Posted by Joe Haggerty

Marc Savard is pretty pumped about his 600th career point in the NHL

Who would have ever dared to hazard the thought that this nice little Bruins hockey team could start turning into one of the Eastern Conference powers?

Well…that’s exactly what’s happening right now out on the Frozen Sheet on Causeway Street, and the Big, Bad, B’s continued to throw out some impressive offensive haymakers in a 7-4 win over the Buffalo Sabres. The Bruins are now on a remarkable 7-0-1 streak in their last eight games, and haven’t lost a game in regulation since before Halloween. One year ago, the Bruins stressed, struggled and scraped their way to a playoff berth while allowing more goals (222) than they actually scored (212) over the course of the 82 game season — the only NHL team last season with that dubious distinction to make the postseason.

But this year’s edition of the Black and Gold resembles last year only in defensive grit and tenacity along with superior goaltending, and amazingly they are the third highest scoring team in the NHL this season with 62 goals scored in 19 games played (3.26 goals per game). The only teams with higher scoring output, you ask? The defending Stanley Cup Champion and goal-churning machine known as the Detroit Red Wings with 64 goals in 17 games, and the Western Conference-leading Jumbo Joe Thornton and his amazing San Jose Sharks with 73 goals scored in 20 games. 

“That’s certainly something that we didn’t have last year,” said Julien, referring to the lamp-lighting wattage needed to recover from two or three goal deficits that happen across the NHL landscape. “Scoring certainly helps us get back in those type of games. Tonight was one of those situations where we did a lot of things we weren’t supposed to be doing and that we talked about, and you just hope it was one of those reality check situations.”

The scoring balance along the stat sheet has been amazing for a B’s team that currently has seven guys on pace for 40 plus points this season after having only three players (Marc Savard, Zdeno Chara, Marco Sturm) eclipse that mark last season with only two players potting at least 20 goals (Sturm and Chuck Kobasew). This season the Bruins have six, count ‘em, six players that are on pace for 20 goal seasons, and they’ve truly established a balanced lineup that can sting you with each of their top three lines — and all four on the days that Kobasew brings his can’t-teach-it-scoring-skills to the energy line with Shawn Thornton and Stephane Yelle.

“It seems like we can play any style right now and win hockey games,” said Savard. “We scored a lot of goals [tonight] and it seemed like last year if we gave up a high amount [of goals] then we weren’t going to win the game.

“This year if it gets high then we can win them,” added Savard. “We obviously want to win them all 2-1, but we had to win 7-4 tonight.

One thing that is called is an embarrassment of newfound offense, and it’s a credit to A) the Hockey Tao of Claude Julien and the frothy fervor with which the players are buying into it, B) the maturation of a handful of up-and-coming offensive players in their second and third seasons in the National Hockey League, and C) the fact that Marc Savard is truly playing at an elite level while ranking among the NHL’s top in points (25), assists (18) and +/- (+12) while continuing to wow those in Calgary and Atlanta that felt he was a one-dimensional playmaker incapable of being anything more than a — in the parlance of our times — career creampuff.

Savard has bought into Julien’s philosophies and system fully, and that effort has not only made Savard an All-Star caliber player, but also brought him to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the very first time in his career last season.

“Probably one of the hardest things is to convince a player that if he plays both ends of the ice, he’s still going to get the same amount of success at the [offensive] end,” said Julien of Savard, who finished with a goal and three assists along with +1 in Wednesday night’s solid comeback win. “I think Savvy’s stats have not been hurt by any means by playing a good, two-way game. He’s certainly been a plus player. He’s certainly been a reliable player defensively where we’ve used him on important draws. He’s killing penalties now.

“All of a sudden the player starts taking pride in it,” added Julien. “I’ve seen some of his backchecks this year where he’s buried his head and come back hard and that’s something that people who follow Savvy didn’t see that often or that consistently. That’s about pride. He’s at the stage where he enjos doing it, he sees the results he gets from it, and the praise he gets from it also.”

The results from Savard have also boosted his linemates as Phil Kessel looks fully capable of putting together a 40-goal season this year, and The Looch Ness Monster is on pace for nearly 50 points while also boasting a respectable +8 thus far this season. All of the teamwork allowed Savard to reach personal milestone Wednesday night as he collected his 600th career point on his third assist and fourth point of the night on Kessel’s third period goal.

The three (Savard, Lucic, Kessel) have combined for an amazing +16 in their last four games with all three forming into an offesnively dominant, defensively responsible bunch. With Looch pounding unsuspecting bodies into the boards, he’s created loads of space for both playmakers to do their thing on the ice, and both smaller players have found ample space to roam and create this fall.

