The leaves are changing colors. People are heading to apple orchards all around New England and picking their favorite red fruit. Everything is flavored with pumpkin. The Patriots are, unfortunately, playing football.
It's fall and what comes with fall? Mother fucking hockey. Well, pre-season hockey today but it still counts as something.
The Bruins are heading to Montreal today after a 10am practice at Ristuccia Arena in Wilmington and it looks like Group B will be the ones getting the nod today. We can talk about that a little later in the preview. There are some big changes this preseason that we need to talk about first. The biggest thing is hybrid icing. If you're like me, you don't really know what hybrid icing is so I went on a search and found this on NHL.com:
"Hybrid icing is a mixture of touch and no-touch icing. It gives a linesman the discretion to blow his whistle and stop the play if he believes a defending player will reach the puck first. If the linesman believes the attacking player has a chance to reach the puck first, he keeps his whistle in his pocket and lets the race to the puck play out. The linesman always will side with the defending player and blow his whistle if he feels the race is a tie by the time the players reach the faceoff dots."
Here's my issue with hybrid icing: it gives the linesman the power of discretion, but with the way the NHL has been officiated the past two years or so referees haven't proved that they are able to knowingly use that discretion. I can't knock it without actually seeing it play out in an NHL game, but I don't like linesmen making snap decisions when they've continually proven that their decision making is less than stellar.
The second rule change will be a more shallow net. Here's a tweet from NHL PR on June 4, 2013:
Here's a look at proposed shallower net, 4' x 6' opening of the net will remain the same, only depth reduced by 4" pic.twitter.com/aDlEhK3xId
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) June 4, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The size of the net doesn't bother me one bit, to be honest.
The last major change is that the NHL has made visors mandatory for less than 26 NHL regular season or playoff games. Anyone over that amount has the choice of wearing a visory. Basically from here on in – rookies will be mandated to wear one.
After the jump, the rest of the preview...
Projected Lines [UPDATED 12:10pm EST]
The Bruins official Twitter account tweeted some projected lines:
Lucic-Krejci-Iginla
Fraser-Söderberg-Cunningham
Camara-Spooner-Johnson
Paille-Fallstrom-Thornton
—
Earlier I mentioned that Group B will be playing tonight. Here is what Group B consists of:
Group B:
Forwards: Anthony Camara, Craig Cunningham, Alex Fallstrom, Rob Flick, Matt Fraser, Jarome Iginla, Nick Johnson, David Krejci, Milan Lucic, Daniel Paille, Carl Soderberg, Ryan Spooner, Shawn Thornton
Defensemen: Matt Bartkowski, Tommy Cross, Torey Krug, Adam McQuaid, Kevan Miller, Zach Trotman, Ben Youds
Goaltenders: Chad Johnson, Malcolm Subban
The rumor is that Malcolm Subban will get the start for the Bruins too. Honestly, I can't even give you line combinations right now because I have no idea what Claude is thinking. If I were a betting man though, the Lucic-Krejci-Iginla line will be in tact. Other than that, no idea.
Media
TV: NHL Network, RDS, TSN2
Radio: 98.5 The Sports Hub
Online Streams: Here
We're currently in the works to providing some amazing streaming capabilities and hope that whatever shakes out will be ready by the regular season. It's still a working progress, but we're hopeful.
Gameday Image/Video
In his Dallas Stars' debut, Seguin had a power play goal and an assist in a 6-5 loss to St. Louis.
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