "naming names" part of the process. Who will be implicated? Sources say...

Seen on ESPN yesterday: "The Bruins are 8-4-1 in their last 13 games. Just thought you should know the fourth horse of the apocalypse is saddling up." The Bruins insist that Tim Thomas is not being Wally Pipped; he'll be the starter again as soon as he recovers from his groin injury. But for finding a backup goalie in the clearance bin, it's hard to beat what the B's have seen from Alex Auld, who...

We're not the biggest Japanese-movie-monster buffs in the world, but we honestly can't remember an entry in the series when the monster got to go home early because Tokyo didn't even make a token effort to defend itself. But Ghidorah was sent to the bench early last night; the "Big Three" were no longer needed amid the Celtics' utter annihilation of the listless Knicks last night. It was a 23-point lead at halftime, and when...

As tempting as it would have been for the Bruins to come out swinging last night, playing back the Flyers for Patrice Bergeron's concussion, that's not how they roll. And they needed the two points even more than they needed the visceral satisfaction of seeing the Flyers laid out like the wounded soldiers in Gone With the Wind. The 6-3 shellacking wasn't exactly a tea party, though. Defenseman Andrew Alberts left the game after a...

Not that it matters for the Celtics. Yes, in the department of "Who's the new guy? He looks kinda familiar," Celtics forward Wally Szczerbiak returned to basketball after a lengthy time-out.

Bostonist has plenty of Pats and Dice-K action, but we've decided to show a little love to our other hometown teams with a sports wrap-up. Consider this Boston Sports Redux Beta.