Bruins Beat: Challenging the Coach's Challenge

This week, rather than looking back at what was a phenomenal set of 5 games for the Bruins, I would like to take a moment and share my feelings on one of the newer aspects of the game which is the ability for Coach's to challenge a play and force the refs to review the play and look to see if it was within the rules or not. Coach's are only allowed to challenge a play in two instances, when they believe the play was offside and was not blown dead as well as if they believe a goal should be called back due to goaltender interference. At the beginning of the season I was one of the many fans who were pushing for challenges to be implemented as I was tired of seeing illegal goals stand when just a simple review would change the whole complexion of a game. After over three quarters of the season I feel like I have a decent enough sample size to truly deliver my verdict on the current state of coach's challenges.
Now unfortunately I don't have an exact number for how many goals have been called back this year in the NHL due to Coach's challenge but I can estimate that it is somewhere between 25 and 75 goals total, which is a substantial amount considering the highest scoring team in the league is barely averaging 3 goals a game so far. This shows that these reviews have been very impactful in their first year of existence yet I don't believe that they have always been positively impactful. In fact, I would personally say only about half of the goals that were called back actually deserved to be called back which is due to problems interpreting the rules of why a goal should be disallowed. On the off sides front many goals are called back due to one player being only inches offside, a distance that really should not have as much impact on the game as it does. Because of this, many coach's will use their challenge whether they think the play was off sides or not because there is such a large chance that one player might have been a few inches over the blue line when the puck enters the zone. to fix this, I believe the league needs to redefine what it means to be off sides and they should not call back goals that are preceded by a player being technically offside because his skate was in the air while entering the zone, a rule I find absolutely ridiculous. On the goaltender interference front I think that goalies should be persecuted more when they dive, as many times goalies will dive just to draw a goaltender interference call on a goal that should have counted. Also, slight nudges to the goalie (especially when hes outside the blue paint) should not in anyway be considered goaltender interference because in many cases the goalies are never actually interfered with on this plays. To summarize, I still am in favor of allowing coach's to challenge plays but the rules need to be more clear cut and consistent otherwise these challenges will continue to be abused which could effect the overall flow of play which hockey fans like myself love so much about this great game.

Bruins Beat: Trade Deadline

Hello everybody, welcome back to another installment of the Bruins Beat where I take a look at the goings on in the NHL, more specifically the Boston Bruins. This past month has been crazy for the Bruins as the word inconsistency continued to be the perfect description of the team wearing black and gold. The Bruins would go from beating one of the best teams in the league 7-3 on the road to losing 6-4 at home to one of the worst and yet somehow the Bruins hold on to a playoff spot with a somewhat comfortable cushion between them and the golf courses in April. In this installment I will be looking less at the teams most recent games and more at the teams most recent trades as the NHL trade deadline has come and gone as of March 1st.
The trade deadline itself was pretty uneventful and quite boring partly due to the asking prices for some of the more quality talents around the league being quite high as well as several key players being traded prior to the actually trade deadline. Overall, the closest the league and its fans got to witnessing a blockbuster this year was when veteran centerman and former Carolina Hurricanes captain Eric Staal was sent to the New York Rangers in exchange for a prospect and two 2nd round picks in the upcoming Entry draft(s). Other than that the deadline saw a total of 19 trades, most of which were for 3rd or 4th line depth players or just straight up AHL roster swaps. the Bruins however did make two trades on deadline day that were a little more than just depth pickups.
The first trade the Bruins made was sending Prospect Anthony Camara and a 3rd and 5th round pick in the draft to the Hurricanes in exchange for lefty defenseman John-Michael Liles. Prior to the deadline Liles had played 64 games on the Hurricanes, primarily on their 2nd pairing, and had 16 points to show for it and a +/- of -3. Although he was a net minus player, that most likely stems from the fact that he was playing on a Carolina team that had basically been written out of contention the day before the season started. His advanced statistics seem to prove this as his cfor and c60 stats both project him to be a top pairing defenseman on a decent team. Seeing as the Bruins had been floundering on defense for a better part of the year, this trade makes a whole lot of sense and I am quite happy with it seeing as we gave up next to nothing of value in the trade other than maybe the 3rd round pick.
The second trade the Bruins made was sending a 2nd and a 4th round draft pick to the Devils in exchange for veteran winger Lee Stempniak. Stempniak had played 63 games with the Devils this year and had notched an impressive 41 points with a +/- of +3. Stempniak was the one piece that I had completely overlooked when comparing past successful Bruins teams to the team that was hitting the ice for a majority of this season. Every season since the Bruins had won the cup and including that season as well the Bruins had always paired an aging, salty veteran with a scoring touch on a line with Bergeron and Marchand, the two most potent offensive players on the team. This year that position had been filled with Brett Connolly who, although he looks to be well into his 30's, is actually only 23 years old and has shown quite a few signs of inexperience in his play this season. Now however the Bruins can fill that position that has been missing and at the same time bring some veteran presence to a surprisingly young roster the Bruins have iced this year.
In all, I quite liked the deals the Bruins made at the deadline and I really do think they improve the chances the Bruins have at being a threat in the playoffs, especially since the Eastern Conference seems to be wide open this year minus the Washington Capitals. I am glad Sweeney decided not to sell the farm in order to bring talent to an uncertain team and I really don't see any of the pieces the Bruins lost in the trades as valuable. Time will tell if this team can push ahead through their most difficult scheduling stretch of the year and still maintain a playoff spot, but seeing the moves that were made to improve the team, I am slightly more optimistic than I was the Sunday before the deadline.