“I’m having the most fun that I’ve ever had in my career right now, and I attribute that to my linemates and my team. They’re a great bunch of guys,” said Savard. “I feel great every night. Especially playing withthe two kids [Kessel, Lucic] it makes me feel young again, even though I look younger than both of them.

Julien is putting the band back together

Julien has mentioned several times how dominant the line of David Krejci, Chuck Kobasew and Blake Wheeler appeared to be during the Bruins’ last preseason game and first regular season game in Colorado, and he chose to reunite the top-performing trio last night. The three of them — put back together when Marco Sturm went down with an upper body injury that has made him “day-to-day” — accounted for three of Boston’s seven goals and kept the B’s in the game during the first period when the Sabres were throwing everything at them.

Krejci, Wheeler and Kobasew all finished the night with a disctinctive +3 next to their names, and Kobasew notched two more goals in the victory — giving the hard-working forward three goals and eight points in seven healthy games this season. Kobasew also slid right into Sturm’s place on the first power play unit and looked instantly comfortable on the ice with Chara, Bergeron, Savard and Michael Ryder.

Something tells me those three offensively gifted skaters will be staying together for the foreseeable future with Krejci’s puck skills, Wheelers size and hands and Kobasew’sunrelenting drives to the net will meld together into an effective, dangerous line for Julien. Krejci served up a perfect pass for Kobasew to redirect and score in the first period of Wednesday night’s win, and Kobasew’s second was the go-ahead goal in the second period on a nifty play hwere he fired the puck directly at the back of Ryan Miller’s pads.

The speeding piece of vulcanized rubber bounced off the back of Miller’s pads and right into the middle of the net — an example that things are clearly going the Bruins way in their current hot streak.   

“As far as I’m concerned the way our guys are playing, it’s hard to establish [which line] is ‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘three,’ and ‘four.’  We’re getting scoring from every line, what’s nice about it is that you can move guys around,” said Julien.  ”I reunited [David] Krejci with [Blake] Wheeler and [Chuck] Kobasew.  I thought the exhibition game and the first game in Colorado where that line was successful…it was a good time to put them back together.

Z starting to find the range

It’s been entertainingly noticeable to watch how much care that Chara has taken in practicing his one-time blasts from the point during the last few weeks of practice, and it looks as if all the different components to his booming, intimidating, one-of-a-kind slapper are starting to slowly come together. Big Z scored two goals power play goals on one-timers from the point in the second period of Wednesday’s win, and both whistling slappers sped past Ryan Miller’s shoulder in the top shelf of the net.

Z shoots, Z scores...

Many, correctly so, opined that Chara’s shot didn’t seem to have the same breathtaking velocity early this season after the big defenseman underwent labrum shoulder surgery in the offseason, but the 31-year-old has slowly regained his boomer. The Big Gun was on full display last night for the first time in recent memory, and should add a big threat to the first power play unit.

“I think it was nice to see him not just shoot but also score and find his range, and that’s going to do tons for his confidence,” said Julien. “You hope that that continues to happen.  We’ve been encouraging him to shoot more: one thing was to shoot and another was to hit the range.  There were times where he was missing the net, and tonight he got rewarded for hitting the net.”

Chara was predictably reluctant to accept all the praise for himself despite the two-goal effort, and instead deferred to the teammates that set him up — including Patrice Bergeron’s 200th career point on Chara’s first scoring blast that tied the game 4-4 in the second period.

“It’s nice to get some goals but the guys did a really good job putting the puck back to me and obviously we had really good traffic in front there,” said Chara. ”Kobasew also did an outstanding job and so did everybody else. It’s a unit of five, it’s not just one guy, but I was glad that we got some goals on power plays.”

Posted by Mike Petraglia

One sign of a really good team that believes it can go deep into the playoffs is finding out early in the season that it can win games in many different ways. The Boston Bruins are proving just that. They won back-to-back 1-0 games against Edmonton and Vancouver. They won a hard-fought 3-2 decision on the road on Monday night in Toronto. They lost defenseman Andrew Ference with a fractured right leg and were without Marco Sturm, out with an upper body injury. And, to the admission of center Marc Savard, they came out sluggish on Wednesday night against Buffalo after getting a day off on Tuesday. After falling behind 4-2 midway through the first period, the light went on, the red light behind Sabres goalie Ryan Miller - five straight times to be exact as the Bruins prevailed 7-4, their 10th win in 12 games, a stretch that has seen them capture 21 of a possible 24 points.

Zdeno Chara scored twice on the power play with two haymaker slap shots from the point.

Chara said the team is happy but not satisfied right now with the way they’re winning games.

