Bruins load up, but is this the year?

Catch your breath yet? It seems the Bruins barely could when they needed a big effort in the final two periods to sink the Senators Friday night after a big day of trades that landed them Tomas Kaberle, Rich Peverley, and less notably Boris Valabik. Into the organization came those three, and out went Blake Wheeler, Mark Stuart, Joe Colborne, and a pair of draft picks.

If you think Colborne, a 2011 first-round pick and a conditional pick for Kaberle [the Leafs will get a second-rounder in 2012 if the B’s re-sign Kaberle or make the Stanley Cup finals] sounds steep, it’s because it most certainly is, but that’s what Peter Chiarelli was willing to do. Hey, it’s probably easier than having a giant “WE’RE GOING FOR IT” painted on the side of TD Garden. Either way, it says the same thing. 

“It’s a strong message to our team and to our fans that we want to win and we want to be successful,” the GM said at Friday’s press conference.

There’s been a wall that’s blocked the Bruins from getting to the Eastern Conference finals the last two years, and banging on it with both fists since the summer have been Cam Neely and Chiarelli. Now more than ever, it is clear that the Bruins front office – one that hadn’t pulled off such a deadline deal since Chiarelli rolled into town in 2006 – has made its calculations and determined that this is a year worth taking that risk.

So with all the hype that accompanies landing Kaberle and, to a lesser extent Peverley, it’s wise to take a look at everything and ask the same question many have been asking since the summer.

Are the 2010-11 Bruins legitimate Stanley Cup contenders?

It’s a question that’s just as easy to answer as it is to ask.

Maybe.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the trade deadline and think that getting the big name makes a team an automatic Cup favorite. The problem with that line of thinking is that there are too many big names moved to too many teams, and there’s only one Stanley Cup. Will Kaberle and his new teammates see their names engraved into it?

Maybe.

The roster is good enough to be in that argument, but things need to happen for the Cup to be brought back to Boston for the first time since “Saturday in the Park” was released as a single. 

In watching of the replay of Friday night’s game, NESN play-by-play man Jack Edwards said something to effect of “Claude Julien going with his most consistent line all year, and that’s the Campbell line.” It’s something we’ve said over and over again since really the first game of the season, but it wasn’t until the day the team made its statement that they’re going for it that such a correct statement sounded so ugly.

That is not a knock on Gregory Campbell or Shawn Thornton, the two cogs of the Merlot Line since its inception at the beginning of the season. Both players have exceeded expectations with their ability to play against top lines and the surprising offense they’ve generated. Brad Marchand performed so well on the line that he earned a promotion to skating with Patrice Bergeron and Mark Recchi, something he’s handled seamlessly. 

Still, if you are looking at the 2010-11 Bruins on Feburary 19th, your biggest question, much like it was a season ago, is goal-scoring. That means you could probably stand to see the Milan Lucic – David Krejci – Nathan Horton line produce to the point where consistency is more what you get and less what you seek. 

Krejci has been hot of late, racking up 11 points over his last 10 games. Horton, who since late November has either found himself in a scoring drought or hinting at one, had a pair of points Friday and has a two-game point streak for just the second time since early December. Lucic, who leads the team with 24 goals, has been fine since missing time in mid-January with an undisclosed injury. The top line is showing signs as to why it entered the season with lots of hype, and it will certainly need to be firing on all cylinders come playoff time. The Bruins will likely enter the playoffs as a very difficult team to score on, and if their top scorers can generate the way they are capable, they’ll be able to take leads in the playoffs and not look back. 

With the second line solid, the Wheeler-less third line is going to be one to keep an eye on. Both Chris Kelly and Peverley could compete for time on that line, and Michael Ryder has played there all season. Tyler Seguin is really starting to get it, and whether it’s been a case of the youngster realizing those healthy scratches could come more often with the additions of Kelly and Peverley or just a case of him feeling more comfortable, they should stick with him. He wasn’t deserving of big minutes prior to his healthy scratches, but he has now turned in two very good performances in two nights and shouldn’t be relegated to the fourth line or the press box. It seems Daniel Paille could end up literally defining “odd man out” given that he has also played well of late and doesn't deserve to return to his healthy scratch days either. Still, if it comes down to Seguin and Paille, the B’s are better off taking a chance with the raw but explosive Seguin.  

