Awful. Just awful. We didn't expect the Bruins to go undefeated obviously but damn that was awful. If the Maple Leafs scouts only saw that game, not even they would trade for any of the Bruins defense. That game was the worst thing I've watched since Pearl Harbor. By comparison, Pearl Harbor is one of the greatest films of our time. I am too mad at the Bruins defense to even do a decent intro. Bruins completely deserved to lose that game. 

Jesus Christ these tweets are fucking amazing.

I'd really enjoy watching Sheriff John Scott lay out Lucic tonight #NHL #payback

— Bilbo Teabaggins (@Cucumber_Kid_71) January 31, 2013

I hope John Scott plays tonight, so I can see him beat the shit out of Lucic.

— Nathan Schultz (@Shouts23) January 31, 2013

John Scott should run Tukka. #Sabres

— Josiah LeRoy (@JosiahDLeRoy) January 31, 2013

If John Scott doesn't dummy at least Tukka Rask tonight I'm going to be disappointed #TheTree #FuckLucic #VilleLeinoForPresident

— William(@willmangione) January 31, 2013

It's Tuukka and the only running over Scott knows how to do is drunk and in an SUV.

I wonder if Milan Lucic woke up with John Scott on his mind this morning? #bruins #sabres #NHL

— Bilbo Teabaggins (@Cucumber_Kid_71) January 31, 2013

Big game tonight for the Sabes.Excited to see what John Scott does against the big boys.Hoping to see a tougher Sabres team!! #LetsGo !!

— Kyle Perla (@KGPearls) January 31, 2013

@hackswithhaggs Whats the matter? Lucic afraid of John Scott?

— Marty Finucane (@FKindofaBigDeal) January 31, 2013

I hope John Scott beats the crap out of Lucic tonight #HatetheBruins #EspeciallyLucic

— Will Korczynski (@WKorczynski_30) January 31, 2013

Jokes on Buffalo. Scott still stinks. The best fight tonight will be John Scott fighting his skates as he shloshes himself down the ice.

Go Bruins

Yeah, that's a thing. They call themselves the Sabres Mafia, which apparently is a play off of the Bills Mafia. Being a Bills fan and the three or four Bills fans I follow on Twitter, the Bills Mafia is just a bunch of Bills fan who are sick of watching their team suck so they've come up with some stupid thing to feel important. They have a website too, where their mission statement is: 

A movement created by the fans and embraced by the players. Join the family.

Ugh, as a Bills fan this is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, outside of someone hashtagging their favorite team with Nation after it. #PatriotsNation! #RedSoxNation! Please, stop with this bullshit. #[YourTeamHere]Nation is a marketing ploy by that team to make you buy their shit. It's fucking stupid and your stupid for linking yourself to it. You're not a nation. Italy is a nation. You're not Italy. 

Sorry, I'm getting off track here. 

So the Sabres Mafia is apparently a thing, which I've already talked about. What I haven't mentioned is that they somehow think that they're going to rise up and take over Boston tonight. Are they serious? Have they been to a hockey game in Boston? You have jackoffs like this guy so doesn't realize that Patrick Kaleta is the worse thing to happen to Buffalo since Scott Norwood's foot. 

Hey #SabresMafia, do you know about #TougherThanKaleta? Don't let them get away with it! #Sabres

— Eric Schmitz (@3rdManIn) January 30, 2013

And...

Kaleta is bout to fuck larose up #SabresMafia

— christopher coppola (@coppola48) January 26, 2013

Yeah, patrick Kaleta is going to fuck up Chad-fucking-Larose because we all know that Larose is a scrapper. 

That's just a sample of what you're getting with the "Sabres Mafia". The funny thing is, the morons who "ride or die" with the Bills Mafia are pissed that the Sabres Mafia is a thing. It's like that episode of South Park where Timmy and Jimmy get the in the cripple fight. You know it shouldn't be happening because it's such a stupid thing, but you can't look away because one side is just as moronic as the other. 

So I hope the Sabres Mafia enjoys the whirlwind that DOY and our readers are going to put you through. I'm not sure if you're new to this sport of hockey, but the Bruins and Sabres haven't really been the best of friends for a bit. Adding Steve Ott to the mix probably won't make this lovefest any better. In case you didn't know, Steve Ott is hated by everyone on the black and gold who have been around long enough to remember his Dallas days. 

I find it pretty funny that the Sabres brought Ott in for "toughness" after the Bruins completely manhandled the Sabres last season. They also brought in John Scott, who is probably delighted to leave his offseason job for a few months until the Sabres choke away another opportunity to make the playoffs: 

I'm surprised people consider him a hockey player at all. The only thing he can do is drop the mitts and even then he's never done it against Thornton (probably because when teams face the Bruins, they play their good players and don't worry about their goons), but this is the mindset of the Buffalo Sabres. They want revenge so bad they can taste it. 

