Man, the Bruins almost blew that one huh. Apparently if teams want a shot at beating Boston, the only thing you need to do is spot them a 2 goal lead at some point because they're sure to blow it and fight for their lives. It is inevitably bound to happen. I mean, whenever Boston takes a two goal lead, I have to tweet this out:
THE DREADED 2 GOAL LEAD
— PezDOY© (@PezDOY) October 18, 2013
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And while the tweet is somewhat in jest, it's actually becoming a real problem with this team over the past few years. Last night, against a clearly inferior team, Boston went up 2 goals on Tim Thomas and almost pissed it away. You can make all the excuses that you want:
– Shitty ice (and boy was it shitty)
– Shitty crowd (shittier than the ice)
– Shittiest opponent
It doesn't matter. To win this division, you have to beat the teams are the bottom and scrape against the more "elite" teams. You have to beat Tampa Bay and Florida and Buffalo. The Bruins should always win five of the six meetings against these teams.
But hey, they don't ask you how you win – they just care if you win and the Bruins won. The better part about it? They beat Tim Thomas and while Thomas looked pretty good as the game went on, he has definitely "lost it". Thomas should have remained in the Bruins pantheon, to forever be engrained as one of the best Bruins goaltenders – not only of this generation – but in the franchise. Instead he's going to wilt away in Florida, but at least we get five more games of him.
After the jump, the breakdown of the game…
Dougie Hamilton had an awesome return back to the Bruins after sitting for the previous two games. Looking at the #fancystats, Hamilton was instrumental on the Bruins power play – and take that for whatever you want. Among defensemen, Hamilton was third with PP TOI, behind Chara and barely behind Krug. He made a BIG impact on the game last night offensively and even scored his first goal of the season.
Stick tap to Pete for all the .gifs
I think it's time to realize that Hamilton and Bartkowski on the ice are still a better upgrade than McQuaid. If you look at the defensive group and have to say: "Scratch one of these guys", I would say 9 out of 10 would scratch McQuaid.
Dan Paille clearly saw this photoshop and said "You know what DOY – fuck you." After receiving a nice pass from Dennis Seidenberg, Paille buried a semi-breakaway (maybe a breakaway, not sure really what it's called) past Tim Thomas to open the scoring.
Reilly Smith came up big for the Bruins last night, scoring his first goal as a Bruin – which also happened to be a game winning goal. Smith was awesome and I saw he was dubbed "Reilly Cyrus" on Twitter by one of our awesome readers Alyeska, who I made this:
Yup, have fun sleeping tonight.
Smith has been a factor since Julien finally made the move and demoted Brad Marchand to the third line.
Outside of the game tying goal, Tuukka had another solid outing in net. Rask stopped 27 of 29 shots on the night, turned away the one power play shot he faced and was Tuukka Rask. Again, these are games that we expect from him.
However…
Shit like this Tuukka:
Woof, that shit can't happen. It's basically a lucky bounce for Florida, but a Vezina caliber goaltender can't allow game tying goals like that to happen. One can credit Jesse Winchester for grinding out that goal and working hard to make it happen, but you gotta stop that puck. There's nothing else I can really say about it. It was a shit goal.
The Bruins power play? Not that great last night despite scoring a goal. In three power play attempts last night, the Bruins got off four shots. I mean, can it look any worse than it has?
Am I just over blowing everything because they scored on it last night?
If you score on one power play, does it make it a successful night?
Four shots on three attempts. What is this? I don't even.
HOW DOES GEOFF WARD STILL HAVE A JOB?!
– The crowd.
Holy shit, that crowd was deader than FDR's legs.
Seriously though if I lived in Florida, I'd be rocking season tickets. I don't care if the team blew, $7 tickets. You know what $7 will get you in Boston for tickets? NOTHING. Not even hookers will blow you for $7, not like I've tried or anything.
– Why is our webshow better despite only using cheap ass webcams?
– Is it okay if I cried into my Tim Thomas shersey last night?
– Is it okay for a grown ass man to call it a shersey?
– Will Jon ever stop working (LOL THE ANSWER IS NO)
– Will Jon's cinnamon ring ever stopped being worked over by his job?
– When will these questions stop?
– Do you like the term "cinnamon ring" for butthole?
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