Friday’s deals most certainly made the Bruins better, but they didn’t come close to putting them over the top. They have everything they need to gear up for a lengthy post-season run, and considering their cap space doesn’t make it likely they’ll add a big-time scorer, they need everyone to execute for them to get a crack at the Conference Finals.

The most important thing for the Bruins also happens to be their biggest strength, and that’s their goaltending. It shouldn’t be a surprise that even on a night in which Tomas Kaberle made his Bruins debut and Marchand continued his sensational season with a pair of tallies, Tuukka Rask was the story. What the Bruins need more than anything – yes, even more than Kaberle feeding Chara – is to be able to lean on their goaltending, as they have at many points this season. If Rask can continue to gain his confidence and perform in longer stretches and Vezina favorite Tim Thomas can break out of whatever funk he’s in (15 goals allowed in his last 10 periods), the B’s can go far. 

Far enough to not make it another long summer? Maybe. 

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One man's quest to find out how tough these Bruins really are

For all its pockets of effete, blueblooded-snobbery, high tech yuppiness and Ivy League elitism, Boston is still a blue-collar town to the core, especially when it comes to pro sports. For every cardigan-sweatered intellectual with a Kindle full of 'George F. Will baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life' books you can show me, I can produce 50,000 guys who are regular vistors to hockeyfights.com.

And to that end, there’s one quality Boston fans respect and admire in our athletes and in our teams above all others: Toughness.

Regardless of which sport we’re talking about, toughness beats all other character traits and it’s not even close. We respond to it more than we do natural talent, charisma, grace, poise, personality, brains, or even when it comes right down to it, productivity. When it comes to all possible facets of a ballplayer’s personality, toughness is our Secretariat, blowing by the others and leaving them its dust.

Think about it. Who was the last athlete that was truly beloved in this town without being a confirmed badass? The bow tie-and-red-glasses crowd can watch Ken Burns documentaries and read John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” for the 10,000th time, and wax poetic about the arc of Ted Williams' flawless swing. But what made Boston embrace post-retirement Teddy was that he was a real life John Wayne. He was arrogant and cocky and crash landed his jet after killing a bunch of communists. And he was also bellicose and profane, busted everyone’s balls and probably couldn’t complete a sentence without dropping more F-bombs than he ever did on North Korea. We loved him because he was an older version of us.

I could cite a bunch of examples: 

1. Bobby Orr was as the savior of the Bruins who burst into the league and immediately started setting records and winning awards. But it’s well-documented that the moment he was really embraced by the city (and the hockey world as well) was when he proved he wouldn’t back down from a fight. Even if it meant being on the receiving end of the occasional ass-kicking. 

2. The Sox of the '70's had Fred Lynn, a graceful outfielder with a lefty swing that looked like an angel brushing a unicorn’s mane with a magic wand. But fans never really loved him. We saved the real affection for Carlton Fisk, who once tried to jam his fist down Craig Nettle’s windpipe. And Bill Lee, who got a separated shoulder in a melee and still tried to take on the whole Yankees’ team like the Black Knight saying “‘Tis but a scratch” in “Holy Grail.”

3. The ‘80s Celtics fought everybody. Bird fought Dr. J and Kareem. Larry and Parish both fought Laimbeer. McHale fought Rambis. Danny Ainge almost got his finger bitten off fighting Tree Rollins.  

4. Not to suggest that toughness is always defined by fighting. The ‘87 Celtics were so banged up they looked like the front row at a faith healer’s revival meeting. But they struggled and clawed and willed their way to the Finals where they were a Magic Johnson sky hook away from winning the damn thing. And everyone I know wore the Celts logo t-shirt with the leprechaun in a sling leaning on a crutch instead of his shilelagh and the words “One damn proud Celtics fan” on it.  