Revenge for the 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs when Buffalo was 3rd in the East and got the taste smacked out of their mouth by the 6th seed Boston bruins 4-2. 
Revenge for Matt Ellis getting his shit pushed in by Johnny Boychuk.
Revenge for Patrick Kaleta being a bitch and turtling in fear of Adam McQuaid.
Revenge for Patrick Kaleta being a bitch and getting pimp smacked by Milan Lucic. 
Revenge for Patrick Kaleta getting trounced by Zdeno Chara. 
And finally revenge for Ryan Miller who got destroyed by that piece of shit Milan Lucic. 

With the trade for Steve Ott and the signing of John Scott, the Bruins have finally gotten into the heads of the Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo wants to be tougher than they really are, but they still don't have the size or the skill to match up with Boston. 

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

Continue Reading

One of my favorite Bruins tweeters, Steph, tweeted this: 

Whether a team actually wears a jersey design in games obviously no longer matters to NHL shop or fans. See: black ice jerseys, pink jerseys

— Steph (@mybruinsOface) January 30, 2013

And it got me thinking, what do people think is a more agregious buy? I figured I would poll our readers and included three options that seem to plague the NHL shop/Pro shops. The first in the Black Ice Jersey: 

This includes it's evolved brother (think of Pokemon) the "Accelerator" jersey: 

Next is the well known pink jersey: 

And lastly is the always famous cash grab, the St. Patrick's Day jersey: 

Jebus. What an ugly, ugly game, ha. Sure, we weren't expecting much with the Bruins playing back to back games but between the Bruins fatigue and boring ass Devils hockey that game was uglier than your prom date. 

But then you sit down and think... well, everyone has taken home a swamp monster in their life and if you try not to think about what it looked like too hard you realize that hey, at least you got laid.

Where were we? Oh yeah, at least the Bruins won! B's still have not been defeated in regulation and continue to pile up important points in a Gary Bettman sized season. 

Thinking about the Devils is making me sleepy. Just click Read More before I fall face first into my keyboard.

I want to apologize before I start this because Joomla crashed 95% into it. For those that don't know, Joomla is possibly the worst blogging software I've ever come across. Why anyone would use this is beyond me, but it is the software Bloguin uses and hence so are we. This isn't the first time this piece of shit software has crashed while doing a post for you guys, so that's why it is late. Fuck you Joomla. 

...AND NOW THE PREVIEW!

The Bruins mettle will be tested tonight as they enter the second game of their first back-to-back on this young season. It will also mark the second of four games in six days for the black and gold. The good news is that Boston escaped Carolina with a 5-3 win despite Jeff Skinner doing his best to slew-foot the shit out of everyone. 

Now the Bruins have a tough test ahead of them with the New Jersey Devils, who enter today 3-0-1 and first in the Atlantic Division. The good news for Boston is that Marty Broduer (who has been sensational this season) is going to be riding the pine and Johan Hedberg will be getting the start. This will be Hedberg's first start of the season. 

I must say, I'm surprised how well the Devils are playing, especially without their top scorer from last year in Zach Parise. Much like the real Jersey Shore though, Parise died of AIDS from banging a ton of whores moved on to greener pastures and we don't mean the Wild jersey color.

Yes, Jersey's offense isn't spectacular (2.75 G/G and 17th in the NHL) but if you told me they would be that high with Parise gone and Henrique down in Albany, I'd call you a fool. What's keeping Jersey afloat is their defense, which is 2nd best in the NHL at 1.75 goals allowed per game. If the Bruins are going to get past the Devils' defense and goaltending (though we don't know what Hedberg can bring at 39) they're going to need every line clicking, which brings me to the Bruins 3rd line. 

(stick tap to Jessica for the 'shop)

Yesterday the DOY Staff had a roundtable which asked which was worse the Bruins 3rd line or its power play. I said the third line and got promptly accused for being a fucking asshole on Twitter (valid) because I'm "attacking" the 3rd line. 

In the game last night, Rich Peverley led the Bruins with 5 shots on goal, including a breakaway chance that was shot directly into Cam Ward's chest. Next time, Peverley should just pick the puck up and hand it to Cammy. He'd have a better chance of Ward dropping the puck than scoring there. Chris Kelly was worse, unfortunately. 

