Posted in Recaps November 10th, 2007
Time flies when you’re having fun…
Wow, has it been a week already? As Neb pointed out in my last post, I’ve got some catching up to do. So here’s what’s happened recently.
Bergeron’s concussion is bad. Pretty damn bad. As you all know by now, Bergy’s hurting. The guy can’t do simple tasks without feeling the effects of post-concussion syndrome. The team has placed him on long term IR, meaning he’s out until at LEAST 11/24. Don’t be surprised if he’s not back until after the holidays and it wouldn’t shock me if he wrote off this season altogether. Right now, he’s just got to get better.
Slip sliding away. Back on the 25th, I noted that the Bruins were tied for 3rd place and that only the Sens and Hurricanes had better records. That feels like such a long time ago. Since then the Bruins have gone 1-5 (adding only four team points…two of them courtesy of losing in OT), and have dropped down into a tie for 7th place. The main culprit has been their inability to score goals. Of these last five losses, the most goals they’ve scored in a game was two and they only did that once (in Ottawa). Remember that eight goal effort they put up in LA? Well, they’ve scored only eight goals in the five games that make up November. Unlike last year, you can’t blame the defense and goaltending for this one. That being said, among the offensive performers who have been pulling their weight, Marco Sturm and Chucky Kobasew deserve special mention for sporting an uncharacteristic (for the team) plus/minus of +6 and +8, respectively. That’s pretty darned good over a 15 game stretch and considering the Bruins are a -2 in goal differential (they’ve scored 34 this season and given up 36). One positive note to finish with: the Bruins have hung tough in all their recent losses…even against the Sens. If they keep playing this way then a few favorable puck bounces will land them in the win column more often than not.
Tuukka Rask. Manny Fernandez’s injury has landed him on the IR and after a week of Jordan Sigalet sitting on the bench, the Bruins decided they wanted Tuukka Rask to get the splinters instead. The B’s don’t play two consecutive games until 11/23-24 (which usually is a good time to start your backup goalie), but if we’re lucky we may get a glimpse of the Bruins’ future sooner than that.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 2:44 am and is filed under Recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Comment on this post
Posted by number4bobbyorr November 10th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Regarding last year: I didn’t agree with PC that their problem was defense and it definitely wasn’t goaltending (except that they needed a steady backup). I thought their two biggest problems were (1) lack of a strong forecheck, and (2) lack of scoring. By playing so much in their own zone they made their defense look bad. Unfortunately, even though their forechecking started out better, we are seeing the same thing happen this year. I know that getting another good goaltender wasn’t a terrible thing to do in theory, but I felt very strongly that they should have been going after a power forward, preferably a left shooter. And with Fernandez a bust at least in the short term, well… I just wish they had gone after that power forward.