What more could a Bruins fan ask for? Marc Savard signed a cheap long term contract, Marco Sturm got his goal-scoring touch back, and a Bruins win that didn’t require overtime or a shootout! The Bruins defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday night at the TD Garden by a score of 4-1.
At 11:30am on Wednesday, Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli finally revealed the worst kept secret in hockey over the last week or so when he announced that the team resigned their leading point scorer of the last three seasons, Marc Savard, to a seven year/$28 million contract. Chiarelli stressed numerous times how Savard wanted to be here and felt as though this team was headed in the right direction, and that he was willing to not take a lesser contract so that Chiarelli will be able to re-up more contracts for major team components over the next year or so (Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara are both up after 2010-2011). I feel as though Chiarelli kept praising Savard for his unselfishness in spite of Phil Ke$$el, who will be returning to the Garden this coming Saturday. Chiarelli has made it clear that he wants players who want to be here. Savard has done a complete 180 since coming to Boston. When arriving here in 2006, he had a reputation of being a very selfish, one-dimensional player who didn’t want to backcheck and play defense. Under the tutelage of Claude Julien, Savard has changed his game and has become one of the best all around players in the game. Savard will make $7 million for each of the next two seasons and will be owed $14 million for the remaining 5 seasons, so it really works out in this tight salary cap era. Words cannot describe how excited I am to have Savard in the fold for the next seven seasons. I’ve always been a huge Savard fan and just recently purchased his Winter Classic jersey on eBay for a good bargain.
Once at the Garden, I received a very nice text message as my buddy Mike let me know during the warmup that I join him at his seats in the 4th row at the faceoff circle where the Bruins shoot twice. I love his seats; the only negative thing is that you can’t see all the way in the far corner, but I had a great view of both nets and the reflection from the glass was hardly an issue, although after all, isn’t that what the Jumbotron is for? The Bruins jumped on the board first on the powerplay with a goal from who else?...Marc Savard! Zdeno Chara fired a shot from the point which was deflected wide by Tampa Bay goalie Mike Smith; Savard went around the net and backhanded it off Smith’s skate and into the net, netting his 200th career NHL goal. The B’s added to the their lead as Mark Recchi (who had one of his best games of the season with 3 assists and looked about 20 years younger than his 41 years) worked hard along the boards to get the puck back to Chara, who then fired a shot on Mike Smith, and Patrice Bergeron picked up the garbage in front of the net to put home the rebound and make it 2-0. The Bruins went into the room up 2 goals. It very easily could have been 2-1 if it wasn’t for Tim Thomas making a great acrobatic save going post-to-post to rob Jeff Halpern point blank. Timmy Thomas seems to be back and that’s a good really good sign; he ultimately finished the night with 39 saves.
The Bruins carried their strong play through the 2nd period as the crazy German, Marco Sturm, has hopefully found his goal scoring touch once again by scoring two goals in a span of 2:33. His first goal was clearly hard work by him, Recchi, and Bergeron. Sturm fired the initial shot and Recchi tried taking a whack at the rebound, but Sturm kept going to the net and was able to poke his stick in there and force it over the goal line. If it wasn’t for Sturm’s excited fist pump, based on my view I would have thought that Recchi got the goal; I’m sure if I had been in my actual seat in 325, I probably would have known all along that Sturm got it. They announced it over the PA as Sturm’s goal and never changed it. Sturm made it a 4 goal lead as Mark Recchi battled Andrej Meszaros along the boards, stripped the puck from him, and fed Bergeron, who went in on a 2 on 1 with Sturm before Sturm finished it off in style. I really think that Sturm will start scoring since he has had chemistry with Bergeron since arriving here in 2005. I don’t think Sturm is comfortable playing with Savard; he has had his chances and he just can’t score. Michael Ryder had the same problem. After two periods, the Bruins led Tampa Bay 4-0.
Tampa Bay got a goal in the first two minutes of the third period as Steve Downie made a nice pass to Jeff Halpern, took a shot and got his own rebound, and tucked it by Thomas to make 4-1. The Bruins didn’t let Tampa get back in the game, and they had many more scoring chances but couldn’t execute; I must say, it was nice to see the Bruins not sit back and get too cute sitting on a 3 goal third period lead. The win was definitely encouraging since they go to Montreal on Friday night, followed by the much anticipated return of Phil Kessel to the Garden on Saturday. I’m sure I will have a lot to talk about for that game.
The Line Combinations were as follows…
- Blake Wheeler-Marc Savard-Byron Bitz
- Marco Sturm-Patrice Bergeron-Mark Recchi
- Vladimir Sobotka-David Krejci-Michael Ryder
- Daniel Paille-Steve Begin-Shawn Thornton
- Zdeno Chara-Derek Morris
- Dennis Wideman-Andrew Ference
- Mark Stuart-Matt Hunwick
Scoring Summary…
- BOS: Marc Savard assisted by Zdeno Chara and Derek Morris (PPG)
- BOS: Patrice Bergeron assisted by Mark Recchi and Zdeno Chara
- BOS: Marco Sturm assisted by Mark Recchi and Patrice Bergeron
- BOS: Marco Sturm assisted by Mark Recchi and Patrice Bergeron
- TBL: Jeff Halpern assisted by Steve Downie and Ryan Malone
Bruins Goal Videos (there will be a Christmas theme throughout December home games)...
- Savard: Will Ferrell scoring a goal in Elf
- Bergeron: Chris Farley dancing dressed as Santa Claus
- Sturm: Spartan cheerleaders from SNL
- Sturm: The Heat Miser and Snow Miser from A Christmas Without Santa Claus
Warmup Music…
- Jay-Z - “One Republic”
- Chamillionaire - “Ridin' Dirty”
- The Game - “Superman”
- Eminem - “Lose Yourself”
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment