His hockey stick knob... perverts.

"I started using this knob when I was sixteen..."

Man, didn't we all.

The Bruins man. Maaaaaaaaan. Dem Broons. Despite being 14-3-3, the Bruins haven't been able to hold many leads this season, but somehow have found a way to come through and win those games. Except on Sunday. And Tuesday. A two goal lead against the Canadiens was wiped away when Zdeno Chara wiped Alexei Emelin's face off of his head then against Washington scored 4 unanswered goals as Eric Fehr split #seidofham like it was Kim Kardashian's legs at an NBA game. 

Fucking disgusting. 

But hey, the Bruins are facing the Maple Leafs so it should be okay right? 

You damn right Charlie. 

Toronto is riding a three game winning streak where they've scored a total of 14 goals. Yeah, 14 goals in 3 games! That's a crazy amount of offense coming from the Leafs, a team that's currently 5th in the East. This isn't your typical Leafs man. I don't think Boston is going to steamroll them like we're used to seeing them steam roll the Leafs. I just don't get that feeling. 

Yeah we can all grab microphones and say "Thank You Kessel" and be stupid dickbags about the whole thing, but the last time these two teams played Boston squeaked away with a 1-0 victory. While two points is two points, that game was a dog fight. 

It's funny, someone will more than likely come on here and call me negative. Shit, we already had one person bitch and moan that we're "writing the team off" because we put a picture of the third line as the Three Stooges.

Can we talk about the third line for a minute? 

How fucking bad is this line? The biggest argument that dickbag had for me was that Peverley and Kelly won a Cup two years ago so we can't shit on them. I'm sorry, but have you shit on Tim Thomas since he's won a Cup? Probably, which makes your argument invalid. 

Claude's system breeds a good plus/minus. You could step on the ice for 5 seconds and you're looking at a +5 for the night, unless you're the third line. This line is currently a -21 with 15 points in 57 games...combined. 15 points! You're paying this line around $7,000,000 dollars this year and they only have 15 points? Why is this acceptable? 

What the fuck is going on on 100 Legends Way where they believe that this is a solid line? What's even is worse is where do you go from here? Who is in the AHL that could replace what this line is(n't) doing? From all I've heard, Jordan Caron fucking blows, Ryan Spooner (I think) and Jamie Tardif is hurt and Jared Knight can't walk from his bedroom to the bathroom without shredding his hamstring into a million bits. Lane MacDermid doesn't really fill a role for you unless Shawn Thornton gets hurt. 

Is Carter Camper really the answer? No. 

You could move Dan Paille up to the third line, play Jay Pandolfo and scratch Chris Bourque but what's the point? Chris Bourque isn't the problem on that line - the whole line is the problem on that line. Chris Kelly can barely stay on his feet, Rich Peverley can't hit the net and Chris Bourque is well...there. 

To fix the line you need to completely re-tool the bottom of the roster. I think what we're seeing is that Chris Kelly had a career year in a contract year and the real Chris Kelly is here to stay - for another two years at $3M per year. The same goes with Rich Peverley. He was a guy that you could count on to move between the first and third line and now you cringe when he takes a wrister in the slot because it goes anywhere but the net. 

I'm getting way off track here. 

Team speed murders this defense and that's what the Maple Leafs are made up of. I think the days of 6-2 whoopings are over, I really do. While the Leafs goaltending is still a mess, you never really know what Boston team is going to show up lately and the 2nd/3rd periods int he Washington game prove that. 

I'm not using one game to justify my concerns with the Bruins but that game was a microcausm of how Boston has played this year. Think about all the 2 goal leads they've blown so far this year, even the ones where they pull out the win. Five times this season Boston has had a 2+ goal lead and blew it. They did it vs Carolina (W), vs Buffalo (L), vs Tampa (W), vs Montreal (L) and vs Washington (L). So about a 1/4 of the time they can't hold a two goal lead. 

Scary. 

After the jump, the rest of the preview...

Jesus Christ. How fucking awful are the Boston Bruins when have a lead in the third? Answer: Really fucking awful.

