On an elimination game when you want your best players and your captains to lead the way,  John Tortorella scratched alternative-captain and $60M man Brad Richards for tonight's game. Yowzer. From the Rangers Rants:

“I’m surprised, I guess,” said Richards, who turned 33 on May 2 and is still owed $36 million through 2020. “I’m disappointed.”

… Richards said Tortorella called him this morning at home with the news. “Nothing’s over,” Richards said. “Work harder and try my best to never let it happen again.”

Via telephone? Really? Tortz didn't have the balls to tell Richards this to his face? Awful.

Don't like that pun in the headline?

Here we go ladies and fellas. Bruins could close out the sweep against the Rangers tonight with a win. Lots of pressure on NY to pull a rabbit out of their asses.

It'll also be nice to see the Bruins close this series out. Get the sweep and heal up your bodies because it's looking like a Bruins-Pens finals and that will be a bruister of a conference finals and not just because we'd have to listen to NBC suck Crosby's dick the entire time. Speaking of the Pens, they scored 7 goals last night by David Krejci is still leading the post-season point totals.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves quite yet. We shouldn't expect the Rangers to go away quietly. They'll be desperate and they'll be firing on all cylinders all game. Best thing the Bruins can do is score early. Get a few goals in the first and really turn the heat on Lundqvist and the Rangers. Force them to make stupid passes and capitalize.

Johnny Boychuk continues to be a post-season beast for the Bruins. Fun fact: has more goals these playoffs than Tyler Seguin, Rick Nash, Jaromir Jagr, Brad Richards, Anze Kopitar & Corey Perry combined. Holy smokes.

We're also expecting the Merlot Line to continue to be awesome. Some people like to shit on them 'cause they're not high power goal scorers but that line gives all they have every shift. They bang bodies and dig hard in the corners for the puck. They might not score a ton but they're a big reason why the Bruins will get momentum and score a shift or two later.

They've been all over the Rangers and NY has no idea what to do.

More after the jump...

Don't ask how we found this... ok, go ahead and ask. But we're pretty sure this is Patrice Bergeron modeling as a pirate for a trash romance novel.

First a Selke nomination and now a Golden Heart Award Finalist. What a year Bergy is having.

Man, who are these Boston Bruins? We've gone from the brink of elimination to up 3-0 in the semifinals and playing great despite playing two teams out there - the New York Rangers and the NHL referees. Seriously, this was possibly one of the worst officiated games I've ever watched and that's saying something given the current state of officiating. 

This game had the narrative pretty much written. It was your classic "Bruins dominate everywhere but the scorebord" game because Henrik Lundqvist was sensational tonight. I wrote in the preview that Lundqvist was going to steal games and he almost did tonight. 

Almost. 

There's something wrong with him and the Bruins can use it to their advantage (and they have). Outside of a good first period for New York, Boston dictated play. They put more shots on goal in the second period (14) than New York did in the second and third period combined (13). 

Then there was the amount of blood that was left on the ice. How many guys got cut in that game? It was like a god damn 1985 Royal Rumble. All we needed was Shawn Thornton to get DDT'd by Mike Del Zotto and then pull a smaller razor out of his gloves and blade. It would have just made everything perfect. 

Despite the win, it wasn't a great game by Boston. You can put a lot of that on Lundqvist, who again was good tonight. Jesus, I'm writing a Bruins recap and all I can do is write about Lundqvist. I'm like Pierre McGuire only I'm not flossing my teeth with Swedish pubes. 

Well let's get to the good stuff. 

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

The Bruins have a chance to take a commanding 3-0 series lead and potentially put a stake in the hearts of the Rangers. The thing we can't forget here is that the Rangers have been down 0-2 in a series this year and then came back to win 4 out of the last 5. Also, Boston has lost a 3-0 series lead before. And I'm pretty sure that Henrik Lundqvist isn't going to play as horribly has he has the past two games. I just can't fathom it. I can't picture him being horrible for an entire series. 

He's to good to do that. 

I expect the Rangers to come out and play with some desperation tonight. Losing tonight, at home, and playing another poor game of hockey will probably crush this team. A lot of people are speculating that they're tuning out Tortorella because he's a fucking child with a mustache. Seriously. Who goes on national television and tells the media that a guy stinks because he's too jittery? Because he's god damn jitterbug. Who says that? 

What's that supposed to do? Fire the guy up? 

I'm sure Torts doesn't verbally abuse his players all season (but I'm probably wrong) and I'm sure he saves his dickish stuff for the media, but at some point his players are going to tune him out right? In Game 2 the Rangers looked like they weren't even trying. They didn't look like they were into the game at all, especially in the third period. That was Bruins-esque in terms of not caring. 

I hope that Boston takes care of business tonight. It wouldn't surprise me if they came out and played terribly, because the Bruins will do Bruins things like that from time to time. I mean, I know Game 2 was great, but they still had 16 turnovers. Dougie Hamilton was horrible on both Ranger goals, especially the first one.

I think Seidenberg is going to be in the lineup tonight, which should solve the Hamilton issue. He's just not playoff ready. It will come with time. 

While Seidenberg may come back, the search for Tyler Seguin and Jaromir Jagr continues. I'm done predicting that either of these guys will do anything, because it's obvious it's not going to happen. Jagr can't stay on the ice for more than 30 seconds at a time towards the end of a period. Tyler Seguin can't fucking deke around someone without losing the puck. 

Seguin is playing with two corpses. Seriously, it's fucking Corpses on Ice out there. Chris Kelly, outside of taking faceoffs, has been rendered utterly useless. 0-0-0 -5 in the playoffs so far. Nine games and nothing. Rich Peverley: 1-0-1 -3 in 8 games. Tyler Seguin: 0-1-1. -2 in 9 games. Pathetic. 

