It wasn't one for the history books. But the Bruins, while integrating some new faces and welcoming back some old ones, got the better of Colorado and opened the 08-09 season with a 5-4 win. The Bruins got early goals from Phil Kessel and Blake Wheeler (in his debut; welcome aboard, kid!), but the Avalanche's high-flying style got to Tim Thomas, and the B's trailed 3-2 midway through the second. Marc Savard's power play goal......

On the way to Tropicana Field, Terry Francona announced his starting rotation for the ALCS! And it's...a continuation of the rotation from the first round. That was anticlimactic. Daisuke will start Game One in St. Petersburg, Beckett Game Two, and Lester and Wakefield will take the first two games in Boston. Tito says he has equal confidence in all three of his big guns (even after Beckett's stinkeroo last week), and says the order doesn't......

The Red Sox didn't just win a series the other night. They may have destroyed a Major League franchise. The Angels, winners of 100 games and the best record in the bigs, spend the entire flight home to California boo-hooing about how this never should have happened. "I'm pissed off. I'm just upset, and it's going to be with me for a while," said Torii Hunter. John Lackey, who was bettered twice by Jon Lester,......

That was a long wait for some bad news, wasn't it? The bad news is that past results are NOT indicative of future success, and apparently the Angels aren't going to go away quietly after all. Now the Red Sox have to learn from the adversity that they had to wait for until the second round in 2004 and 2007. The blame for last night's loss, sadly, can be placed in a few different place.......

New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Cancun for Spring Break. And now, Anaheim in October. These are the place you go to get loose, have fun, and live it up. The Red Sox made it 11 in a row over the Angels in the postseason, crushing the Halos with a dramatic 9th-inning home run by J.D. Drew. It wasn't that easy. Sure, the Sox jumped on Ervin Santana with four runs in the first. But Daisuke......

Remember Manny Ramirez? Bill Simmons does, and he's spent the last two months on a roller coaster of emotion about what went wrong (coughScottBorascough), what could have been done to fix it, and what it all means. The result is a 750-page analysis that's well worth the hours it will take to read it. Manny is still going strong, and so is his team, as he homered again to help the Dodgers wallop the Cubs......

We were worried? Remember, last season the Bruins were 0-37-1 against Montreal in the regular season, and still managed to force the Habs to seven games in the playoffs. 1-8 against the Angels in the regular season? Pfffft. As long as we're comparing Game One of the ALDS to hockey, there aren't a lot of games where it's easier to pick your Three Stars than last night in Anaheim. It's just putting them in order......

The preliminary 162 are over. The Red Sox finished their regular season with a split, got to wave farewell to the Yankees, and now can head to Anaheim with a fresh start. Well, except for the daily agony that's keeping Mike Lowell on the shelf for who-knows-long, the nagging problems with J.D. Drew, and now the news that Josh Beckett pulled a muscle and won't start 'til Game Three. Other than that, we're ready. The......

Amidst all the sogginess, crankiness, and uncertainty of this weekend's "series" with the Yankees, we're forgetting one silver lining. Scalpers must be getting their butts kicked, after probably paying high prices for tickets that now nobody wants. They surely had visions of hundreds of dollars for a season-ending showdown, little realizing that it would be a messy, rainy matchup of Pawtucket vs. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre that nobody really wants to go see, and the players probably don't......

Is anyone else a little fired up that the Sox could still win the East? If we sweep NY, and the Rays get swept in Detroit...wow! Or not. Whatever. The Sox kept their hopes alive by beating Cleveland, again, as Jon Lester took a no-hitter into the sixth en route to a 6-1 win. Lester wasn't going to get a chance for the complete game, said Terry Francona, who had a strict pitch count in......

If the rumors are true, Troy Brown is expected to retire from the Patriots and the NFL today. He's been a Patriot since 1993, from the first year of the Bill Parcells era, and has been the kind of steady, reliable guy that sometimes gets overlooked. It'll be nice to have the spotlight on him for one more day. Brown was a favorite target of both Bledsoe and Brady - a guy who was always......

There's some debate whether and how much a team should celebrate just by making the playoffs. It's not like the days when the NHL had 16 playoff spots for 21 teams. But with four spots in each league up for grabs, a team with a recent record of success, a high payroll, and experienced veterans should expect to make it. Oh, sorry, Hank, didn't see you standing right there. But that's the attitude of a......

There's not enough lipstick in the world to cover up this pig. It's been a long, long time since we've had to report on a Patriots game that was this hard to think about, let alone write about. The Pats welcomed Miami to Foxboro with open arms, a red carpet, and a map to the end zone, and as a result are 38-13 victims. The story of the game was the Miami offense, which left......

Roy Halladay wasn't going to let the Red Sox celebrate on his dime. With the magic number at one, the Sox just needed to beat Roy and the Wild Card spot (at least; they're still not giving up on Tampa Bay) would be theirs. But as the Sox learned, you can't spot Halladay a 5-0 lead and expect to come back. Jon Lester was surprisingly un-automatic, as the Blue Jays touched him for one in......

Let's face it, kids. Barring a miracle, the Sox are Wild Card-bound. The Rays, who we spent the entire summer waiting for to go away, are real. And they're spectacular. They clubbed Tim Wakefield last night, and walked out of the series with a bigger lead than when they started. Again. Tampa Bay's 10-3 rout of the Sox clinched the season series, which means the Rays own the tiebreaker now (they don't do one-game playoffs......

