B's vs Montreal and Canucks..

We have a lot to catch up on here. It took me a while to get over the B's game this past weekend against the Canucks, but I think I am finally of sound mind to discuss it without being too biased. First off, if you are a hockey fan that game was hockey porn, yes even with the Bruins losing. You could just feel the hatred leading up to the game and it didnt take long for it to show during the game. If you dont mind I would like to run through the key moments in this game, give you my opinions and then hopefully you will share yours..

The 7 on 7 scrum (or as Jack Edwards says 8 on 8 but I count 7) 5 minutes into the game..
If any of you haven't seen it I have posted the video above which basically runs thru all of the key moments in the game there it's too much for me to touch on all of it.. So this pig pile led to following, Milan Lucic was ejected for the rest of the game for "leaving the bench to fight" and the Bruin's were short handed 2 men leaving the Vancouver with 2 full minutes of 5 on 3. Now watch the video again and tell me if that makes any sense. This all started with Thornton and Borrows going 1 on 1 and then turned into 7 on 1 as 6 other Canucks dove onto Thornton knowing that Borrows could never stand up for himself, after a couple seconds the Bruins responded they did their best imitation of superman flying into the pile to pull all of the Canucks off of the Thornton. The reason that there was so many players on the ice was because both teams were in a line change. Milan Lucic was one of the players that had just come on the ice during the line change right before the scrum started. When the scrum started he realized that in all of the confusion of the change and the scrum that there might be too many guys on the ice so rather than take a too many men penalty he went to step back into the bench. He didn't get all the way back in before realizing that there was also more than 5 Canucks player's on the ice so rather than leave his team short handed in the scrum he decided it was worth the too many men penalty and joined in. Unfortunetly, the refs didn't see it that way, they thought Lucic was never on the ice to begin with and just hopped the boards for the sole purpose of knocking someones face in. The Bruin's obviously protested but do to Lucic's tough guy reputation they weren't going to win that battle. Now if the league saw what the ref's thought they saw, Lucic would have faced an automatic 10 game suspension, fortunetly for the Bruin's the league knew the ref's made a mistake and immediatly following the game took back the call and did their best "whoopsie, sorry our bad" impression. So to sum this moment up, Thornton challanged Borrows, Canucks responded by trying to go 7 on 1 (with players also punching Thornton while they stood on their bench), the Bruins tried to protect Thornton and in the end the Bruins lost Lucic for the game and were penalized for 2 extra penalties leaving them down 2 men for a full 2 minutes.. hmmmm..

Moving on..

During the third period Brad Marchand joined Milan Lucic in the locker room for the rest of the game. Marchand was tagged for "clipping" a rule that does not often come up but nonetheless Marchand got the gate for it. I dont have much defense on this one, it looked questionable when it happened, it looked dirty on the replays and no matter how you want to chalk it up Marchand knew exactly what was going to happen when he decided to drop low to obsorb the hit. The league agreed, they hit Marchand with a 5 game suspension costing the Bruins a top 6 forward for 5 games and costing Marchand $150,000. Had Marchand not have just come back from a 2 game suspension for "slew footing" a guy it may have been a 2 or 3 games suspension but the more Marchand gets the attention of the league with borderline hits the longer the suspensions are going to be. Oh and yes the Canucks also went on a 5 minute power play, meaning it was a major penalty so no matter how many times they scored in those 5 minutes the Bruin's were going to be short handed for a full 5 minutes. Which they did score, essentially costing the Bruin's the game.

In the end the Bruins lost, Lucic couldn't play due to a ref's mistake, Marchand got suspended for 5 games and Borrows and the Canucks continued to look like the rattiest, punkiest pieces of shits in the entire NHL.

*I am very proud of myself for writing this post without turning it into an all out rant on how much I hate Vancouver players, coaches, media and fans.

Posted in: DD,NHL