5. Take the championship era Red Sox. While Manny Ramirez was putting up incomprehensible numbers, he was never really loved in this town, mainly because he’s a Froot Loop. Whereas some guys who didn’t have a fraction of Manny’s production were embraced, because they were seen as gritty, scrappy, blue-collar types. Dirt dogs in the mold of Trot Nixon or Bill Mueller. Obviously the most beloved figure to come out of this era is Big Papi, who’s tough in the only way a DH can be: the mental toughness to come up big when it counts.  

6. But just to suggest that toughness really IS defined by fighting, there’s not a sports pub in the Commonwealth that doesn’t have that picture of Varitek feeding A-Rod a catcher’s mitt sandwich. Without it, you get your liquor license revoked, that’s a fact. Because again, we like the hardasses.

7. Your most recent generation of Bruins have had some talented players come and go, but the truly appreciated ones, the retired number-worthy guys, have all been fearless, bloodied-knuckle types: Terry O’Reilly, Ray Borque and Cam Neely.

I bring all this up because over the weekend I sat down at a suburban radio station and talked Bruins with three serious, hard core Hockey Krishnas. Or more to the point, they talked Bruins, I mostly listened and threw in the occasional casual fan, pink-hatter obvservation. But the gist of the conversation was us trying to figure out exactly what this current Bruins team is all about.

Are they (here’s the word again) tough? Are they a collection of bad mamma-jammas, one of those nasty, physical teams that strikes fear into every opponent? In other words, are they the kind of legendarily tough club we’ll be sitting around twenty years from now still talking about like the ones I mentioned above?

Lord knows they’ve shown flashes of it. That epic game against Dallas was one for the ages. Three fights in the first four seconds, which immediately produced two goals. It seemed a mortal lock that it was a defining moment. That they’d finally found their identity and that they were going to cut a swath through the NHL, fists first. Big, Bad 2.0.  

Annnnd ... two days later they got shut out by San Jose. Then came the unforgettable Blazing Saddles bar fight against Montreal. The rough stuff there sparked them to eight goals, and it seemed like the Sharks game was just a glitch. That the Bruins we saw against the Canadiens were the real thing.  his is what they were going to be going forward. Razors that would fight their way to the playoffs, one broken nose cartilage at a time if that’s what it took.

Annnnd ... they proceeded to lose their next three, including Tuesday night’s embarrassment at the hands of Phil Kessel.  And in those three games they’ve shown as much balls as a Cairo mob ganging up on Anderson Cooper.  

Speaking strictly as a casual Bruins fan -- a reformed hockeyaholic who used to love the Bruins and wants to again -- I seriously wonder if this is one of those teams this city can rally behind. Are they, frankly, tough enough for our liking?

Does this mean I want to see every game looking like the Charleston Chiefs against the Syracuse Bulldogs the way those Dallas and Montreal games were? Hell no. Too much of that would be an abomination.  

I suppose I’d be satisfied if I was convinced the current Bruins were more like the current Celtics. It’s not a great analogy because they’re very different games. But there’s not a man on the Celts roster who hasn’t shown he’s willing to play a physical a style as the league will let him get away with. Whether it’s take a charge, throw an elbow, take an elbow, throw a fist, or bleed profusely from the head. It’s the very thing that makes the rest of the league hate the Cs, and what makes Boston love them.

Because above all else, Bostonians are tough. Not me, by any means. My last fight was 3rd grade. (I told Jimmy Stickle he smelled like a pickle and he took offense. Granted I shouldn’t have said it, but in my defense he really did.)  Since then I’ve managed to avoid pissing anybody off enough to start anything. But as a whole, we’re a tough breed who respond to tough athletes. Because our life sucks. The weather is awful the city is laid out terribly and the place is run by crooks so every day is an ordeal. We have to be Massholes just to function. I’m not saying being a Massholey like us is the only way to get us to warm to an athlete, but it helps.