First place was in their grasp. So close. Josh Beckett was humming, the Rays were putting up a line of zeroes, and even though it was only 1-0, the Red Sox had to feel good about taking first back last night. Until Carlos Pena solved Beckett and put one into the seats over a leaping Jacoby Ellsbury (shown here). Suddenly, it was Tampa Bay starter Andy Sonnanstine and the remarkable Ray bullpen that looked magical.......

Nobody's going to be boxing this one up and sending it to Canton. It was slow, grinding, methodical and (objectively, let's be honest) kind of boring. But it was also quiet and efficient. Coach Belichick doesn't want style points - not right now, anyway - and he got exactly what he wanted, which was a W at New York. The defense had a few shaky moments. Brett Favre led the Jets on a long opening......

The Red Sox split their doubleheader with Toronto. The Rays split their doubleheader with New York. So nothing changes at the top of the division, but the clock continues to tick on the Jays and the Yankees, so that's what really matters right now. The Sox were tickled pink to salvage the split after the afternoon game, which saw Paul Byrd smacked around by Toronto for an 8-1 final. Meanwhile, A.J. Burnett carved through Sox......

We'll get to the picks and the standings in a minute. The Sox and Rays were both off last night; the Twins and White Sox both lost, so realistically, the chances of them both making a major run and the Red Sox losing the Wild Card is slim. Very slim. But let's not count any chickens yet. The Celtics are poised to resign Sam Cassell, meaning just about the whole gang is back to defend......

We think we can officially admit that Tampa Bay isn't just going to go away. For weeks, while the Red Sox played very good ball, only to see the Rays blow through the rest of the AL, our mantra was always, "we've got six shots left at these guys". Now we're down to three, the Sox haven't won in Tampa Bay all year, and the half-game deficit has ballooned to two and a half. Uh......

Well, they flipped the switch, and we're still here. Our MVP All-World QB is gone, and we're still here. The Rays are officially going to leave Fenway still in first, and we're still here. And we feel fine. Fenway last night didn't have that edge-of-Armageddon feeling that it sometimes does when other teams are in town for a September game with first place on the line. And if any of the crowd was extra fired......

Prior to last night’s game, the Red Sox were a game and a half behind the first place Devil Rays and a sweep would put the Red Sox back at the top of the division. In previous years, it was the Yankees the Sox were fighting for the top spot – the laundry might have changed, but the battle is still there. Last night, Jon Lester and the Red Sox beat the Tampa Bay Devil......

"The show must go on," says Randy Moss. And the Patriots will have to be in New Jersey next Sunday, and back in Foxboro the Sunday after that, and so on. But it could be a long, long season. For seven and a half minutes, Tom Brady was in charge of the Patriots offense. And then, suddenly, he wasn't. And nobody this morning seems to be indicating anything other than season-ending surgery. The right leg......

Are we ready to put last season's unpleasantness behind us? Are we ready to internalize that the exact number of wins doesn't matter, so long as it all ends with a three-game winning streak? are we, in the parlance of our times, ready for some football? The Patriots sure are. Steve Buckley says, "this will not be a season for calling off the dogs." Jim McBride crunches the numbers and says the Pats win 31-10.......

We didn't really think there was going to be any Wally Pipp-ing of the injured Red Sox (well, maybe one of them). Even though the kids have been on fire, the Sox welcomed back Josh Beckett from arm trouble and Mike Lowell from a strained oblique with open (if sore) arms. And the two of them chipped in, in an 8-1 ripping of the Rangers that pulled the Sox within 2 1/2 of the AL......

It's a good thing nobody took us up on our bet that Tom Brady would be in his usual spot on the injured list. Well, he's not. And even though we all know, and everyone knows we all know, that the injury list is only mandatory because of wink-wink gambling, it's a good sign. Tom's going to play. We hope he plays better than all those weeks he was injured. Speaking of gambling...we'd love our......

Folks...the late season magic has arrived. The Red Sox seemed poised for another near-sweep, so close and yet so far. Daisuke Matsuzaka, the master at digging then getting out of holes, had gotten the Sox down 4-0. The seventh-inning stretch had arrived. (By the way, Bostonist was at Fenway the other night and noted that fans now have to be reminded to stand up for the seventh-inning stretch, but leap up out of their seats......

Dustin Pedroia. It's never gonna get old. Once again slipped into the cleanup spot due to Kevin Youkilis' absence, Dustin rose to the occasion again, homering and driving in five runs as the Red Sox torched Baltimore last night, 14-2. This was a nice gift for Jon Lester, as the Sox posted four in the third and six in the fourth off of hapless O's starter Radhames Liz. David Ortiz got the party started with......

The mighty midget is making his case to become the AL MVP this season; Dustin Pedroia went 2-4 last night when the Sox beat the Orioles 7-4. Paul Byrd, who threw for seven innings last night and recorded the win, called Pedroia the MVP of the league. Coming from a guy whose spent 13 years playing baseball and has seen a lot over the years – it’s a compliment. Plus, if it doesn’t work in......

The Red Sox came ohsoclose to sweeping the Yankees out of the picture in New York last week. And they came, well, not quite so close this weekend, as good Chicago hitting and a dearth of run support for Tim Wakefield doomed the boys to a 4-2 loss to the White Sox at Fenway. Wake gave up a first-inning homer to Jim Thome (now tied with Mickey Mantle on the all time list for home......