Bruins Beat: All Star Shenanigans

To continue this small Bruins blog I'd like to take a moment and discuss some of the recent events that involved the NHL, more specifically the NHL All star game. This year, the NHL allowed fans to vote for one captain from each division and an additional 10 players from each division who would then be broken into small 3 man teams to compete during the weekend. Now as soon as I heard that fans would be allowed to vote for all the players and the captains I knew that something screwy was going to happen because putting the power in the Internets hands is almost never a good idea. To confirm my suspicions, the winner of this years pacific division All Star captaincy ended up being the one and only John Scott of the Arizona Coyotes. Scott is almost exactly the opposite of the type of player that should be allowed to compete during All Star weekend, a 7 foot tall goon who has a total of 11 points and over 500 penalty minutes in his career. Most other players that were voted in have more points in the first half of their season than Scott does in his career and yet Scott overwhelmingly won the captains vote for the Pacific Division due to the fact that he was the oddball and trolls everywhere decided they wanted to ruin what little credibility this event had, if it even had any to begin with. The major problem I have with his selection is that it also deprives the Coyotes of having a real representative at the All Star game, instead being forced to send Scott in place of a more deserving player like Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
The league tried to override this decision which would have been happy with if they didn't try to do so in the most shady and underhanded way. To summarize, the NHL basically orchestrated a trade where the Coyotes sent Scott and another prospect to Montreal in return for a middle of the road defensive prospect. Montreal was then instructed to send Scott down to the AHL in order to make him ineligible for the All Star game. Unfortunately for the league both the media and fans were outraged at how the league handled this situation and in the face of losing many viewers to a boycott the league decided to allow Scott to represent the Pacific Division anyway. I am both happy and sad at the outcome of this, for although I don't believe Scott belongs in the All Star game he definitely does not deserve to be booted out in such a manner. Overall, this whole situation makes me sad as it shows that the fans really don't care about the All Star game at all and would rather ruin the credibility of being selected to the All Star team in order to send a goon to skate around and get embarrassed by real All Stars.

Bruins Beat: The Skids

Hello boys and girls, welcome back to another installment of Bruins Beat. It has been exactly three weeks since my last post as I took a break for the holidays. It was nice to not have to worry about any school work for a couple weeks, but I am glad to be back and analyzing what has proven to be a very interesting Bruins season thus far. Since my last post the Bruins have played a grand total of eight games and have a record of 3-5-0 in those eight games. In this post I don't plan on recapping every one of these eight games as I just do not have the time nor the memory to accurately describe the events that occurred during each game of these last 3 weeks. There is one game in particular that I would like to talk about and that would be the Winter Classic, which I had the overwhelming pleasure of attending this year, my second Winter Classic I have attended. Unfortunately, this year my experience with the Classic was overall a negative one.
There were many things the NHL did right this time around with the Winter Classic, first of all being the choice of match up. With no disrespect to the Redsox/Yankees or the Lakers/Celtics rivalries, the Bruins/Canadiens has to be the most electrifying rivalry in all of North America. Between the almost 100 years of history the teams share to the countless scraps and playoff match ups that have culminated in all out brawls on the ice, there really is nothing like a game between Boston and Montreal and that was something I could feel as soon as I walked into Patriot Place. Due to the relatively small distance between Boston and Montreal, there was a good amount of Montreal fans on site for this game, which of course riles up the fans of both teams. There's a tension in the air at the games between these two teams that builds and builds the more rowdy and fanatic the fans of each team are, and on the day of the Winter Classic that tension hung in the air like smoke from the many tailgate parties going on in the parking lot. The choice of venue was also pretty damn perfect as well. Gillette is large enough to host an insane amount of fans of both teams, yet small enough that there were very few bad site lines in the place. I myself sat about halfway up in the balcony and was able to see everything that happened on the ice. The pregame events and team introductions were nothing short of phenomenal, as well as the flyover which I have posted a video of down below (video credited to YouTube user David West). I myself was literally shaking by the time Ozzy Osbourne's crazy train played over the speakers to signal the drop of the puck.

