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...

Oh those Carolina Hurricanes. With the Jordan Staal trade at the draft and then signing Alexander Semin to that huge one year deal (worth $7M, are you for real?) on top of Skinner and Eric Staal, I thought they'd be good. Apparently I'm wrong because they aren't. They're an average, middle of the pack type of hockey team that hasn't found their flow yet. Either way, they're not as good as I thought. Then again, Semin. 

The 'Canes are 16th in offense (goals per game: 2.75) and 22nd in defense (3.25). Their power play is 23rd in the NHL with a 15% success rate, but it's still better than Boston who is 29th with a 5.9% conversion. 5.9%! There's a silver lining here, the Bruins aren't last like the LA Kings, who haven't converted a power play attempt yet. So I mean, woo? 

The good news is that the Bruins have a chance to score a power play goal tonight (lol optimism) because Carolina is trash on the penalty kill so far, killing only 77% of the penalties they take. Boston? 100% and perfect just like each one of you reading this. 

Carolina also has this guy: 

So now to ruin the rest of your day...Adam McQuaid is out of tonight's game sue to personal reasons and...

Wait for it...

Aaron Johnson is playing. 

I can already see him huffing and puffing on that 3rd pairing. It's giving me New York Rangers flashbacks. 

Part of me is hoping that we see Anton Khudobin tonight in net. I'd like to see what the kid can bring to the table. I know that Julien loves to ride the hot hand and Tuukka has been outstanding so far this season, but with a back-to-back coming up and New Jersey being the better all around team (better offense, much better defense, and a slightly better power play) you would think the more established guy would face the better team.

Then there's the argument that you want the rookie in net at home and not on the road, but I don't know if I can buy that. Between the pipes is between the pipes no matter where you're playing. Plus then I can use this photoshop more and more: 

Lines n stuff....

It wasn't pretty, but it's 2 points and in the end that's all that matters. The Bruins looked sloppy and sluggish throughout the game tonight and needed some luck (see: Campbell game tying goal) but eventually took control in the third period and beat the New York Islanders 4-2.

The Bruins fourth line really clicked tonight and played like the first line while the third line is disgustingly terrible. I'll go through everything when we break it down in Positives/Negatives/Lingering Questions. 

There's isn't much to say about this game as a whole. The Bruins did some things well (penalty kill, Hamilton) and they did some things terribly (power play) and but was basically average/ They played down to their opponent, which could be expected because coming off of an overtime game versus the Rangers could make anyone not give a shit. 

Let's be honest, it's the Islanders and Boston is known to play down to their opponent at times. It's like getting excited to perform a play in front of people and walk out to see 4 children sitting there. 

But like they say, two points is two points and the Bruins now lead the Eastern Conference with 7 of them. 

After the jump, lets break it down...

The Rangers put up some stupid post about "Women's Guide To Watch Hockey". Fuck that noise. Woman don't need a guide to watching hockey, but people new to the sport do. So welcome to DOY's "Newbie's Guide To Watching Bruins Hockey". 

1. Boo this man: 

And these guys: 

2. Love this guy: 

3. Destorychuk

4. Not tough:

Tough: 

5. Merlot:

Not the right merlot: 

6. Is Pie: 

Eats Pie: 

Rules: 

Captain: 

Also captain: 

Also Also Captain:

Angel: 

Devil: 

Saint: 

Youngins:

Also middle kid is unconfirmed to be Brian Scalabrine's kid. 

Finnish: 

Fin. 

Ever since Milan Lucic beat Ryan Miller out for a loose puck, the Buffalo Sabres and their fanbase have been crying out for more toughness, for more accountability. Apparently they realized that Patrick Kaleta is softer than a pool of Charmain Ultra. So what do they do? They hire that dude from the band Saliva and Brave Steve Ott. The idea was that those two would keep the big, mean bullies like the Bruins at bay... or something.

Anyways, apparently it's not working out too well for Buffalo. Last night, Nathan Gerbe got boarded pretty bad by Hurricane Drayson Bowman. SOme of his teammates decided to have a little lip action with Bowman. And then he gets manhandled by NHL referree Dan O'Halloran.

Damn. Hey, Sabres, how do you feel about all that?

After the game it's rumored thatn goaltender Ryan Miller called O'Halloran a "piece of shit" and then wrote some bad poetry about it.

Must suck when NHL refs are pushing your team around. Where was Who is John Scott and Brave Steve Ott when the Sabres needed them? Weren't they hired to deal with this exact thing? Once again someone takes advantage of a Sabre on the ice and no one does jack about it.

Oof.

The Bruins return to the Garden after their brief visit to New York. Against the Rangers the defense, well, looked like this:

We expect that to not happen again tonight against the NY Islanders. A Claude Julien team just doesn't have long stretches of awful defense like that. Expect tonight's defense to be a lot more like this:

The Islanders are currently doing pretty well. They're 2-1 and are 5th in the conference, 2nd in the Atlantic. They've lost to the Devils but beat Lightning and the Leafs and have netted 12 goals in three games -- most coming from Tampa and Toronto. They mustered just one goal against the Devils, so they've yet to put up great offensive numbers against teams with actual starting goaltenders and solid defenders.

Both teams PK is a perfect 100%. Boston's PP, as well all know, is asbysmal and sitting at 7%. The Islanders PP is 23%.

Boston has won 3 of the last 4 games against the Islanders. In those three games the Bs put up six goals. Be nice to see more of that tonight and maybe a few PPGs to make us all feel better about life.

In net for the Islanders is expected to be old Boston resident Rick DiPietro.

Rick DiPietro makes his season debut tonight for #Isles against Boston.

— Arthur Staple (@StapeNewsday) January 25, 2013

Insert injury joke here. And this.

Do you think DePietro forgets he's in the NHL sometimes?

More after the jump...

In case you haven't been either of the Bruins home games, here's the new 2013 Boston Bruins opening video to the tune if "The Boys are Back" by the Dropkick Murphys.

This might be the first Bruins opening video that doesn't include Lucic busting Van Ryn through glass from 2008.