What I AM saying though is that before I’m willing to get emotionally invested in this current edition of the Bruins, I need to know that they’re more than just occasionally tough. As it stands we’re 56 games into the season and there’s not a serious puck head in the city who really can say what kind of team this is. 

Follow Jerry on Twitter at @jerrythornton1

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

One man's quest to find out how tough these Bruins really are

For all its pockets of effete, blueblooded-snobbery, high tech yuppiness and Ivy League elitism, Boston is still a blue-collar town to the core, especially when it comes to pro sports. For every cardigan-sweatered intellectual with a Kindle full of 'George F. Will baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life' books you can show me, I can produce 50,000 guys who are regular vistors to hockeyfights.com.

And to that end, there’s one quality Boston fans respect and admire in our athletes and in our teams above all others: Toughness.

Regardless of which sport we’re talking about, toughness beats all other character traits and it’s not even close. We respond to it more than we do natural talent, charisma, grace, poise, personality, brains, or even when it comes right down to it, productivity. When it comes to all possible facets of a ballplayer’s personality, toughness is our Secretariat, blowing by the others and leaving them its dust.

Think about it. Who was the last athlete that was truly beloved in this town without being a confirmed badass? The bow tie-and-red-glasses crowd can watch Ken Burns documentaries and read John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” for the 10,000th time, and wax poetic about the arc of Ted Williams' flawless swing. But what made Boston embrace post-retirement Teddy was that he was a real life John Wayne. He was arrogant and cocky and crash landed his jet after killing a bunch of communists. And he was also bellicose and profane, busted everyone’s balls and probably couldn’t complete a sentence without dropping more F-bombs than he ever did on North Korea. We loved him because he was an older version of us.

I could cite a bunch of examples: 

1. Bobby Orr was as the savior of the Bruins who burst into the league and immediately started setting records and winning awards. But it’s well-documented that the moment he was really embraced by the city (and the hockey world as well) was when he proved he wouldn’t back down from a fight. Even if it meant being on the receiving end of the occasional ass-kicking. 

2. The Sox of the '70's had Fred Lynn, a graceful outfielder with a lefty swing that looked like an angel brushing a unicorn’s mane with a magic wand. But fans never really loved him. We saved the real affection for Carlton Fisk, who once tried to jam his fist down Craig Nettle’s windpipe. And Bill Lee, who got a separated shoulder in a melee and still tried to take on the whole Yankees’ team like the Black Knight saying “‘Tis but a scratch” in “Holy Grail.”

3. The ‘80s Celtics fought everybody. Bird fought Dr. J and Kareem. Larry and Parish both fought Laimbeer. McHale fought Rambis. Danny Ainge almost got his finger bitten off fighting Tree Rollins.  

4. Not to suggest that toughness is always defined by fighting. The ‘87 Celtics were so banged up they looked like the front row at a faith healer’s revival meeting. But they struggled and clawed and willed their way to the Finals where they were a Magic Johnson sky hook away from winning the damn thing. And everyone I know wore the Celts logo t-shirt with the leprechaun in a sling leaning on a crutch instead of his shilelagh and the words “One damn proud Celtics fan” on it.  

5. Take the championship era Red Sox. While Manny Ramirez was putting up incomprehensible numbers, he was never really loved in this town, mainly because he’s a Froot Loop. Whereas some guys who didn’t have a fraction of Manny’s production were embraced, because they were seen as gritty, scrappy, blue-collar types. Dirt dogs in the mold of Trot Nixon or Bill Mueller. Obviously the most beloved figure to come out of this era is Big Papi, who’s tough in the only way a DH can be: the mental toughness to come up big when it counts.  

6. But just to suggest that toughness really IS defined by fighting, there’s not a sports pub in the Commonwealth that doesn’t have that picture of Varitek feeding A-Rod a catcher’s mitt sandwich. Without it, you get your liquor license revoked, that’s a fact. Because again, we like the hardasses.

7. Your most recent generation of Bruins have had some talented players come and go, but the truly appreciated ones, the retired number-worthy guys, have all been fearless, bloodied-knuckle types: Terry O’Reilly, Ray Borque and Cam Neely.