Little Lamb and the Capitals spoon feed the Bruins with an easy 3-0 lead and then the team decided to take the rest of the night off. Here's a picture of the team when they came out for the second period:

Capitals are third in the worst division in the NHL and the Bruins couldn't shut them down. Ugh. And does Ovechkin do anything but just hang at the offensive blue line? I think him hooking Marchand was the first time he's ever been seen in the defensive zone. He's the kid that would never play defense in pick up hockey.

But another late lead blown. Bruins are breaking down more in the third than my old car. Awful.

Bruins are 14-3-3 so there's no need to blow this team up or anything, but they gotta wake up. This doesn't bode well for the rest of the month when they have to play every other day if they're going to only put in a partial effort.

Rest of the recap after the jump...

I fucking hate the Washington Capitals. I know I say I hate a lot of things on this site, but the Washington Capitals rank #2 in my "hockey world of hatred", ranked right under the entire city of Montreal, which includes that team and that pathetic fucking fanbase. I don't know what it is about the Washington Capitals that I really dislike, but I'm pretty sure most of it comes from the way everyone sucks Alexander Ovechkin's hairy caveman dick. Remember when he was drafted? I'm pretty sure I saw an ESPN commercial with Steve Berthum where Stevie boy is just cranking his prick over a post of Ovechkin and someone walks in on him. It's like a bad American Pie movie. 

Add to that their fanbase that acts like their shit doesn't stink when in reality they have absolutely no reason to be such pompass dickbags. None. Go on Twitter and search Capitals and it's just a fucking joke. They're either saying how amazing the team is or how fucking awful everyone else is. You know what this city celebrates? Winning divisions. Hang a banner. Hang a fucking banner because you won the Southeast Division - the resource room of the NHL. 

Go to the Verizon Center and look up at the ceiling. It's Southeast Division banners - maybe an Eastern Conference banner sprinkled in there - maybe. It's like big, idiotic Ted Leonsis will hang a banner when someone sneezes and another person says "God bless you." Hey Teddie, I have a banner for you: 

Yeah, you did it! You're currently fucking 14th in the Eastern Conference, tied in points for last place with Florida. Your division is made up of Florida, Tampa, Carolina, yourselves and Winnipeg and for some reason you can't make it out of the cellar. You know how bad your division is? If it was the playoffs today, only one team would be in the playoffs. You and your division are the reason why these new alignments are going down - so the NHL's shitstain division doesn't have to be seen in the playoffs. You're the red headed stepchild locked away in the closet and fed bread through a filed down mail slot. No one wants to see you guys, unless it's Holtby's father doing Stephen Hawking impressions. 

Also, you're welcome NHL that the Bruins made Holtby look like a Vezina Trophy finalist in the playoffs so the Capitals extended him and he sucks. It was probably the greatest things the Bruins accomplished in the playoffs last season. Out of 74 goalies recorded by NHL.com, Holtby is currently 57th in goals against average with 3.01 and is 43rd in save percentage at .907. Amazing isn't it? Pierre McGuire was creaming is pleated pants over this guy during the playoffs and now he can barely fend off a cold. 

And that's your Washington Capitals in a nutshell - a team that overachieves and then falls back into the pit where they belong. Then there's Ovechkin, the most overpaid, laziest mother fucker I've ever seen play hockey. It's a disgrace to see this guy be such a lazy fuckwad that he is knowing the talent he possesses. I mean, his lazyness got Bruce Boudreau run out of town because Boudreau sat him in overtime, then Dale Hunter stopped playing him late in the period during those Bruins playoff games and he complained about it. 

HELLO ALEX, YOU'RE LAZY! For years the league compared him and Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin can't hold Crosby's pube shavings. Hell, if Ovechkin put paste over his face like how I picture he ate it in those Russian kindergarten cells they own and then plastered Crosby pubes all over the paste, they'd probably just fall off in disgust. I wish he stayed in Russia like he stated he was going to because he thought his word had pull in the NHL. 

