Bob Ryan Also Sucks –
The Bruins are looking so good
right now, Bob Ryan’s face exploded.
In our last installment of Bob
Ryan Also Sucks, Bobby told us to “stop whining.” What abuse will he have
for his readers today?
(Bob’s pompous windbagginess in bold,
my pathetic ramblings in plain.)
The Sweet Sounds of Serenade
Does not compute! Error! Error!
"Hockey Night in
Ha, ‘cause Canadians say ‘eh?’!
Looked more
like "Crying Time in
Oh LOL, Bob Ryan!
Striking fast and striking with
authority, the Bruins moved to a 2-0 series advantage over
I thought Canadian Abuse was
another term for their national healthcare system. Zing!
Or, should I say, the
"hated" Canadiens?
Take it easy man, they live like
twenty miles away from you..
The sold-out Garden crowd of
17,565 was in vintage playoff form, waving their yellow towels,
No fanbase is ‘in vintage form’ if
they’re waving towels over their heads. That’s something Eurotrash soccer fans &
Pittsburghtrash Stillers fans do.
starting right in with a hearty "Let's Go Bruins!" as
soon as the puck was dropped, and, of course, serenading the
“Sieve” is the only thing you
chant at the opposing goalie.
A word of
caution, please: 2-0 is nice, but it is not a death sentence. This is no time to get cocky.
Too late, I already whipped it
out.
The flip side is that this is a
1-vs.-8 matchup and all the indicators point to a
We might not sweep them. But we
probably will.
This was a beatdown of the
highest order,
6-1 would’ve been of a higher order..
with the Bruins doing all the things, big and little, that
win hockey games - especially playoff games.
If this was a regular season game and we scored five goals and they scored
one, we probably would’ve lost.
"We were very disciplined tonight," said Marc Savard, who had two goals and two assists.
"We won the loose-puck battles, and we moved the puck around very well on
the power play."
We did better hockey stuff than
they did hockey stuff. Hockey.
The Bruins had the jump, as
they like to say in the college game, from the start.
Those crazy college kids and
they’re wacky lingo!
Phil
Kessel had a couple of pretty
good chances before the game was seven minutes old, and you had the feeling it
was just a matter of time before the Bruins would score.
I would say, for
The ice-breaker was a
power-play goal by Savard at
It’s sad how common Canadian
prostitution is these days. Don’t you have any self-respect
on a night when Les Habs spent far too much time reacting
to the Bruins, rather than initiating any positive action themselves. The
sequence began with Steve Montador winning a
battle on the boards and it concluded with Savard flicking a nice wrister from
straightaway past Carey Price.
I flicked a nice wrister past a
Carey once..
That was the first of many
occasions when the thoughtful
Ex-BC Eagle Chuck Kobasew got the joint jumpin' anew with a
rebound goal at 15:12, the first period ending with Kessel in the locker room
after being assessed a rare roughing penalty, the result of a scuffle with Tom Kostopoulos. When Kessel gets physical
Physical!
(sort
of), you know the Bruins have come to play. Guess he won't have to worry about
being a healthy scratch this year.
Speaking of unlikely
occurrences, the patrons had better save their ticket stubs because they were
witness to a certified first: a five-minute fighting major for - you'd better
make sure you're sitting down - Patrice Bergeron.
Oh shit, I wasn’t sitting down! My
tailbone!!
The gentlemanly center had to
avenge his honor after
Heavens!
Off came the gloves, and out
came the fists, and Bergeron demonstrated a bit of fistic skill,
Gross.
landing some solid shots while earning the approval on all the
judges' cards.
"I didn't think
much," said Bergeron, who did, in fact, have a fight in the AHL. "I
didn't know what I was doing out there."
I was so fuckin’ high..
By the time that confrontation
took place, all the good hockey had already been played, most notably in the
second period, when the Bruins took control.
Way to hog all the good hockey,
second period.
There was one brief period when
there actually was a game. It looked as if the score would go up to 3-0 early
in the second, when Zdeno Chara came swooping in
on the goal, only to be thwarted by a nice Price save. As so often happens, the
Canadiens capitalized on the subsequent possession when the ever-dangerous Alex Kovalev sneaked one past Tim
Thomas to make it 2-1.
Predictably, the visitors were
now full of vim, vigor, and purpose, carrying the action to the Bruins for the
next four minutes or so before Shane Hnidy beat
Price on what, frankly, looked like a stoppable shot. That was at
Seriously? C’mon,
off for hooking, Savard scored his second goal on a
beautiful collaboration with Michael Ryder and Dennis Wideman. You couldn't ask for more precision
passing on a power play.
Well you could, but you
shouldn’t. That would be rude.
The building was now reverberating
with the "Ca-rey!" chant.
There was blood & tampons
everywhere.
The power play was a major
factor all night long. The Bruins went 3 for 5, while the Canadiens were 0 for
1. And so it was fitting that the goal that ended the night's competition was a
third power-play goal, and a particularly back-breaking one, at that. With
Kovalev out for yet another frustration hooking penalty, Ryder rifled one over
Price's left shoulder with 2.3 seconds remaining in the second period to make
it 5-1.
When the third period began,
Price was on the bench and Jaroslav Halak was in
the net.
I guess you could say that on this
night, the Price was not right!
"We needed to regroup in
the third period," said Canadiens coach Bob Gainey,
"not to score five goals and win the game, but putting another goalie in
at that point helps settle things down."
If there is to be a different
outcome tomorrow, the Canadiens will have to stop being coconspirators in their
own demise.
The fuck? Did this just turn into Les Miserables?
"We're going to have to
play better, and part of that is to play smarter," confirmed Gainey.
"We had hooking and slashing penalties, and it seemed to me they were
legitimate calls. We have enough problems with our opponents. We can't take
penalties, or stray from our plan."
The Bruins have done what they
needed to do here. Now comes the fun part, a trip across the border to a city
where many a Bruins team has wound up weeping.
So, weeping = fun?
"They're going to come
back and they're going to come back hard," warned Bergeron.
Well, I s’pose ya can’t come back
flaccid..
"They'll be ready for
us."
Just remember: 2-0 is 2-0. It's
half the job. There's still a lot more hockey to be played in this series. But
this is a tape a good Bruins fan in need of a hockey fix would like to pull off
the shelf on some hot July night.
While slathering
margarine all over his chest.
Bob Ryan is a Globe
columnist and host of the Globe's 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.
~~~
Well, the
home team won, so Bob was a lot less negative.
I gotta
say, as an unlearned bandwagon fair-weather hockey fan, the Bruins look pretty
good right now. And rumor has it Celine Dion is in line to buy the Habs. Advantage?