The long drought is over! With the Revolution losing the MLS Cup, and the results of the Superb-oh God, we still don't want to talk about it - it's been almost six full months since a local team brought home a piece of significant championship hardware. No more. Boston College hockey captured their second title of the young century by flummoxing Notre Dame 4-1. Nathan Gerbe, as he does, led the charge with two goals......

"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." - Michael Corleone There are things that are a little confusing. There are things that out-and-out defy logic. Then there are the 2007-2008 Bruins. Left for dead a week ago, unable to score a goal and suffering a rash of untimely injuries, most of us figured the Bruins had as much chance to compete for the Stanley Cup this year as the Hartford......

We'd sure like to know what happened in the Bruins' locker room between the second and third periods last night. After two, the Leafs had tied the game 1-1, had peppered Tim Thomas with 18 shots, and had everybody at the Garden pontificating whether the game would be a microcosm of the entire season. Well, maybe not everybody. But whatever was said, it lit a fire under the B's; Phil Kessel, Glen Murray and Peter......

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. They gave a strong performance, all right, but only if you gauge by smell. The Bruins opened a 1-0 lead, then watched helplessly as the Leafs pummeled them into a fine dust, scoring eight......

...only makes you stronger. That has to be the attitude the Bruins take today, after having their winning streak stopped, killed, set on fire, stomped, buried, and the earth salted. The good news is, they will never play a worse game than they did last night. It was 6-0 Capitals in the first period. Alex Ovechkin had a hat trick before half the fans had found their seats. Tim Thomas got pulled, put back in......

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......

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......

There's been a lot of praise heaped on Bruins goalie Tim Thomas this year, and it's all been deserved. The guy's been a huge reason why the B's are still very much in the playoff hunt. But man is mortal, and Tim looked anything but great last night in Florida, giving up four goals in 12 shots through two periods. His defense was far from blameless, but Tim's been great at covering for their mistakes.......

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. But on Tuesday, Boston was asked to go back to the Super Bowl and that second, 35 from the end of the game and a perfect season, when Burress beat Hobbs and scored the touchdown that set......

Is it just us, or does it seem like whenever the Bruins have the spotlight to themselves, they lose? When they play the same night as the Celtics, or Patriots, they're fine, but give everyone else the night off, and it feels like we always have to lead with a Bruins loss. Maybe it's just us. But they deserve better. They certainly deserved better last night, as they dropped a 4-3 OT game in Toronto.......

So much for the idea that the thrilling shootout win over Buffalo would spark the Bruins. They followed up that great win with an official stinkeroo last night, turning a 3-2 lead into a 6-3 embarassing loss at the hands of the Panthers. Zdeno Chara, Glen Murray (yay!) and Marco Sturm scored for the B's, but then the defense broke down and Tim Thomas stopped looking like himself for a while. Bad news all around.......

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). The Bruins played well, but you have to play a perfect game to beat Detroit, and they didn't. Milan Lucic made a sweet steal that set up a Chuck Kobasew goal to take a 1-0 lead, but the Red Wings battered and battered and finally got to Tim......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

BootWatch: Tom Brady sprained his right ankle. It is a high ankle sprain viewed as minor, according to the local media types, and while it's a big enough deal to have rendered The Boot necessary in New York on Monday, it's not enough to keep QB Brady out of the Really, Really Big Game on February 3. We're going to go out on a limb here and state that we're not going to invest much......

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......

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 -......

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......

One of the most remarkable things about the Celtics' remarkable turnaround is that NBA players actually want to come here. You may remember the lure of playing in Boston almost got Reggie Miller off his couch, and now there's talk that future Hall-of-Famer Gary Payton called his agent the other night and said he'd like to come to Boston. Now, this is amazing news for Bostonist. For years, our favorite non-Celtic players in the......

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......

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......

This won't work all the time. There are going to be nights when lollygagging it in the first half, then turning it on in the second, won't be enough. Last night was not one of those nights. The Celtics came out in the first half sluggish, especially on defense. "Their biorhythms are off," said radio announcer Sean Grande, and it sure looked like he was right. The Sixers, struggling all season and trying to welcome......

That's right; we almost had to go in the closets for a rare winter activation of the Panic Button. The Patriots were struggling on offense, dropping passes left and right. The defense really struggled, allowing Raven Willis McGahee to run amok for three quarters. Don Shula was up in the booth with corkscrew in hand. But somehow, the game stayed close. And Tom Brady had a chance to go up the field with 3:30 to......

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......

Any objective observer would agree that last night's game was a game the Celtics honestly didn't deserve to win. They didn't shoot well, they looked tired after the Laker game, and they were facing a Bobcat team that may have no identity whatsoever, but played with spunk and energy the whole time. Things looked especially dismal down two with five seconds to go. Paul Pierce missed a game-tying shot, and Charlotte got the rebound. Boston......

Does the venue make the team or does the team make the venue? And what happens if the venue has two teams, two games, and one day to pull it all off? The two host teams win, venue staff deserve medals, and a lot of people walk out of the place happy. There wasn't much of a battle on the boards of the TD Banknorth Garden on Friday night. The Celtics, doing what has become......

Remember when Celtics-Lakers games used to mean something? In the Sixties, the Celtics championship road seemed to always end with a victory over LA. In the Eighties, the Bird-Magic schism divided the NBA right down the middle, but the Lakers took two out of the three Finals in which they went head-to-head. The rivalry even has its own Wikipedia page. Alas, for the last 20 years or so, the cachet has been long gone. While......