I bring all this up because over the weekend I sat down at a suburban radio station and talked Bruins with three serious, hard core Hockey Krishnas. Or more to the point, they talked Bruins, I mostly listened and threw in the occasional casual fan, pink-hatter obvservation. But the gist of the conversation was us trying to figure out exactly what this current Bruins team is all about.

Are they (here’s the word again) tough? Are they a collection of bad mamma-jammas, one of those nasty, physical teams that strikes fear into every opponent? In other words, are they the kind of legendarily tough club we’ll be sitting around twenty years from now still talking about like the ones I mentioned above?

Lord knows they’ve shown flashes of it. That epic game against Dallas was one for the ages. Three fights in the first four seconds, which immediately produced two goals. It seemed a mortal lock that it was a defining moment. That they’d finally found their identity and that they were going to cut a swath through the NHL, fists first. Big, Bad 2.0.  

Annnnd ... two days later they got shut out by San Jose. Then came the unforgettable Blazing Saddles bar fight against Montreal. The rough stuff there sparked them to eight goals, and it seemed like the Sharks game was just a glitch. That the Bruins we saw against the Canadiens were the real thing.  his is what they were going to be going forward. Razors that would fight their way to the playoffs, one broken nose cartilage at a time if that’s what it took.

Annnnd ... they proceeded to lose their next three, including Tuesday night’s embarrassment at the hands of Phil Kessel.  And in those three games they’ve shown as much balls as a Cairo mob ganging up on Anderson Cooper.  

Speaking strictly as a casual Bruins fan -- a reformed hockeyaholic who used to love the Bruins and wants to again -- I seriously wonder if this is one of those teams this city can rally behind. Are they, frankly, tough enough for our liking?

Does this mean I want to see every game looking like the Charleston Chiefs against the Syracuse Bulldogs the way those Dallas and Montreal games were? Hell no. Too much of that would be an abomination.  

I suppose I’d be satisfied if I was convinced the current Bruins were more like the current Celtics. It’s not a great analogy because they’re very different games. But there’s not a man on the Celts roster who hasn’t shown he’s willing to play a physical a style as the league will let him get away with. Whether it’s take a charge, throw an elbow, take an elbow, throw a fist, or bleed profusely from the head. It’s the very thing that makes the rest of the league hate the Cs, and what makes Boston love them.

Because above all else, Bostonians are tough. Not me, by any means. My last fight was 3rd grade. (I told Jimmy Stickle he smelled like a pickle and he took offense. Granted I shouldn’t have said it, but in my defense he really did.)  Since then I’ve managed to avoid pissing anybody off enough to start anything. But as a whole, we’re a tough breed who respond to tough athletes. Because our life sucks. The weather is awful the city is laid out terribly and the place is run by crooks so every day is an ordeal. We have to be Massholes just to function. I’m not saying being a Massholey like us is the only way to get us to warm to an athlete, but it helps.

What I AM saying though is that before I’m willing to get emotionally invested in this current edition of the Bruins, I need to know that they’re more than just occasionally tough. As it stands we’re 56 games into the season and there’s not a serious puck head in the city who really can say what kind of team this is. 

Follow Jerry on Twitter at @jerrythornton1

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Bruins pay the price, upgrade big-time with Tomas Kaberle, Rich Peverley

It’s almost anticlimactic that Tomas Kaberle is now a member of the Bruins. Fans have been customizing jerseys with the Czech blueliner’s name for years now, but they can finally don those sweaters without getting funny looks. 

The B’s swung a deal Friday that finally landed them the 32-year-old Kaberle in exchange for 21-year-old center prospect (and former 16th overall pick) Joe Colborne, Boston’s 2011 first-round pick, and a conditional pick, which will be a second-rounder in 2012 if the defenseman either re-signs in Boston or if the B's make the Stanley Cup finals. It was by no means a giveaway on the Leafs’ part, but the Bruins did what they had to in order to reel in a guy they have targeted for quite some time.