The best part is that there's an actual website called Russian Machine Never Breaks and their banner is his cro magnon man face. I wonder if they changed their name yet. I have some wonderful names for it: 

Russian Machine Never Skates (Yinz)
Russian Machine Rarely Scores (Jbro)
Russian Machine Rarely Tries
Russian Machine Has Tramp Stamps (Jbro)

All are a lot more accurate than what they're working with right now. It's possible that the machine never breaks because it's not really working, like an 85 year old's woman vibrator. His defensive abilities are probably as dusty as her cooter too. 

I hope Boston is angry when they play tonight. Angry about Sunday, angry about the playoffs. I hope they just come out and shit stomp the Washington Capitals, take that airhorn and shove it up that guys puckered starfish. If any team deserves to be strewn about the ice in writhing pain in America, it's the Capitals. God, that arena should implode when the Bruins leave tonight. 

After the jump...the rest of the preview...

ESPN is the shittiest thing this side of my toilet after some amazing Mexican food. For some reason, the higher ups believed that having Stephen A. Smith talk about hockey was a great idea. Who know what else is a great idea? Apparently throwing babies off balconies, searching Habs hashtags on Twitter and checking vulnerable places and then getting your face bashed in by Chara's disgustingly huge Hulk hands. If you missed this yesterday/earlier this morning (and I'm not 100% sure because I refuse to watch Sportscenter), here's the video: 

Now re-attach your brain and let's try to figure this out. After that whore who is running ESPN talks about the Chicago/Detroit shootout, they cut to a graphic about the two current streaks going on: 

And in case you're a fucking idiot, here's a reminder that both teams are from Minnesota because that apparently means something?! So after this graphic, Whores Devores cuts to Smith and asks him which streak is more impressive. Guess what the guy who covers basketball for ESPN is going to say about which winning streak is more impressive between a basketball team and a hockey team. 

Guess. 

Basketball?

RIGHTO! 

Stephen A. Smith wouldn't know what a hockey puck was if you placed it in front of him. He's so fucking oblivious to the NHL that he would probably think it was an overcooked bagel. 

"When it was a 21 game streak, it was really an 8 game streak because THERE WERE TIES." - Stephen A. Smith

Ties? Fucking ties? Is this guy serious? Did he just finish playing NHL 95 on his Sega Genesis? Fucking TIES?! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FUCKING TIES IN THE NHL ANYMORE. Jesus Christ, do some god damn research. Wins. Losses. Overtime Losses - which means that there is a shootout, which means someone lost. There's no ties anymore. Someone should take that guy's tie and choke him out. 

This is why hockey people hate ESPN, because they don't do anything right. A fucking tie?

"Obviously hockey is about points." - Stephen A. Smith

It's clear that no one outside of John Buccigross at ESPN really cares about the sport of hockey. They allow people like Stephen A. Smith to come on and speak their mind about a subject they know dick about. He fucking goes on and on about ties in hockey. Jesus Christ. 

The best part is that little shot at Columbus at the end. Well obviously if you don't know the rules about how a hockey game lines up in terms of winning and losing, you won't know anything about the teams and where they are located. 

Disgraceful. 

Last night's 4-3 loss ot the Montreal Canadiens was hard for Bruins fans to swallow, and the team itself, too. After the game, head coach Claude Julien went ham on the refs not calling a cross-check that broke a stick against Seguin's ribs, and the Habs for embellishing hits. 

This prompted some Habs fans to get a little uppity, as to be expected. Some even saying this is no one likes the Bruins, which is funny since this is the first time we can remember that Julien was blaming the refs to any extent. He's always been a "it is what it is and we need to play better" coach while in Boston. But that really just amplifies how fustrated Julien must be. The team isn't drawing many calls and they're getting hit with a lot of reputation penalties or, in the case of Chara-Emelin-Seguin, getting railed with 17 PIM when they should've been on the powerplay themself.

But, let's be honest here, any embellishment by Montreal wasn't why Boston lost last night. Losing Chara was. And by that we mean the Bruins defense didn't do their part after Chara stood up for Seguin. 

Not sure if it was just us, but lately we've felt the Bruins-Canadiens rivalry had gone soft. There was no spark. The atmosphere had been about as intense as a Blue Jackets playoff watch. Then a game like tonight reminded us why this rivalry is not only the greatest in hockey, but the greatest in all of sports.

