It was about a week ago when we noted that the Bruins were in 6th place in the Prince of Wales Eastern Conference, which was a decent place to be, thus drawing the winner of the weak-sister Southeast Division. In that week, the B's have solidified the 6th spot, but are now officially in spittin' distance of bigger and better things. They've won blowouts this week, they've won shootouts, they've won at home, they've won......

On the way out of the TDB Garden last night, we weren't completely thrilled about the Celtics' victory over King James and the Cavaliers last night. It was a kind of sloppy game, Paul Pierce was way off-target all night, and the effects of jet lag were obvious. Then we stopped for a second and remembered where this team was a year ago. In one season, we've gone from plummeting towards ignominy, to beating the......

It seems that the Bruins' approach to the NHL trade deadline - to hold steady and remain as is - might just pay off. On Tuesday night, against an Ottawa Senators team that the Globe kindly referred to as "thoroughly disinterested" (read: someone's will to play didn't arrive at the TDBN Garden with the rest of the Senators' gear), the Bruins cruised along to a 4-0 win, extending the winning ways that began out on......

Maybe it was being in L.A. one night after the Oscars, so the magic of the stars could rub off on them (because when you think "glamour", you think Coen Brothers). Maybe it wasn't. Probably it had a lot to do with the injury-riddled, overmatched Clippers. But whatever the reason, the results speak for themselves: the C's blasted LA last night, and come home with a 2-game winning streak. The Clippers only broke 20 points......

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. Last night, the B's finished off a 4-0-1 Southern swing with a 5-3 win at Tampa Bay. Glen Murray scored twice, with Milan Lucic and Mark Stuart also scoring early. P.J. Axelsson took a Glen Metropolit pass and scored a shorthanded goal to put the Lightning away for good. Alex Auld wasn't......

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.) The Celtics were facing maybe their toughest test of the season so far. There have been Negative Nellies all over the land saying that the......

"Bye-weeks. Bronco Nagurski didn't get no bye-weeks! And now he's dead! Well, maybe they're a good thing." - Moe, The Simpsons These are the times that try fan's souls. The cavalcade of ridiculousness that is Media Day is long over, but the actual game is still three looooooong days away. But with 564,000 media members stomping around Greater Phoenix, stories will be filed even if there's no story there. And we have to talk about......

-- The Bruins lost to Ottawa on Tuesday night, 3-2, and the Globe was quick to point out that the Bruins started to lose their steam around this time last year. The paper asks about whether this year could be a repeat. We'd answer, but we're busy wondering about whether Dan Shaughnessy helped Kevin Paul Dupont with his story. -- The Celts are facing off against Detroit tonight -- and Ray Allen is back and......

Hope you sports fans were able to relax yesterday. The disappointing non-slaughter of the Jets is in the rear view mirror, the Dolphins game isn't quite as exciting since the stupid Ravens ended Miami's bid for a winless season, everything is sewn up in the AFC, and the Monday Night game wasn't that exciting. Plus, the Celtics and Bruins were off. But we've got some big games coming up in the next 48 hours, so......

We already know they must hate us in Minnesota. Once, they had David Ortiz, Randy Moss and Kevin Garnett. Now they don't. But they must really hate us in Denver these days; less than two weeks after their Colorado Rockies were vaporized in the World Series, the Nuggets came to Boston and fared just as badly. The Celtics (who said they'd need time to adjust to one another?) annihilated Denver almost from the opening last......

For a day that featured not a single Boston professional sports team in game mode, Tuesday was jam-packed with sports news. And what made things even more ridiculous was the fact that, for a good portion of the day, one faced difficulty figuring out what news was legit and what was a sports scribe's attempt at an exclusive gone wrong (Tom Brady exclusive, anyone? Don't worry, we'll get it to it). We're going to sort......

In the first half of the Patriots' perfect-so-far season, there were a few scary moments. There was the time Dallas took the lead in the third quarter, and....well, that was about it, actually. For eight games, the Pats picked the tune, and the opponent either danced along, or more likely, got flung out of the way. We've had our scary moments now. Yesterday was a game when the Pats not only didn't pick the tune,......

A somewhat abbreviated Redux, since we're preparing for our live-blog of NFL Armageddon this afternoon. Let's start with the bad and end on a high note. First, the Bruins. They went to Ottawa last night to play the Senators, who are 11-1 and running away with the Northeast Division. So now the Bruins know how it feels to play any of the other teams from Boston. It was close, and the B's even led at......

In the winter of 1846-47, a party of 33 settlers, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner, ran into a snowstorm in the Sierra Mountains. After a few months of ox-slaughtering and shivering, fifteen of them set off to find some help. They, of course, famously got caught in a blizzard and had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. This historical tidbit is meant merely to provide perspective, and reflect that this week's Sox......

You play until the late hours against your fiercest rival, then fly six hours cross-country to face one of the toughest pitchers out there. How would you fare? If you're the Red Sox, you'd fare badly for a while, then really well, then disappointed. Oakland starter Danny Haren was fantastic, shutting the Sox down with 9 strikeouts through the eighth. So Boston did what they do best, which is bide their time until the bullpen......

The Red Sox have been living large off of the Foes' inferior bullpens all season. Sadly, what goes around came around last night. The unstoppable Okajima and unbeatable Papelbon were respectively stopped and beaten by the Yankees, who took 2 out of 3 from the Sox for the second straight series. This one was a typical Sox-Yankees seesaw affair. Josh Beckett pitched well, but spotted the Yanks a 4-0 lead. But the Sox got it......