It is about here that the positives of the experience begin to fade and the negatives set in. One of the more minor negatives were the choice of music performances between intermission. The NHL decided that it would be a good idea to book two artists to perform in between each period, which is a great idea as there really isn't much else to do other than wait in the gigantic line to use the bathroom. Unfortunately, NBC chose to invite two of the worst acts I have ever seen in Nate Ruess (lead singer for FUN) and Simple Plan. These two artists could not have been further removed from the atmosphere of the games. Instead of having an exciting local talent perform, say the Dropkick Murphys, NBC decided to choose an annoyingly falsetto alt rock singer as well as a pop punk band that peaked in popularity around the time I was born. It goes without saying that I and many of the other fans around me were not impressed with the acts and I really hope NBC chooses more relatable talent in the future. Finally, and most unfortunately, the most upsetting thing about the whole event had to have been the abysmal hockey that myself and 68,000 other fans had to watch. The Bruins got completely embarrassed on the ice in a 5-1 defeat that saw them play their worst hockey of the season at the worst possible time. The tone of the game was set early on as Montreal scored just over one minute into the first period, a period that saw the Bruins get out shot 14-3. While it may be true that the Bruins were missing key players in David Krejci and Brad Marchand, the overall lack of effort and inability to complete passes and overall just play the game cannot be blamed solely on the Bruins bad luck with injuries and suspensions. Overall, I would have to say I had fun at the Classic but there is just no denying how long, cold, and defeated the walk was back to my car at the end of the game.

Bruins Beat: Rolling Along

Hello boys and girls, welcome back to another installment of this blog series following the events of the Bruins and their 2015-16 season. Last week I decided my post would be better used to discuss some of the issues I have had with the Department of Player Safety and their incompetence when it comes to handing out supplementary punishment. It is an issue that I believe goes even deeper than the spearing incident that occurred a couple weeks ago and I may revisit the topic in a longer post in the future. For now however, lets talk about how the Bruins have collected points in 12 of their last 13 games and are now second in the Atlantic division and gaining ground fast on the Montreal Canadiens.
After the Thanksgiving break and Black Friday game the Bruins traveled to the western most regions of Canada to do battle with some of the most mediocre teams in the league. Feeling confident after a gut-check style win over the Rangers, I myself saw nothing less than 6 points out of 6 coming from this road trip. However the team seemed to think they could gather these points with almost no regard for quality of play, which is something the Bruins seem to have done a bit too often this year for my liking. The Bruins barely seemed to be awake for their first game against the Oilers and it showed as, although they held the lead in shots most of the game, they trailed the Oilers 2-1 late into the third period. Only thanks to a late goal by captain Zdeno Chara were the Bruins able to force overtime, which led to a shootout which led to a disappointing loss for the black and gold. The lackluster play continued into Calgary as the Bruins played one of their most defensively lax game of the season. Although the Bruins had a 4-3 lead with less than a minute to go, a late penalty on Chara led to a 6 on 4 situation and Calgary was able to tie the game with 1.3 second left in regulation.  Johhny Guadreau did what he usually does which was magically stick handle behind the defense in OT and score the game winner assisted by none other than Douglas Hamilton. At this point many Bruins fans were groaning at the prospect of flushing what should have been easy points down the toilet that was this road trip. Thankfully, the Bruins came out swinging in Vancouver and pummeled the already bruised and lackadaisical Canucks by a score of 4-0. That win singlehandedly turned what could have been an awful 2 point 3 game swing into a 4 point swing and gave the Bruins some confidence heading back home.
This confidence however was met and equally matched by a defensively adept Nashville Predators team that was able to skate circles around a seemingly jet-lagged Bruins team. Even still, the Bruins made a game of it, only losing by a score of 3-2 on a late goal by Nashville. This loss set the team back on the road for an extremely important meeting between the Bruins and the Habs. This being the last meeting before the winter classic, both teams wanted to be the ones to carry momentum heading forward into the month that could see the Atlantic division turned sideways by the time January rolls around. Although the Bruins came out flat in the first 2 periods, a stellar effort by Tuukka Rask kept the game 1-0 until midway into the third period where Loui Eriksson scores a shorthanded goal off a beautiful pass by Chara. Just 40 seconds later the Bruins scored again to make it 2-1 with only 7 minutes to go in the game. With a goal by Bergeron in the final 5 minutes, the Bruins walked out of the Bell Centre with their first win over the Canadiens since March of 2014 and all the momentum on their side heading into the outdoor game at Gillette on January 1st. The Bruins would then go on to win 2 of their next 3 games in convincing fashion, leap frogging their way into second place in the Atlantic with 2 games in hand on almost the entire division, meaning the Bruins could prospectively be only one point away from their arch rivals within the next couple of weeks. The Bruins have 6 more games in the month of December, 3 of which are against divisional opponents making the points in these next few games absolutely vital to the Bruins success going forward. If the team is able to continue their ever strengthening defensive play as well as scoring at a league leading clip I can very confidently see this team being atop the Atlantic division within a month. The Bruins next play against Pittsburgh on Friday.