Montreal plays a perfect bad guy. They give you so many reasons to HATE them. Then when you realize they want you to hate them, they've got you again.

This game had everything but a Bruins win. It was a great game. But we're still too pissed off to do a decent intro.

If this headline sounds familiar it's because we used it the last time the Habs and Bruins met. Not much has changed between then other than Boston has three games in hand with Montreal. Both teams have 30 points, but Boston's head-to-head between the two and also having a few games in hand give them a bit of an edge the standings -- the difference between first and fourth in the East.

Nonetheless, today's game will give one team 32 points and the other 30 (or 31). Season's still early, though, so whatevs in terms of standings but every point counts, especially within the division.

Yesterday we saw the Boston Bruins claw their way back from being down 0-2 to a 3-2 win, thanks to some solid PK and two PP goals. Yes, two! Meanwhile the Habs were in a good ol' fashion firefight with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Neither Price or Vokoun decided that they wanted to stop pucks. Pens won 7-6.

We'll also get to see old friend Michael Ryder.

Don't even want to think about what we'll do if he scores a goal tonight.

Big win for the Boston Bruins. After falling down 2-0 in the first period they scored three unanswered goals to take the lead and the win. And two of the goals were on the power play...

...of which there were a ton of. It was fucking Free Penalty Day for the first 36 NHLers to arrive at the Garden today.

Seriously, the refs were appaling in this game for both sides. Hits to the shoulder were called boarding, solid defensive plays were called interference. Rediculous. Here's a picture of the refs arriving at the game this afternoon:

Bruins took 10 penalties today. Ten. Fucking one, zero. And they killed off eight of them. And against Tampa's PP unit going 8 for 10 is pretty fucking good, even if it below Boston's PK standards. Here's what the penalty sheet looked like:

We hope the refs didn't straing any shoulder muscles raising them over their head all day, especially the first. They probably train for this type of game, though:

Ok, enough bitching about the officiating. More than penalties happened in this game. Rest of the recap after the jump....

The last time these guys met on the "ice" the Bruins put a beating on the Lightning despite playing in a bowl of soup with ice cubes in it. When we talked on our pregame show about this game Justin, Pizz and I were so worried about the Lightning power play and Boston completely shut them down. They owned the game. Shit, they owned the enitre state of Florida. It was a glorious and magical thing to witness. 

Just cut the whole state away from America and let it float to Cuba...or do the logical thing and move those teams to Canada. Hamilton and Quebec will happily support NHL franchises, plus it creates INSTANT rivals with Toronto and Montreal. Think about it: the Nordiques and Canadiens face off and 12 players, at any time, could be floudering on the ice like they're Abe Lincoln watching a play. Hamilton and Toronto, battling it out for 14th place in the North-Central-East part of Conference 1A.2. It'll be absolutely amazing. 

(Thanks to Dooby over at cblog)

I can't even fake hatred for the Florida teams though. Tampa has a legit shot at being a good hockey team, which is exciting because we will get to see Steven Stamkos 6 times a year. The guy is awesome to watch. I would liken it to the Atlantic division (and soon to be Atlantic Confernce, I guess) getting to watch Crosby or Malkin for 6-8 games a year. Yeah, you may not like the Penguins, but getting to watch them live is something else. Other than Stamkos (and maybe St. Louis, but he's probably going to be thrown in the tar pits soon) though there's not much to get excited about with the Lightning. The Panthers...next. 

Stamkos is on a fucking tear right now. He leads the NHL in goals (14) and points (31) and scored against the Bruins last week in the game down in Tampa. He's a disgusting talent on an okay team in a shitty market that's made up of other team's transplants. With that said, Tampa is still doing work on offense. They still lead the NHL is goals per game (3.55) and they're top 10 in power play (21.2%). Basically, they still have a good power play but suck on defense. 

Shocking right? 

Hopefully the Bruins have their legs underneath them because team speed murders this team. If this becomes a track meet on ice, Boston is going to be for a world of hurt. 

Let's finish the preview off like DiPietro's career...