Harry Doyle and the Friends of the Feathered are breathing a sigh of relief this morning. After two losses at Fenway, Chief Wahoo's Tribe turned on the juice Wednesday night, pounding out a season-high 18 hits and smacking the Sox 8-4. Boston gave Daisuke a 2-0 lead after four innings, but Dice had been living dangerously all along, and Cleveland finally started to make him pay. And pay and pay. The Indians score two in......

Trot Nixon's homecoming game at Fenway was one to remember. Not so much for Trot (1-for-3), but for the fact that this game had a little bit of everything. An inside-the-park home run for Kevin Youkilis (shhh...20 game hitting streak...shhh). A conventional home run for Manny, tying him with former teammate Jim Thome for 25th place all time. A controversial third-strike call in the ninth that brought both managers out for some earnest discussions with......

We've now entered the portion of the 2007 Red Sox season where, frankly, it's not that big a deal if the starters struggle. How long this portion will last, we don't know, but we saw the Sox' offense rescue a queasy Daisuke on Friday, and they bailed out a shaky Wakefield Saturday to club the Rangers 7-4. Wake struggled in the fifth, giving up a two-run double to Gerald Laird as the lowlight of a......

We know you're Red Sox fans. We know that, much like every home is supposed to have emergency supplies (flashlight, bottled water, etc.) close at hand at all times, every good Red Sox fan should know where the panic button is. Just in case. Don't press them yet; just make sure everyone in the family knows how to get at it if the worst should happen. Yes, it's only one game. And yes, it's only......

With a miserable rain forcing the postponement of last night's Sox-Tigers game, our thoughts turn to geography. Yes, they really do. Specifically, to a subject we've been noticing a lot lately: the fact that the Red Sox seem to attract a large number of players whose last names are also the names of towns in our fair Commonwealth. So let's hit the road and take a tour of Massachusetts, Red Sox-style. Close to Boston, we......

The complete game is a dying art in the States. In the age of relief specialists, managers tied to pitch counts, and Papelbon, there aren't a lot of occasions when a manager wants to leave his starter in any longer than necessary. And last night, in fact, Papelbon was warming up when the Sox blew the game open in the 8th, taking a 7-1 lead and giving Terry Francona an excuse to leave Daisuke in......

Bostonist was walking past the hustle and bustle of Fenway Park on Friday afternoon when we finally identified that nagging feeling that had been with us ever since the Park Street station. We had seen more Baltimore Orioles jerseys, hats and T-shirts in an hour than we saw all day when we traveled to Camden Yards last season! What was going on? Everyone knows that the orange-accented Baltimore ballpark is known fondly in Red Sox......

Twins ace Johan Santana only made it five innings, but that was more than enough to send the Red Sox bats into a tizzy from which they never recovered. The Minnesota bullpen, if anything, was sharper than the starter, and the result was a 2-1 loss and the waste of a very good outing from Sox starter Julian Tavarez. Tavarez went six, giving up only four hits and two runs, while striking out seven. But......

6-0. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, it looked grim for a while for Josh Beckett and the Sox. Dan Johnson broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the sixth with an RBI single, but the Sox rallied off 2 off the Oakland bullpen in the bottom of the inning. Then Okajima and Timlin shut the A's down, and just like that, Beckett became the majors' first six-game winner in the 6-4 triumph. Bostonist hearts......

Finally, we can put the one-day wonder of Sockgate behind us. O's broadcaster Gary Thorne admitted he misinterpreted Doug Mirabelli's horseplay as a confession, and thus has no reason to believe that Curt Schilling painted his sock to look bloody. The lesson here, of course, is that horseplay has no place in a major league clubhouse. Curt took the opportunity to unload on the media; you get the feeling that parts of his diatribe were......

This Japanese Word of the Day will, we hope, be brought to you by Daisuke Matsuzaka, who will try to use his houri to send the Yankees packing tonight. The Red Sox took game two of the latest Ultimate Regular Season Series yesterday; Josh Beckett recovered from a couple shaky innings to hold New York in check. David Ortiz provided the big hit, as he is wont to do, with a two-run homer around......

The Bruins had their last game after flaming out so spectacularly toward the end of the season. They took on Ottawa and did what they do best - they lost, 6 to 3. When the Celtics are fighting harder than you are, you know it's time to hang it up. Coach Dave Lewis offered his typically cheerful thoughts on the season finale: "It's an awful feeling to play the last game of the year in......

Have we pretty much run out of Japan-themed headlines? Almost? OK. After all the hype and promise, Daisuke turned out to be everything Red Sox Nation could have hoped for. Of course, he gave up six hits and a run, so there's room for improvement, but Dice was firmly in control of the hapless Royals in the 4-1 victory. Which puts the Red Sox alone in first place, and makes us feel a little silly......

Daisuke Matsuzaka Mania has already jumped the shark, and the season hasn't even started yet. The Globe had a long, loving look at how the arrival of Matsuzaka is going to juice up Boston's economy. (Better hide Pastor Wall's warning to tourists about the risks of getting shot around here.) We are anticipating Matsuzaka's official debut as much as the next sports fan. And we are tickled that one guy is expected to pump $14......