Bruins Beat: Spearing and the DoPS

Hello boys and girls, welcome back to another installment of my blog series following the Boston Bruins season. This week, rather than talking about the games the Bruins played this past week I would like to take the opportunity to discuss and share my feelings on a play that happened earlier this week during the Bruins and Canucks Saturday night game. Near the end of the third period as the Bruins gained possession and skated out of the zone Canucks left wing Brandon Prust skate up to Bruins left wing Brad Marchand and speared him in the groin with the blade of his stick. Marchand had to be helped up by the trainer but was able to skate off under his own power. Prust was given a ten minute misconduct, essentially ejecting him from the game. Later on that week the NHL Department of Player Safety fined Prust 5,000 dollars yet did not suspend him. After a week of readin response posts around the internet and doing some thinking of my own I wanted to share my opinion of the play and the overall effectiveness of the DoPS.
To put it bluntly, I feel the way the NHL handled this was completely unacceptable. The play itself is extremely dangerous due to the fact that, other than your standard athletic cup, there is little padding in that area to protect from odd angle bumps and hits. Combine that with the speed and power that NHL caliber players are able to handle their sticks, it is all to easy for someone to badly injure another player in one swift motion. Taking that into account, I applaud the referees for at least handing out a misconduct penalty to Prust although I feel there should also have been a 5 minute major penalty for spearing assessed as well. I understand why there was not in this case though as the event happened away from the play and I don't believe any of the referees saw the incident play out in real time. Where the NHL completely dropped the ball was when it came to handing out supplementary discipline. As stated before the DoPS decided to only assess a fine of 5000 dollars to Prust, which is a measly 0.2% of his current 2.5 million dollar annual salary. Prust took to twitter after the fine was assigned, referring to the fine as the "best money I ever spent". All of this put together makes it pretty obvious that the DoPS failed to do their job of enforcing the rules that are supposed to keep players safe. This is not the first time the DoPS has had trouble with punishing spearing in the league. A couple years ago, Milan Lucic committed a similar act against the Red Wings Danny Dekeyser in the playoffs and was similarly fined 5000 dollars with no other supplementary discipline. In my personal opinion, due to how egregious and dangerous these incidents can potentially be, there should be a minimum fine in place of at least 25000 dollars as well as a one game suspension. Only with harsh punishments will we see this gutless play removed from players repertoires which can only be a good thing in a league already struggling with dealing hits to the head and slew footing. If there is one thing about the league that I wish was more consistent it would be how the DoPS deals with protecting the players that play this magnificent game and punishing those who take liberties with the rules that are there to ensure player safety as well as the integrity of the sport as a whole.

