What a night! A last minute luxury box hookup, a cameo on the Jumbotron, Rene Rancourt’s traditional drunken Christmas carols, running into Jack Edwards at the Mobil station on route 2, and a Bruins 6-4 win! What more can you ask for 2 days before Christmas?
When I left my house at 4:00 with my girlfriend Rebecca and long time friend Anthony, I totally envisioned myself sitting in 310, row 13 with Rebecca. When arriving to the Garden I found out that my friends, Ed and Nancy, who had given me their seats in 310 because they had tickets in a luxury box, decided they didn’t want them and that they would prefer sitting in their seats, so they gave their luxury box tickets to Rebecca and me. We were also treated to “hidden treasure” from my boy Rob who is on probation for giving out “hidden treasure” (hidden treasure is when he gives out extra chicken tenders but he puts them under the fries; he’s been doing that for years with me but finally got ratted out a few weeks ago and was put on probation). After the warmup, we proceeded up to the box which was located right above loge 20 at the faceoff dot with the Bruins coming at us once.
The Bruins jumped out to a 3 goal lead less than ten minutes into the contest. Marc Savard got the ball rolling as he received a diagonal pass from Zdeno Chara; Savvy then waited for goalie Ondrej Pavelec to commit and threaded the needle top shelf to make it 1-0. The Bruins made it a two goal lead 48 seconds later as Mark Recchi fired a dart of a pass from the faceoff dot to Daniel Paille and Paille redirected it home to make it 2-0…and they weren’t done! 20 seconds later, Shawn Thornton fed Vladimir Sobotka on a two on one, and Sobotka made it a 3-0 game! That's three goals in 1:08! Rebecca and I were on the Jumbotron after the Bruins goal video, and thankfully we weren’t making asses out of ourselves. My cell phone buzzed non stop for about five minutes as I received numerous text messages that I was spotted on the Jumbotron; I was also given props on facebook for it. Atlanta head coach John Anderson pulled Pavelec in favor of Johan Hedburg after the blitz of Bruins goals. Boston let Atlanta back in the game as Bryan Little fired a slapshot from just inside the blue line that beat Tim Thomas, and it was a really weak goal that Thomas let up. Shortly thereafter, Maxim Afinegenov made it a 1 goal game as he took the feed from Ilya Kovalchuk from behind the net and slid the puck through Tim Thomas’ pads to make it 3-2, which was the score going into the room after 1 period.
During the first intermission, Rene Rancourt kept one of the best Bruins traditions going as he enlightened us with his drunken holiday Christmas carols. Rene was rocking the Santa hat with his festive red vest and red socks for sure! He busted out “Jingle Bell Rock,” “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays,” “White Christmas,” and “Holly Jolly Christmas.” I think I was the only one in the building giving him a standing ovation. That is seriously one of the highlights of my Bruins season. I’ve been a huge Rene Rancourt fan since I started watching the Bruins in 1990. One year he was was standing on the bench and tried showing the crowd his socks, and he nearly fell off the bench! Back to the game; the Bruins had an early 5 on 3 powerplay to start off the second period, and they made it a 2 goal game as Zdeno Chara fired a slapshot from the point which was redirected a few times by Atlanta players. The score was 4-2 after 2 periods of play.
The Bruins thought they put the game away in the third on the powerplay as Michael Ryder made it a 5-2 game by backhanding home a goal from the slot after he picked up the garbage off a Patrice Bergeron one timer from the left point. Ryder has been the topic of recent trade talks depending on whether the Bruins are serious about making a late season push for Ilya Kovalchuk; I’m sure Peter Chiarelli would love nothing better than to unload that $4 million a year contract when Ryder hasn’t been producing on a consistent basis. Despite the Bruins' efforts, Atlanta wasn’t going away quietly as Colby Armstrong made a nifty pass from behind the net to 18 year old phenom Evander Kane, who put the puck through Tim Thomas’ five hole to cut it to a two goal deficit. Atlanta kept pouring it on less than two minutes later as Maxim Afinegenov sent Ilya Kovalchuk on a breakaway and Kovalchuk smoked Thomas to make it 5-4. I can’t recall a Bruins team having this much difficulty putting away teams. I was honestly waiting for Atlanta to tie it with Hedburg on the bench and with Atlanta’s 6th attacker on the ice, but thankfully, Patrice Bergeron iced the victory as he fired a shot from the blue line into the open net to secure the win. It wasn’t pretty, but I’ll take it.