With this move, the Bruins have landed their biggest fish in trading season since Mike O’Connell brought in Sergei Gonchar at the 2004 deadline. As a result, and with all due respect to Dennis Seidenberg and Mark Recchi, this marks the first time in Peter Chiarelli’s time as Bruins GM that he pulled off a blockbuster to significantly improve the club for the final month and a half of the season.

What Kaberle brings to the Bruins is undeniable. He gives them another guy on the blue line capable of playing significant minutes, and gives them the veteran puck-moving defenseman (hockey’s equivalent of “DE/OLB 'tweener” in the Big Book of Overused Sports Clichés) they had been clamoring for since they shipped Dennis Wideman to Florida in the deal that netted them Nathan Horton and Gregory Campbell. 

Kaberle has three goals and 35 assists for 38 points on the season. Twenty-two of those assists have come on the power play. His 38 points on the season are more than any current Bruins blueliner and would currently put him sixth on the Bruins. 

Furthermore, Kaberle’s 22:28 of ice time per night would be third on the Bruins, behind only Zdeno Chara (25:54) and Seidenberg (23:40). He changes the entire dynamic of Boston’s blue line with both his ability to generate offense and his reputation as a guy capable of racking up minutes. 

As for how those numbers might look once he’s wearing black and gold, Kaberle has every reason to turn it on over the rest of the season and playoffs. To use a second baseball reference, think of this as Carlos Beltran going from the Royals to the Astros. All eyes are on him and his team with high expectations, and it just so happens to be the final year of his contract. Kaberle is playing for both a Stanley Cup (something he’s never won) and a new contract (something that won’t necessarily be with the Bruins).

The move also meant that another defenseman, and potentially another forward, would be on the way out via a salary cap-clearing move, and that was exactly the case when the B's traded Mark Stuart and Blake Wheeler to Atlanta in exchange for Rich Peverley and Boris Valabik. The move improved the roster while also saving them money. Stuart didn't have a spot on the Bruins' blueline, and Perverly, who has 14 goals and 20 assists for 34 points, has outperformed Wheeler at a cheaper pricetag. Furthermore, Peverley and his $1.325 million cap hit are signed up for another year past this season.

Steven Kampfer is another guy that benefits from the Kaberle deal. The Michigan product has, in his adjustment to a new league, been more than a pleasant surprise for the B’s since being called up in Decemeber, but the acquisition of Kaberle gives them an All-Star puck-mover that will take pressure off the 22-year-old to do more in his rookie year than he may be capable of doing. 

Chiarelli said prior to the All-Star break that he wanted to add “a defenseman that could log some minutes, but that’s in a perfect world.” The package that the Bruins ended up having to part with serves as the reminder that in order for the B’s to get that sought-after blueliner, it wouldn’t come cheap. 

Make no mistake: This trade was not the lopsided deal many around these parts are used to the Bruins making with the Leafs. While losing a late first-rounder when you already own a top-6 pick doesn’t sting, losing Colborne does. The Bruins like their centers small and nimble (6-foot-2 Patrice Bergeron is the team’s tallest pivot), so it would have added an interesting dynamic to one day see the 6-5 Colborne operating in Boston.

By the same token, there is always that logjam down the middle when trying to figure out what future lineups may look like. After this season the B’s have one more year of David Krejci (though he’d only be a restricted free agent), two more of Tyler Seguin (also a restricted free agent at the end of his deal), three more of Bergeron, and six more of Marc Savard. 

The Bruins are probably in your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine mode regarding how much longer Savard actually ends up playing, but nevertheless, they have four big-name centers under contract that don’t appear to be going anywhere. Campbell will be an unrestricted free agent after next season, but it’s hard to imagine Colborne being properly utilized as an “energy line” player, and it’s even harder to imagine this team letting Campbell walk after seeing what he’s brought to the B’s.

There is no denying that Kaberle gives the Bruins something that they need right now, and the fact that they moved as much as they did to acquire him shows that they believe this can be the year that Boston fans spend late May and early June watching hockey rather than lamenting another second-round exit.

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