Bruins Beat: 2 Week Recap

Welcome back boys and girls, time to get the ball rolling once again on this blog. I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving because I sure did. Not only was I able to stuff my face for a whole day, but I was also able to watch possibly the best game the Bruins have played all season on the Friday after. Before I get ahead of myself however let me breakdown the week before that game as well to put in perspective why that Black Friday game was such an important win for the Bruins moving forward.
In my last post I was able to breakdown how the Bruins successfully ended their 5 game home stand with a positive win/loss ratio as well as winning two games in a row with strong, dominating efforts over one strong team (Wild) and one not so strong team (Leafs). The week following the Bruins traveled to Toronto to complete a home and home stint against the Leafs, hopefully with two wins. Although that ended up being the case, it was only just barely so. The Bruins got pretty badly out shot in all but the third period and gave up a lead twice in the game (2-0 lead and 3-2 lead). No scoring in the third or overtime meant the game went to the shootout, the first time the Bruins had encountered the shootout all season. This had been a blessing for Bruins fans as last season the Bruins had an abysmal 4-10 record in shootouts. Fortunately, this one did not follow the same pattern as David Krejci scored the lone shootout goal and the Bruins walk out of Toronto taking both games in the series but only barely. The Bruins once again had disciplinary issues as they took 7 total minor penalties in the game. All that can be thrown under the rug however cause a wins a win and that win extended the win streak to 3.
 Two days later the Bruins travel to Detroit with hopes of keeping the ball rolling and the win streak alive. However, the ball seemed to roll right off a cliff as the Bruins got absolutely manhandled by the Red Wings for 55 minutes of that game. After scoring quickly in the first to give themselves an early lead, the Bruins subsequently got pummeled by the Red Wings with both shots and hits alike. Only thanks to the wondrous play of Jonas Gustavsson were the Red Wings only up by one goal heading into the last 5 minutes of the 3rd period. Thankfully it was at this point the Bruins remembered they were hockey players and a beautiful passing play lead to Colin Miller tying the game with slightly less than 2 minutes to play. Fast forward to 2 minutes left in overtime and, wouldn't you know it, Colin Miller yet again takes a slapper from the point, tips off Frank Vatrano in front and boom, 4 game win streak.
The Bruins headed home to enjoy their Thanksgiving as the league held no games on that day, but were back at it on national television nice and early on Black Friday as they have been for the past several years. Their opponent this go around was the third best team in the league New York Rangers who had just come off of their own 9 game win streak being snapped a few days earlier. This game was nothing short of fantastic hockey as the Bruins were able to hold their own in terms of skating with the Rangers and trading chance for chance with one of the more solid offenses in the league. The goalies in this one were huge as Tuukka and Lundqvist both made sensational stops and each only allowing 2 goals heading into the third period. Unfortunately the Bruins took a goaltender interference penalty on a pretty bad embellishment by Lundqvist and allow a goal with just over 10 minutes to play. The good thing that came out of that goal was that it lit a fire under the Bruins I have not seen in a long time. Those ten minutes of Bruins hockey were absolutely sensational with Bruins playing offensively and holding offensive pressure for almost that entire span. It pays off just as 5 minutes ticks onto the clock and Jesper Fast takes a penalty which allows the best powerplay in the league to do what they do best. Shot to the net by Eriksson, scrum at the goalmouth and Ryan Spooner swoops forward to pot the goal and tie it with 4 minutes left. I thought at that point that oh boy that means overtime for the third game in a row but thankfully the Bruins once again find another level of offense and after 2 minutes of nonstop scoring chances David Krejci rips it toward goal where it tips off of a Ranger and in with just less than 2 minutes left. Fast forward two minutes and the Bruins win streak is at 5 games.

The only blemish on that game other than the embarrassing dive by Lundqvist to draw the goalie interference call came when Matt Beleskey hit Derek Stepan late in the 2nd period. Stepan wasn't looking and since Beleskey is one of the strong Bruins he was able to send Stepan flying into the boards. Dylan McIlrath takes exception to the hit and proceeds to pummel Beleskey in the ensuing fight. Many people are saying the hit is suspendable but I myself think that it wasn't much in terms of a dirty play. Stepan was unfortuantely caught admiring his pass and, although the hit is a tad late, it wasn’t high and didnt seem to be intentional boarding and I chalk it up as nothing but misfortune for Stepan. Unfortunately that misfortune lead to 2 broken ribs and 4 weeks recovery time. I will leave a video below of the hit and I’ll let you guys decide for yourself if it was dirty or not. On that note I will bring this entry to a close. The Bruins next play the Oilers on the day before I submit this but as the game is a late start I have not watched it yet but I will definitely cover it in next weeks post.