Is it time to panic yet? What is going on with the Bruins? Three games into the season and I'm already starting to get annoyed. The Bruins completely laid an egg versus the Anaheim Ducks two nights ago at the TD Garden. It looked as though they were building off of their strong 7-2 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes when they came out flying in the first period and had 19 shots on a goal, and quality shots at that. What they ended up with was a 6-1 loss. The Bruins lost by 3 or more goals only once at home throughout the entire season last year; they've managed to do it twice already at home this season.
The Bruins jumped out to a 1-0 lead when Marco Sturm came streaking down the left side and took the feed from Marc Savard, blasting a slapshot five hole on Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller. It was Sturmy's 2nd goal of the season. The Bruins could have easily had 4 goals in the first period, but thanks to Jonas Hiller (who may I add is on all three of my fantasy hockey teams) it remained a 1 goal game. Hiller stood on his head and wound up with 33 saves on the night.
The Bruins came out for the second period not ready to compete with highflying Ducks. They got a little too undisciplined for my liking as Matt Hunwick and Marco Sturm received 2 minute minor penalties, giving Anaheim a 5 on 3 powerplay for 1 minute and 20 seconds; that didn't work out too well as the Finnish Flash, Teemu Selanne, potted 2 goals in 82 seconds of each other. For the first goal, Selanne took a half-slapper just inside the blueline and put it through Tim Thomas' legs as Anaheim power forward Ryan Getzlaf set a nice screen. A little under a minute and a half later, Selanne took the feed in from Saku Koivu, waited for Thomas to go down and start flopping around, and roofed a bankhand top shelf; that totally killed the mood for me. The ugliness continued as young sniper Corey Perry absolutely danced around Matt Hunwick and forced Thomas to try to come out his crease a little bit to cut down the angle. Perry had everyone fooled and he finally snapped it top shelf which led to me screaming at Hunwick for getting absolutely burned. At that point I was more than annoyed with what was going on out there on the ice.
The third period was just as pathetic as the second as the Ducks continued to pour it on. James Wisniewski sent an outlet pass to underachieving enigma Evgeny Artyukhin, and Artyuhkin blew right past Matt Hunwick and snapped a low wrist shot five hole on Thomas. Artyukhin is an absolute beast and has a good 70 pounds on Hunwick, so Hunwick was definetely outmatched, but I will be very curious to see if Claude Julien dresses Johnny Boychuk, our 7th defenseman, tonight against the New York Islanders. Hunwick had a really tough game; he's young and he may need a seat on the 9th floor with assistant coach and former NHL defenseman Doug Houda to try and figure out what he's doing wrong. Don't get wrong, I'm a big Hunwick fan, but I know he had kind of a shaky camp and he may just need a game or two off. Boychuk has a one way contract which means that he can't be sent down, so it's not doing him much good just sitting up in the press box every night; after all, he was the leading scorer among AHL defenseman last season.
Back to the game... Sophomore sensation Bobby Ryan made it a 5-1 game as he redirected a Scott Niedermayer wrist shot from the blueline. That pretty much chased the Garden faithful out of the building and to the bars to catch the start of the Red Sox playoff game. Corey Perry finished off the scoring as he was sent away on a shorthanded breakaway and took a shot that Thomas originally stopped with his chest, but the puck pinballed back off Perry's head and into the back of the net; that was my cue to get out of there. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see Tuukka Rask make his season debut between the pipes tonight versus the Islanders, Thomas has let in some really bad goals and may need a breather, especially since this season's NHL schedule is hectic with all the games bunched up together due to the three week long Olympic break in February, so Thomas will need more rest then usual. The Bruins powerplay tonight was absolutely horrible; they went 0/6 and it was so bad that when they had two powerplays in the third period, Claude Julien had the 4th line of the powerplay in to send a strong message to our top forwards.
I really don't have any funny stories from inside the Garden, but when I was crossing the street after the game, I saw these college kids walking down the sidewalk and one of the kids put one of those large bright orange traffic detour barrels over his friend's head and the barrel went down to his knees; the kid had no idea where he was going, and he was walking into buildings and parking meters...you have to love student nights at the Garden!
The Line Combinations were as follows...
- Milan Lucic-Marc Savard-Marco Sturm
- Blake Wheeler-David Krejci-Michael Ryder
- Mark Recchi-Patrice Bergeron-Chuck Kobasew
- Shawn Thornton-Steve Begin-Byron Bitz
- Zdeno Chara-Derek Morris
- Dennis Wideman-Andrew Ference
- Mark Stuart-Matt Hunwick
Scoring Summary...
- BOS: Marco Sturm assisted by Dennis Wideman and Marc Savard
- ANA: Teemu Selanne assisted by Scott Niedermayer (PPG)
- ANA: Teemu Selanne assisted by Corey Perry and Saku Koivu (PPG)
- ANA: Corey Perry assisted by James Wisniewski
- ANA: Evgeny Artyukhin assisted by Joffrey Lupol and James Wisniewski
- ANA: Bobby Ryan assisted by Scott Niedermayer
- ANA: Corey Perry assisted by Joffrey Lupol (SHG)
Bruins goal video...
- Sturm - Carlton Banks of The Fresh Prince dancing
Warmup music...
- AC/DC - "Back in Black"
- Disturbed - "Indestructible"
- Linkin Park - "Give It Up"
- Rise Against - "Savior"
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