Posted in Transactions October 14th, 2008
Yesterday, the Bruins traded defenseman Andrew Alberts to the Flyers for minor league forward Ned Lukacevic and a conditional 4th round pick in 2009 (a 3rd rounder if Alberts re-signs with Philly).
You always hate to see someone go, and especially a young prospect who never got to blossom. However it appears Alberts hasn’t fully recovered from the head & neck injuries caused by now-teammate Scott Hartnell and didn’t appear to be in the Bruins plans for this season. Therefore, off to the Flyers he goes, where he’ll have a better chance of cracking their injury-depleted defensive core.
Lukacevic doesn’t appear to be much of a prospect, but at least the B’s were able to free up 1.25 million dollars of cap space with this move.
Posted in Recaps October 11th, 2008
I’m happy to say that, grades be damned, I was able to pull myself away from my Cisco textbook to watch some (okay, most) of the Bruins opener Thursday night. Unfortunately, most of the 1st period was marred by lingering images of Def Leppard from the pre-game concert (which I suspect was actually from before the Wings-Leafs game as it was in Detroit and Darren McCarty came out with the Stanley Cup). It took about three songs to realize that, holy shit, that 275 pound mass of humanity really WAS Joe Elliot and not some replacement singer. It’s a shame that it wasn’t some YouTube replacement especially after Elliot pulled THIS Stanley Cup travesty.
But enough about washed up bands, here are some bullet points on the game.
- Overall game play was sloppy, but then again, it *was* the season opener. The first period was especially scary considering the Bruins played most of it in their zone, being outshot 20-5. The defense started to gel after that, but overall Thomas spent way too much time sprawled on the ground doing damage control in front of the net.
- Two of those five shots actually went in, especially a beautiful Kobasew-Krejci-Wheeler goal where they caught the Avalanche in transition. That was especially sweet. There’s a lot of potential here to become an excellent third scoring line. Wow!
- Only two power play opportunities, but Savard scored on one of them. I’ll take the 50% conversion rate while it lasts.
- Maybe I just don’t watch enough hockey (hey, I worked 2nd shift for most of my life) but something happened in the 2nd period which I’ve never seen before: after an Avs shot broke the glass behind Tim Thomas with under 3 minutes left to play, the refs stopped play and called for the intermission then. Don’t know if that’s a new or old rule, but that makes incredible sense. Why stop play for an extended period of time twice within five minutes? So they all went to the locker room while they fixed the glass and drove the zamboni. They came back with 2:47 left on the clock and when the period officially ended, they took a brief break while they changed sides to start the 3rd.
- Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler with their first goals as Bruins (and Wheeler with his first NHL goal ever). Nice!
- Thomas held his own but gave up a bad rebound in the 3rd period that led to a game-tying Jordon Leopold goal midway through the 3rd period. Manny Fernandez will more than likely get the start Saturday.
- Vs. scared the crap out of me with what I originally perceived to be lack of an HD broadcast. I have DirecTV where they share an HD channel with the Golf channel. According to the DirecTV online guide, the hockey games were only being shown on the standard definition channels. The shared “VSGFHD” channel was instead rerunning a PGA golf event. That’s right, they were choosing to rerun a PGA event (the season ended a few weeks ago) instead of the unofficial start of the hockey season (don’t get me started about last weekends games). Fortunately, it appears Vs. came to their senses between the time they released their planned schedule to DirecTV and the start of the game as when I checked that channel on a whim midway through the 1st period, the Bruins game was being broadcast there in hi-def. Hey, I didn’t spend $1500 on a Sony Bravia to watch the season opener in crappy standard def!
All in all, the Bruins start the season with a road victory. I’ll take it!
Posted in Uncategorized October 7th, 2008
…and I get to spend the Bruins season opener…sitting in front of a text book. That’s right, yours truly has committed himself to a Cisco network class this week and will probably miss most of the game because I’ll be studying (although I’ll probably sneak an occasional peek). And since I’m working on my CCNA, I’ll probably only be able to catch an occasional game over the next few weeks.
What’s that you say? Why such piss-poor planning, Doobie? How could you do this your dedicated masses and throngs of adoring fans? Well, you can blame my company who decided to outsource our IT department to India leaving your humble host out of a job and scrambling to pad his resume with certifications! And perhaps the oddest thing is that, while you’d assume I’d have a hell of a lot of free time on my hands, I actually now have less since I’m spending all of my free time studying and with family commitments, now that I’m not on a 3rd shift schedule. Yay!
But all of you long distance fans (like myself) with access to the Vs. channel can enjoy the game this Thursday (<—shameless plug, but nothing compared to the sidebar over there!–>). They’ve got the Leafs-Wings game at 6:30 PM, and Bruins-Avs at 10. Tune in!