Head coach Claude Julien is happy that Chara broke out with a big night.

Julien said it wasn’t a beautiful win but he’ll take it.

Patrice Bergeron said the team overcame slow start.

Bergeron on winning 10 games in a 12-game stretch.

Posted by Joe Haggerty

In an entirely expected move, Boston Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli announced before Wednesday night’s game that the club has recalled 22-year-old defenseman Matt Lashoff from the Providence Bruins (American Hockey League) and placed defenseman Andrew Ference on injured reserve. Lashoff has played in 15 games this season for Providence and has posted 3-10=13 totals and 21 penalty minutes. Ference is expected to be 6-8 weeks with a broken right tibia.

Lashoff is considered a highly-skilled offensive defenseman and potential power play specialist with skills and instincts tailor-made to quarterback the power play. He hasn’t been gritty enough, productive enough or defensively responsible enough, however, in coach Claude Julien’s system to stick with the Big Boy B’s.

 But the kid still has a world of potential on a team with limited blueline depth, and this will constitute another opportunity for Lashoff to show his stuff before Chiarelli is forced to venture out into the unpredictable trade market for another puck-moving top-line defenseman.

“We’ll see how things go in practice and we’ll see if [Lashoff gets in the lineup],” said Julien. “He’s one of those guys who should move the puck and offensively he’s very gifted. We told him when he went down [to Providence] to work on the other part of his game defensively,” said Julien. “He needs to win battles and compete in his own end, and the rest of it will follow. We’ll look at him practice and see how he does, and who knows…eventually we may see him in there.” 

Here’s a little piece of youtube evidence that shows off the offensive skill set of Lashoff, who wasn’t in the Garden early enough to potentially crack Wednesday night’s lineup and likely wouldn’t have suited up above Shane Hnidy anyway:

Posted by James Stewart

5. This link about payment on an overdue bill…

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665847

If it could only be that easy! How do the art people make money? I need a big time education on selling art.

4. Brock Lesner becoming the first man to win a  Wrestling and UFC Heavyweight Championship.

3. Finding out who’s broadcasting the Patriots game on Sundays.

For someone who only goes to one game a year, Michael Berger finding this website a few weeks ago was huge. I consider who the network selects for an announce team tells me if the NFL thinks it’s a good game. Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf are solid in the booth. As Patriots fans we’ve been spoiled with Jim Nantz and Phil Simms on a near weekly basis.

http://www.the506.com/nflmaps/index.html

2. How much Jack Edwards talks…

Chach actually blogged about this last week, but it deems repeating. Jack Edwards talks WAY too much for a TV play by play man. I’m not sure if Andy Brickley is the Remy of hockey and if he is, you’d never know it because he can’t get a word in edgewise. This isn’t Sportscenter, every line out of your mouth doesn’t need to be “cute”, “it’s a shooting gallery out there”. He just sounds fake. I’ll take letting Brickley talk, “up along the dasher boards”, good fight calls and “SCORE!” for the home games any day of the week. (The Boston Globe is 17% share holders of the er.. I mean Jimmy Stewart is one of the producers for the Dale Arnold and Michael Holley Show, heard 10-2 on WEEI.)

1. That the Red Sox might not have gotten enough for Coco Crisp…

Michael Holley and I were debating the value of Coco Crisp during one of the breaks. If Theo says only two teams showed interest in Coco, I tend to believe him. He doesn’t share that kind of information so openly. Peter Gammons blogged about the Reds being the other team that showed interest. I even admit that sometimes I overvalue hometown players, in this case I think Coco Crisp could have brought back a catcher from Texas. I put more value on that, than a right handed pitcher who’s had one REALLY good season in the majors. I defer to the baseball people to prove me wrong.

What Coco will do for the Royals is hit second, slap the ball into the gap producing doubles and triples, run down everything in center and steal 20-30 bases. He has 6 career triples at Royals Stadium, the most in any ballpark. He will help a team that Dayton Moore is trying very hard to improve the Atlanta Braves way.

Thoughts, Questions, Comments can be left below or sent to jstewart850@yahoo.com.

Posted by Joe Zarbano

Laughter really is the best medicine! The Cam Neely foundation held the 14th Annual Comics Come Home benefit this past Saturday with proceeds going directly to cancer patients and research. Cam Neely and his brother Scott started the foundation in 1995 after both their parents passed away from cancer. The Comics Come Home Benefit is the longest running comedy fund-raiser in the country.

Denis Leary and Cam Neely at the Benefit (Photo from the Boston Herald)

 The show was hosted by Denis Leary and was filled with A-list comedians such as Lenny Clark, Jim Bruer, Anthony Clark, Patrice Oneal, Al Madrigal, and Mike Destefano. Denis Leary kicked off the show with a hilarious parody of the Rolling Stones song “Miss You” intended as a goodbye song for President Bush! Check out the video below along with some interviews with Lenny Clarke and the Neely brothers.

