Results tagged “milanlucic”

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.

Imagine our surprise yesterday to discover that we had a chance to snag ourselves some playoff tickets. And we're not talking just any old playoff tickets. Other people can go and buy themselves Yankees-Angels tickets or Dodgers-Phillies tickets. We had a chance to visit StubHub and get ourselves Red Sox playoff tickets, according to the emails that found their way into our inbox. We could even snag ourselves METS playoff tickets!

Man. It seems like it's been forever, doesn't it? At least a week and a half since we had very much local to talk about.

While Bud Selig teases us with the idea of an actual playoff game involving the Red Sox, the rest of the sports world is moving at a faster pace. Your Boston Bruins signed Phil Kessel Milan Lucic to a three-year extension through 2012-2013. Good for the B's, and Lucic. He plays hard, fans love him and he is exactly the kind of player the franchise wants to have. However, they just gave $12.25 million over three years to a player with 25 career goals.

Last time the Bruins saw the Carolina Hurricanes, Scott Walker beat Tim Thomas in OT to put an abrupt end to the magical 2008-09 season. Last night, they got together again, and the Bruins beat them on the scoreboard, in the face, and up and down the ice in a 7-2 pummeling that almostsortakinda erased the pain of last season, or at least redirected it onto their foes.

"This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst." - John Blutarsky

It was exactly and totally unlike last season. This time, the #1 seed fully lived up to its poisition, while the #8 seed meekly submitted. Last year, the Bruins were #8, and came out of the series loss with unbounded optimism for the future. This year, the Canadiens were #8, and they're just done.

Man, do we love seeing the athletic equivalent of home movies: minor league footage and the "where was he then" stories that chronicle a rise to greatness. As we had a day off from regular season play on Monday (simma down, Sox fans, we'll get to it), we can focus our attention on the love letter written by the Globe to Bruins bruiser Milan Lucic, who we manage to forget (frequently) is a mere 20 years old.

The Celtics throttled the Oklahoma City Thunder (we had to look them up, too) last night, 103-84, but not before Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant split Glen Davis's head open during a third quarter scrum for a rebound. Big Baby, whose head needed 10 stitches, ended the game with his second consecutive double-double (19 points, 10 rebounds). It's an auspicious streak for a man who is starting in place of Kevin Garnett.

When the Bruins deliver a less-than-stellar performance, we think back to when coach Claude Julien described his team as trying to play pretty. Tuesday's 5-2 loss to the Sharks - the game marked by the highly-anticipated return of Joe Thornton - was a pretty game in the worst sense of the word.

Milan Lucic, Manny Fernandez, Patrice Bergeron, Phil Kessel: they are Bruins we know, Bruins we love, Bruins who were part of a potentially devastating succession of injuries, illness or otherwise unanticipated twists of fate.

We hope you still love Mike Lowell and David Ortiz. Because the slow tango between the Red Sox and Mark Teixiera came to a sudden crash yesterday, as the Yankees showed up on the dance floor with a briefcase full of $1000 bills and took the slugger back to New York.

Well, it was nice while it lasted. The Bruins and Celtics were on a combined 157-game winning streak (or did it just seem that way?), but it all came to an end at the hands of Washington goalie Brent Johnson, whose 33 saves stifled the B's attack and sent the locals away with only their second regulation loss since November started, 3-1.

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.

One local team hung on to first place. So let's start with them.

The Bruins have had bad news this young season, and some eh news. Last night, though, they nabbed an unqualified success, as Milan Lucic notched a hat trick and the B's overcame some early slugginshness to beat Atlanta, 5-4 at the Garden.

If you ever wondered if the Garden is freezing cold when there’s no ice in the rink, we can answer that question for you – it is and we’re still trying to thaw out. Last night we neglected to bring our winter coat when we attended the second annual State of the Bruins, a town hall meeting for the season ticket holders to find out what’s expected this season from the black and gold.

We're big microcosm fans here at the Bostonist Sports Department. So we're even more excited by the Bruins than we'd ordinarily be. The story arc for their whole season has been overachievement, resilience, and good old-fashioned grit. They weren't supposed to be in the playoffs. They weren't supposed to hang with the mighty Canadiens. And they sure aren't supposed to be heading back to Montreal for Game Seven.

The Bruins' win over Pittsburgh had a little something for everybody. It had scoring (including two by Marco Sturm), goaltending (Tim Thomas came one shot away from two straight shutouts), fighting (Milan Lucic exchanged pleasantries with Jarkko Ruutu for a good long satisfying while), and most importantly a win, which pulled the scorching-hot B's within four points of the Northeast Division lead. Kevin Paul Dupont analyzes why doing nothing might have been the best move at the trade deadline.

While the Celtics are floundering out West, the Bruins have just finished an honest-to-goodness stampede through the South. And attention must be paid.

A very brief Redux today, since we're saving our best stuff for the YouKnowWhat XLII Live-Blog, which will start around 5:30 (not 7:30 as we earlier reported).

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.)

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.

The Bruins have, objectively, been pretty good this year. They're still in playoff position (it's tenuous, but still true), and have won some pretty exciting games. But for some reason, the sight of the Canadiens turns the B's into frightened little kittens, commiting penalties and hanging their goalies out to dry on power play after power play.

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...