On the way home, I stopped at the Mobil Station on Route 2 in Lincoln, MA to buy a bottle of water and who do I run into while there? Jack Edwards!!! I bumped into him, shook his hand and told him I am a huge fan; he was very excited, as you can quite imagine. I told him I had his fan club with me in the car and asked if he wouldn’t mind meeting them. He was all for it but told me he wanted to buy his coffee first. I was totally accommodating. We then discussed how funny he is with his famous calls, such as, “This building is vibrating!” I picked his brain about what it would take to get Ilya Kovalchuk to Boston because that has been the hot rumor all season since the Bruins are one of the best financially set teams under the cap and have a number of draft picks. He said it would take Blake Wheeler and a pick which I told him I was totally fine with since I voiced how I think Wheeler is an underachiever who I feel can do much more. Jack also pointed out that Kovalchuk has to commit to signing a 4-5 year extension with Boston before agreeing to be traded here since Russia is offering him $130M to play there and he needs to fit into Claude Julien’s system just as Mark Recchi did last season. We also did some Phil Kessel bashing because it was only right, and he said that Kessel didn’t want to play the system which was pretty evident. We also agreed that Chiarelli blew it when he traded Brad Boyes to St. Louis for Dennis Wideman. I also had to get him going about the Dallas game from last season since he was at his best that night, and I asked him about Steve Ott and he said, “Steve Ott is a sociopath! He should be behind bars for the safety of all of us.” Before heading home, he agreed to a photo-op, which was absolutely legendary as you can see:
The Line Combinations were as follows…
- Steve Begin-Marc Savard-Marco Sturm
- Blake Wheeler-David Krejci-Michael Ryder
- Daniel Paille-Patrice Bergeron-Mark Recchi
- Shawn Thornton-Vladimir Sobotka-Byron Bitz
- Dennis Wideman-Zdeno Chara
- Andrew Ference-Johnny Boychuk
- Matt Hunwick-Adam McQuaid
Scoring Summary…
- BOS: Marc Savard assisted by Dennis Wideman and Zdeno Chara (PPG)
- BOS: Daniel Paille assisted by Steve Begin and Mark Recchi
- BOS: Vladimir Sobotka assisted by Shawn Thornton and Matt Hunwick
- ATL: Bryan Little assisted by Maxim Afinegenov
- ATL: Maxim Afinegenov assisted by Zach Bogosian and Ilya Kovalchuk
- BOS: Zdeno Chara assisted by Dennis Wideman and Marc Savard (PPG)
- BOS: Michael Ryder assisted by Patrice Bergeron and Marc Savard (PPG)
- ATL: Evander Kane assisted by Todd White and Colby Armstrong
- ATL: Ilya Kovalchuk assisted by Maxim Afinegenov and Nik Antropov
- BOS: Patrice Bergeron assisted by Mark Recchi and Zdeno Chara
Bruins goal videos…
- Savard: The Snow Miser from A Christmas Without Santa Claus
- Paille: Chris Farley dancing dressed as Santa Claus on SNL
- Sobotka: Will Ferrell scoring a goal and celebrating in Elf
- Chara: The Heat Miser from A Christmas Without Santa Claus
- Ryder: The Spartan Cheerleaders from SNL
- Bergeron: The dancing bear
Warmup music...
- Jay-Z feat. Lil Wayne - “One Republic”
- Kanye West - “Stronger”
- The Game - “Superman”
- Rihanna feat. Jay-Z - “Run This Town”
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