Results tagged “thebruins”

The wheels are coming off the bus. After Monday night's debacle in DC and Tuesday's shutout at the hands of Florida, the Bruins desperately needed a strong showing last night, with Toronto in town and their six-seed hanging by a thread.

It felt great for a second or two, flipping the pages of the local dailies to check in with the Bruins. Win, win, shootout win, come from behind win, win...and then that Monday night game against the Capitals happened. The Bruins came back home to Boston last night a little humbled, but we'd hoped that they were ready to kick it up a notch and not make absolute fools of themselves again deliver a quality game against Florida.

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.

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 Eastern champs while clucking about aesthetics. We'll take that deal.

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.

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.

We don't like to think back to the final moments of Super Bowl XLII. If we could, we'd erase the name Plaxico Burress from our memory, and we'd focus on the good times we've had with Ellis Hobbs.

It looks like it's going to be an easy season for Red Sox beat writers. It looks like all they'll have to do is set up a microphone within half a mile of Jonathan Papelbon, and he'll come a-runnin' with enough material to fill a dozen Notes columns. More, if they can be padded out with 40-year-old rock lyrics (hi, Dan!).

The All-Star Break couldn't have come at a better time for the Celtics. It's a few extra days of rest for KG, of course, but after last night, almost everyone over 6'8" is in agony this morning and needs some time off. Brian Scalabrine fled the court with a groin pull very early, then Glen Davis went down VERY hard in the second half. He was in so much visible pain that they didn't immediately kick it to the dancing idiots on the Jumbotron. What happened to him is being called a "strained left quadriceps".

It was the rarest of rare occasions: a Beanpot final that didn't involve BU. Instead it was Boston College and Harvard, with the Eagles leading by two midway through the third period. BC almost blew it before taking control in overtime and winning on a Nick Petrecki goal. So two overtime wins for Boston College. And a very relieved Jerry York. BU beat Northeastern in the consolation game.

Tim Duncan and the city of Boston have had an interesting relationship over the years. It looked like the big guy would be coming here as a reward for the dismal 1997 Celtics season; Rick Pitino [make evil eye sign, spit on ground] even took the C's coaching job assuming that he'd get to coach Tim. As we all know, the Spurs' tank-job paid off, Duncan went to San Antonio, and Pitino stayed. Just to rub salt in the wounds, Duncan and the Spurs came to Boston every year, and beat the Celtics here every year.

The good news for the Celtics is that the Timberwolf portion of their schedule is in the history books. After surviving a 1-point game against Minnesota at home a couple of weeks ago, the C's went to the Twin Cities and pulled out a 2-point win.

In theory, our eyes are supposed to be now turning from the failed Patriots 2007 campaign to the promise of the upcoming Red Sox season. Truck Day is tomorrow (Bostonist will be there), and the Sox can lift spirits around here like nothing else.

Tuesday was supposed to be a glorious day. A crowd was to stand in the rain, braving the elements to cheer for the football heroes ambling down roads lined in blue and red. And after the last bits of confetti were cleaned up, the celebratory mass of people would tune in to cheer for their basketball team's winning ways.

It seems for some reason, Tom Brady and Randy Moss don't want to take a 6,000 mile flight this week and be reminded of Sunday's crushing disappointment. Brady's ankle issues are well-documented, of course, but Randy is feeling sympathy pain and is skipping the trip to Hawaii as well. So the Pro Bowl will have to go on without them. Tissues all around.

After he got hammered in the 1996 election, Bob Dole told everyone who would sit still and listen that he didn't take things as hard as he'd feared. "I slept like a baby...woke up crying every two hours," he'd say.

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).

With a couple of days before the Super Bowl, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell found himself discussing a topic that even he's got to be sick of by now. Wouldn't he rather pour over the details of the commemorative coin toss coin? Or the commercial he's really looking forward to seeing? On how many times fans at the game in Glendale will have to hold up colored cards to become part of the action of the halftime show?

"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

Super Bowl Media Day is the professional football equivalent of the annual family reunion. A bunch of people get together, often traveling long distances, for the purpose of catching up. There's little that they have in common, but since they sort of fall under the same name, everyone has to make nice. The hijinks on display makes for a hilarious time for those not directly involved. People make nice and dumb down the stories of what they do and who they are in order to appease the extended family, and the whole thing would be much more enjoyable for all involved if alcohol was part of the equation. Someone (or, rather, many someones) wind up doing something dumb that seemed like a really good idea at the time, but is really foolish in retrospect.

Here's something we never thought of: the Patriots' (hopeful) victory parade would have to be on Tuesday, thus conflicting with the Massachusetts primary. The team won't be back on Monday, and most of them have to go to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii on Wednesday. So Tuesday (and not AFTER the Pro Bowl, which would just be crazy talk) it is.

"Half the guys in our league couldn't shoot 15-for-21 if they were in a gym by themselves," said Doc Rivers. The man would know, having coached Kedrick Brown, Gerald Green, and Brian Scalabrine over the years. But 15-for-21 were the numbers Toronto rained down on the C's from 3-point-land, dropping the C's to their first division loss of the season.

Ask Bill Belichick about last week's game, and you may as well be asking him about the Treaty of Ghent. Ask him about the 14-point-underdog Chargers, and you may as well be asking him about an All-Star team composed of the '85 Bears, '89 49ers and the Justice League of America. You know what you get from Coach Bill when you ask about football. But apparently, ask him about team fight songs and you hit a nerve.

Thanks to the Freedom Of Information laws and the PATRIOT Act, we were able to petition the federal government to listen in on last night's weekly Manning Family phone call. Here's a sample:

If you were looking for a titanic defensive struggle, last night wasn't a game to remember. If you were looking to see two patient, methodical offenses chew up yards back and forth all night, you're probably pretty pleased right now. Most importantly, if you're a Patriots fan, you're extremely relieved this morning.

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.

Jeez, can't a guy catch a break and land 16 more votes? Poor Jim Rice. The man listened to the annual chorus of "maybe next year" time and time again while his Red Sox teams tried to bring home a championship; now he has to listen to the same call again, for the 14th time, as he wonders whether he'll ever get voted into the Hall of Fame. Once again the MVP could have been voted in. Once again it didn't happen - and the margin separating him from official baseball immortality was a tiny little margin.

Amazing when you think about it: everyone who's played the Celtics this season has a losing streak against them right now. The C's' three losses have all been avenged; first Cleveland, then Orlando, and last night in Detroit, in a fantastic game that served as a serious test of how good this 28-3 team really was. Ray Allen continued his struggles, Kevin Garnett got in early foul trouble, so it was Paul Pierce and - especially - Glen Davis, who did the damage and KO'ed the Pistons.

There are plenty of reasons to like Doc Rivers right now. Twenty-eight reasons, actually. But we wish we could kindly remind Rivers and the Celtics that you have to focus on winning the little games in order for the big games to mean anything.

Like so many teams before them, the New York Giants gave it everything they had. And like everyone else before them, they could only watch helplessly as Tom Brady and company engineered another beautiful fourth-quarter comeback to win the game, and become the first team in the 16-game era to run the table.