Throughout the course of this blog I have currently not strayed away from the topics that we cover in our everyday English classroom. Today I would like to change that as I was told that I could write about anything I wanted for this particular blog post and I decided this would be a good time to talk about something I am very passionate which is sports, in particular the Boston Bruins and hockey as a whole.
The Boston Bruins this year a fickle team. They are a team comprised of old hats, new faces and plenty of young blood in place of griseled veterans like Greg Campbell, Danny Paille and Milan Lucic, who were shipped out hastily by the newly appointed GM Don Sweeney. Sweeney was hired at the end of last year when previous GM Peter Chiarelli was shipped out of town due to a disappointing season that saw the Bruins missing the playoffs for the first time in 7 years. A more prominent factor in the Bruins decision to end relations with Chiarelli however may be the fact that in those 8 years as Bruins GM Chiarelli was able to manifest one of the most disgusting salary cap situations currently in the NHL. Chiarelli was notorious fro being too generous with his payment of older veterans that brought little to the table in terms of scoring and offensive production, as well as handing out no-trade clauses to every pylon that has passed through the Bruins bottom 6 forwards. This culminated in a team in 2014-15 that was, on most nights, physically unable to put pucks in the net which provided some of the most frustrating hockey I have ever seen in my 9 years of watching an understanding the game. This, combined with terrible drafting in the past 4 or 5 years had left the Bruins at the end of last season with little to no offensive production, an ageing top defensive pair and a barren minor league prospect pool. Therefore, Chia went out the door and Sweeney entered the fray.
Sweeney made some interesting moves over the off season, like trading Dougie Hamilton and Milan Lucic for picks and prospects as well as Riley Smith for good ol' Dorchester boy Jimmy Hayes. This combined with surges from young Bruins forwards David Pastrnak and Brett Conolly had the Bruins suddenly looking very potent on the offensive end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, the defense was left mostly unchanged and with Dennis Sidenberg going down in preseason with a back injury, the Bruins are currently left with what looks like there worst defensive set up since captain Zdeno Chara first joined the team. So far in 12 games this season the Bruins have notched 6 wins, 5 loses and 1 overtime loss and are situated right smack in the middle of the eastern conference. The major issue that I can see with the team right now is our inability to solidify and regulate our defensive play which is especially difficult with Sidenberg, one of the Bruins most powerful veteran presences, out for at least another 2 weeks. The rookies that are spotted throughout the lineup have had flashes of greatness, but remain inconsistent and until these inconsistencies are addressed, I'm afraid the Bruins this year will be nothing more than a .500 team able to beat up on lesser teams, but unable to hang with the big boys in the conference and will most likely be heading to the driving ranges in mid-April with the rest of the playoff excludees.
Personally I wish that we could write more about whatever we want more often. We get plenty of time in class to discuss the literature and I have tons of great and totally not stupid ideas to share with the world.
ReplyDeleteI know the pain of having aging vets. The Yankees are locked into starters at 8 of 9 positions next year, and only one of them is under 30. Usually, baseball players start to decline around 30-32, and the Yanks have 4 players in that range, all of whom are under contract for 3+ years. Fortunately, Tex and Beltran, 35 and 38, only have one more year left in their contracts. A-Rod, however, has two more, and he's already 40. They've got a lot of young guys trying to break their way in- Bird, Judge, Ref, Sanchez, Heathcott, Williams- but they've got nowhere to go. You gotta power through it and wait for the good times to start.
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