They're fucking pathetic! And Seguin leads the team in shots with 35. 

I hope the Bruins buy out Chris Kelly and Rich Peverley when the time comes. They have two amnesty clauses and it's obvious that neither guy deserves the contract that they were given. Yes given, not earned. I'll get more into this in the offseason when I do my "What Should The Bruins Do Now" type of post, but buying these two guys out give the Bruins $6M in cap space on top of the $6M they will already have and the possible $4M from Savard's contract should they long term injury reserve him again. 

(click the image for a larger res)

I mean, come on man. 

Still - Seguin and the rest of the Walking Dead on the third line need to wake up. 

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

The Bruins dominated the New York Rangers yesterday in a 5-2 beatdown. Two hours after the game ended, most players would be home resting or eating dinner with their families. 

Not Jaromir Jagr. 

Jagr was still on the Garden ice as of 8pm, skating with just his stick and a puck. 

He hasn't been playing that great and the guy is about as snake bitten as anyone not named Tyler Seguin can be, but man, you gotta love his dedication. It also helps that Massachusetts doesn't have any casinos in the area yet.

(S/T to Next Impluse Sports)

(Click the image for higher res photo)
 

Five. Five goallar. Five goallar Bruins gaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Suck it Rangers. Suck it Ryan Callahan. Suck it Henrik Softqvist. Suck it Rick Nash. Suck it Linda Cohn. Suck it Stan Fischler. 

Rask was a beast. Hey buddy, we already forgot. How many goals did your team score on Lundqvist while you were playing A LOT better than him again?

If we forgot you and you're a Rangers fan, suck it.

BUT THE RANGERS CAME BACK FROM BEING DOWN 0-2 AGAINST THE CAPITALS.

Yeah. But Tuukka Rask isn't a freaking sieve. Chara has more talent in his nose hair than the entire Washington defensive corps combined. Ovechkin is a terrible leader with no heart. Basically, the Bruins are the opposite of the Crapitals. 

Lick our collective buttholes.

Boston has a chance to step on the throats on the New York Rangers today. They say that a playoff series is never a real series until the home team loses, but I hope that doesn't happen until Game 3. Boston was the better team during Game 1, especially in overtime. Hank can come out and complain about his offense all he wants - it's not like Boston lit the scoreboard either. 

If anything, Lundqvist should be mad at himself. That Krug goal was softer than a sneaker full of newborn baby shit. 

But hey, I'm not one to complain about "the best goalie in the world" being as sharp as a Playschool kitchen knife. Like I said in the Game 1 recap, if the Bruins can take advantage of Hank being off, then they're in the driver's seat. He'll steal games, especially against a team where Braden Holtby and James Reimer stole games against them. 

What really sucks about this whole thing is that it's a fucking matinee game. Fuck NBC and their love for afternoon hockey on the weekends. The good news is that the Bruins were actually good in afternoon games this year. In 9 games, Boston was 6-3, which is a complete turn around from their usual awful pre-6pm games. 

But now the real questions start like: 

• What Bruins team are we going to see? 
• Will they have the Game 1 hustle or the Toronto Game 2 hustle? 
• Where the hell is Tyler Seguin? 
• Will the Bruins have a Red Bull IV attached to Jaromir Jagr?
• Will the Young Guns be be able to show up in consecutive games?

It's the same thing - the Bruins still haven't shown the ability to play consecutive 60 minute games. In fact, its debatable they have played one 60 minute hockey game this entire post season. I know the "Miracle on Causeway St" was unreal, but they were also down 4-1 and were playing like absolute dog shit. 

I still think that Boston can take it. The Rangers aren't a very good hockey team, especially until Tortorella. They played timid in the first game, especially in the first period, like they were scared to give anything up. They never really attacked Boston, which is surprising because Boston's defense should have been easily exploitable given their youth. 

But if New York wants to worry about collapsing in the defensive zone and blocking shots instead of actually putting shots on Rask, you won't hear me complaining. While we're on the topic of Rask, he wasn't particularly sharp in Game 1 either - especially on Stepan's goal. 

But hey, you can't lean on your goalie in every game. Sometimes you need to actually need to do something for yourself, which was what the Bruins did on Wednesday night. 

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

So thanks to Dan Ryan for coming up with the idea of the "Overly-Attached Chara" meme, we decided to have a quick photoshop expo for our readers. The last time we did one, it was a huge success. So let's get to the memes, shall me? 

Here was the original picture:

(Note, there's a lot of images so if you have slow internet - you may want to welcome yourself to 2013). 

Thanks to everyone who sent in images. They were all pretty awesome. 

Oh dat Chara. 

Found at last minute I'm doing the recap and no PS at work so...YOLO

There were periods of that game last night where my have had to make sure I had a pulse because it was a snooze fest. This was what we were expecting in this series though because of the way these two teams play. Their style is so similar that it leads to a boring, shot blocking type of hockey game. Oh well. There's only one piece of advice I can give you: 

Seriously. Remember the Capitals series last year? It'll be relatively the same thing. Low scoring games that will more than likely go into overtime. Last night's game had 50 total blocked shots, 29 blocked by the Rangers and 21 blocked by the Bruins. It's just going to happen. With all of that said, the Bruins took game 1 home in overtime because Henrik Lundvist let in some of the softest goals I've ever seen him allow. 

It was bad for him, great for the rest of us. 

Seriously - Lundqvist was not sharp last night and the Bruins capitalized on it. Good teams do that. Good teams beat good goalies when they aren't sharp. We all know Lundqvist has the ability to steal hockey games and he probably will, which makes my point even more crucial. 

Then there were the Bruins' Young Guns who stepped up last night. 

After the jump, the rest of the recap...