Late in the second period, Kelly had a crucial turnover (and we mean, passing the puck directly to Alex Semin's skates) that led to the eventual game tying goal before Boston nutted up in the 3rd period. From the start of the season, Kelly hasn't looked like the Kelly we saw last season. Could it be the "Curse of the New Contract"? Who knows. Here's the thing, I know Peverley and Kelly can bounce back.

Lastly we get to Chris Bourque who is a fucking train wreck and needs to get his ass shipped down to Providence. Can you believe Billy Jaffe on NESN last night swallowing Bourque's hanging brain about the game winning goal? Is he fucking serious? Chris Bourque sucks. 

Do you hear me Boston? 

Chris Bourque fucking sucks. The kid is an AHL stud but being an AHL stud doesn't necessarily translate to an NHL stud. Look at Brandon Bochenski. Yeah, Brandon fucking Bochenski who was a stud in the AHL but sucked so much in the NHL he's now in Russia playing for the Kazahkastan Borats. What makes Chris Bourque any different? His last name? If he was Chris Jones or Chris Smith or Chris Suckadick he'd be third line on in the ECHL playing for peanuts and bagging groceries on his off days. Instead he was a lucky sperm baby and Billy Jaffe is giving so many mouth hugs it has the Red Light District up in arms.

Take your sweatpants boner for Ray Bourque's kid and tuck it into the elastic waistband because it's time to end this abortionary experiment once and for all.

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

Last night, Patrice Bergeron and Jeff Skinner got into an altercation but you'd never know it if it weren't for Jack Edwards because NESN was to busy watching Tyler Seguin score an empty net, power play goal. The only thing we saw the end the result - Bergeron and Skinner being pulled away from each other by the referees. Everyone wondered what Skinner did to get Bergeron so mad and come after him, something Bergeron doesn't do. In fact, he's only had one other major for fighting and that's when he southpaw'd Josh Gorges in 2009. 

So what caused Bergeron to go after Skinner? 

A slew foot. 

That light footed, diving fairy slew footed Patrice Bergeron when the game was out of reach and Bergeron lost his Lucky Charms. You can't blame the guy. Skinner was a rat bastard all game - basically Carolina's Brad Marchand - and it pissed Bergeron off. It was a blatant attempt to hurt someone. Bergy never gets upset like that unless its an attempt to hurt him, again referring to the Josh Gorges fight. 

Here's the video evidence (and slo-mo provided by dafoomie, who you all should subscribe to on YouTube)

Fuck you Jeff Skinner. Karma is a bitch. 

Holy jeebus that was an exciting game. Bruins blew two leads including a two-goal lead only to cocktease the Carolina Hurricanes and win 5-3. It was Anton Khudobin's first start of the season and he did exactly what the Bruins needed him to do -- be solid, make some big saves and let Tuukka Rask rest up for tomorrow's home game against the NJ Devils. Mission accomplished. Khudobin made 20 saves in his season debut.

The Bruins odd-man units also came up huge for the Bruins today. They killed off seven penalties against Carolina, making that 23 straight killed off penalties in a row. On top of that, they netted their first short handed goal of the season. And On Top Of That, they scored their second and third power play goals of the season.

It wasn't all smiles and sunshines in the game, though, as they did blow a nice two goal lead, took a shit ton of penalties and had a few bad turnovers. Still the team improved to 4-0-1 which puts them on top of the Eastern Conference.

After the jump, Positivies, Negatives and Lingering Questions...

Every day, we have a "Staff chat" on GChat where we shoot the shit about things that have no reason to ever see the light of day. Most of the time it has to do with video games or comic books or something completely offbase that would have the FBI or CIA knocking at our door. Today, though, Justin posed a question that I felt would be perfect for our first round table of the year. 

"What's worse -- the Bruins third line or the Bruins PP?"

Now, it's no secret that the Bruins power play has been a complete disaster. You can head to NHL.com and look at the stats and see that the Bruins currently rank 29th in the NHL with a 5% success when up a man. This also conincides with a Bruins team that has been bad on the power play for a few years. I recently looked at the Bruins offense and power play in the recent seasons: 

So we're not talking about a power play that has been lights out for years and has suddenly fizzled, we're talking about a power play that has consistently been in the bottom half of the league (outside of 2008-2009 [Hello Marc Savard]).

When this season began, not many people believed that the power play would improve past their 15th rank last year. You're bringing back the same team with a few relative changes. What caught people by surprise has been the play of the Bruins 3rd line. The 3rd line as been relatively atrocious since the season began. 

Yikes. How bad is this line playing right now? 13 combined shots in 4 games, a minus 8 and they all (almost) play 13 minutes a game. The fucked up thing about this? Bourque averages 3 minutes on the power play too.

So we threw the question out to the group and this is what came back...