Posted by Alex Speier

Coco Crisp just concluded a conference call, and declared himself excited for the opportunity to return to the American League Central and resume his career as an everyday player with the Kansas City Royals.

“My agent told me that there was a possible trade in the works within this week. All that waiting and anticipating to see where you go or even whether it happens kind of keeps you on edge. When I finally got the news that I was going to Kansas City, I was excited,” said Crisp. “It kind of woke me up. It was kind of early around here, about 7 in the morning. I wasn’t fully awake yet.”

Crisp described his experience in Boston as “bittersweet.” The opportunity to play for a World Series winner and in a baseball-crazed market were unquestionable positive experiences.

Still, there was a sense of some disappointment with how the tenure had gone. When he arrived, he was coming into his own as a member of the Indians, but things got off to an ominous start when he broke his left index finger in his first week with the Red Sox. From there, he dealt with a variety of injuries that limited his performance, as Crisp hit .271 with a .330 OBP and .390 slugging mark with the Sox.

“It was a learning experience, definitely. That’s first and foremost how I’d classify it,” said Crisp. “On the field and off the field, it helped me grow.The one negative thing aspect that came out of the whole thing was that I was plagued by nagging injuries pretty much the whole time I was there, except a month here and a month there and towards the end of (the 2008) season…It’s been an up and down ride. Most of the time, I’ve enjoyed myself over there, even though it was difficult.”

Crisp believes that both he and Jacoby Ellsbury stand to benefit from the increase in playing time, and the fact that they both will assume everyday roles as centerfielders.

“Ellsbury is a young guy who is coming to that day and age where he needs the opportunity to play everyday for everybody to know exactly what he can bring to the table,” said Crisp. “We didn’t get a full idea of what he was capable of. You can kind of tell, but I think this year coming up, with him playing everyday, hopefully he’ll have a great season and be able to show everybody that he’s going to be in the big leagues for a very long as a premier player in the big leagues.

“It’s nice for me to move aside and get out of the way, and for the Red Sox to allow this to happen by trading me and allowing me the opportunity to come to a team where I now have the opportunity to play everyday instead of being a filler guy—even though I got a lot of playing time last year due to other guys going down and being injured,” said Crisp. “I’m getting an opportunity to show everybody exactly what I’m capable of. I’m happy for that opportunity.”

Posted by Mike Petraglia

Consider these the Dog Days of the NFL season.

Players are beat up and coaches are tired. Anyone with a mathematical chance of playing in January is doing whatever is necessary to carry themselves into the final month of the season.

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And in Foxboro - more specifically the Patriots locker room, there’s something else in the air. Quiet. Only a handful of players spoke on Wednesday, which is usually a heavy volume day when it comes to players talking about the upcoming game.

Wes Welker, Pierre Woods and Mike Wright were among those to talk. This is not meant as criticism but merely fact.

As players get extra treatment in the hot tub and coaches hold position meetings, we, the media hordes, usually wait around in the locker room for player availability. It just so happened that on this Wednesday, one could not escape the unmistakeable ‘bunker mentality’ feel.

That feel may come from the knowledge that the players realize their season could very well be on the line this Sunday in South Florida against the Dolphins. It could also be that none of them want to waste time adding to the silly ‘Joey Porter gets no love from the Patriots’ theme that has been dialed up by none other than Peezie himself. (credit Brandon Marshall with that one) or it could just be that they don’t want to have to answer another question about ‘Wildcat’ football unless it’s Tedy Bruschi talking about his alma mater.

Speaking of college pride, the Patriots locker room boasts two proud Texas Tech alums, running back Sammy Morris and wide receiver Wes Welker, who was wearing a nifty-looking Red Raiders skull cap as he prepared to go out to practice. As we were struggling to find new and different questions about the Dolphins, Welker even did us the favor of asking, “No questions about my hat? How about the Red Raiders?!”

He had these words of encouragement for his No. 2 Red Raiders as they play at No. 5 Oklahoma on Saturday.

“This is going to be a tough game for us, with Tech going into Norman (Oklahoma), it’s going to be a tough one. We’re excited and I know all the fans are excited and everyone I’ve been talking to back in Oklahoma and Texas are really excited. We’re going to have to bring out best game to match up against them. They’re playing some good ball right now.”

Asked which game is more important to him, he didn’t hesitate.

“That goes without saying. I definitely have to take care of my end. I’m just a fan now, just a proud alum now.”