The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

The Sharks are an astonishingly good team, the Red Wings are very good as well. The Blackhawks have a great deal going for them. And all of them pale in comparison with the Boston Bruins, who just two seasons ago finished 23rd in the league.

Tonight, Boston, playing its third road game in four days, dismantled Pittsburgh on the way to a 5-2 victory that came with surgical precision. Every mistake the Penguins made was paid for in blood.

Boston’s first goal came on a second-period power play when the Bruins overloaded the right side of the ice and, after PJ Axelsson mishandled a pass, he faked toward the corner and with the help of a forward down low, drew both Pittsburgh defenders below the faceoff circle and to the left of Marc-Andre Fleury. What every Penguin on the ice missed was Zdeno Chara sneaking onto the backdoor like a shifty forward half his size, that is until he shoveled home a seeing-eye pass from Axelsson to pull the Bruins even. Marc Savard sniped another power play goal a few minutes later to put the Bruins up 2-1.

Soon after, Pascal Dupuis put a slapshot into Mach 5 to beat Tim Thomas high to the glove side and tie the game again, but like using conventional weapons on Godzilla, it only made the Bruins angry. Phil Kessel scored on a tap-in 1:30 later and Martin St. Pierre and Dennis Wideman added third-period insurance goals to ice the game. And it all looked so incredibly easy. Tonight, they SILENCED Sid Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. The former had an assist on the Dupuis goal that was an individual effort, the latter had dick, and they combined for a nice minus-3 rating.

They now have the same number of points (60) as league-leading San Jose, which only leads the league on the formality of its one game in hand, but it’s not too far into the hazy past where San Jose looked all but uncatchable. The reason, of course, is that Boston is now undoubtedly the best team in hockey. In November and December, they lost an incredible TWO games in regulation, and this is a team that got off to a 2-2-3 start. In its last 30 games, Boston is 26-3-1, a winning percentage of .883(!).

The Bruins have scored the most goals (137, five ahead of Detroit and 11 ahead of San Jose), the and allowed the fewest (82, two ahead of San Jose and six ahead of Chicago, both of which have played fewer games).

They have the best goaltending tandem in hockey — Tim Thomas has a line of 2.04/.935 in 22 games and Manny Fernandez has a 2.02/.930 in 16.

They’re arguably as deep at forward as Detroit or San Jose and while they don’t have the singular star power provided by your Crolkins and Semvechkins and Datsutterbergs, you have to feel like the contributions of Marc Savard (12-34-46), David Krejci (13-27-40) and Phil Kessel (23-16-39) are pretty outstanding from any point of view from which you choose to view them. Blake Wheeler and Milan Lucic are playing pretty well too. And that’s not even counting the man-games they’ve lost to injury. Patrice Bergeron’s a guy any GM in the league would take in a heartbeat, and he’s missed the last few games of this nifty little nine-game winning streak the Bruins are on. Chuck Kobasew’s missed 12 games, Marco Sturm’s missed 19, and they’re both worth about .65 points a game. Not that the Bruins need it.

And the Bruins blue line is stacked as well. Zdeno Chara’s reputation speaks for itself. The guy was a Norris finalist last year, he eats big minutes and he’s a phenomenal leader on and off the ice. Dennis Wideman is the most underrated No. 2 defenseman in the National Hockey League, and he has more points than Chara. Aaron Ward has played well when he’s been healthy, Mark Stuart’s developing into a very nice stay-at-home defenseman in his own right, and the rotating collection of youngsters filling in for whichever defenseman is injured on a given night has never looked entirely out of place.

The Bruins have won nine in a row, and all but three of those have been at home. Six of those have been on back-to-back nights. They’ve lost five games in regulation all year. All despite a rash of injuries to several important players. And let’s hear the arguments that someone’s better.

The Bruins played Detroit already and beat them 4-1. No problem. They played Chicago too, controlled the entire game and won in a shootout, 2-1. The result was slightly better than Chicago deserved. They won’t play San Jose until Tuesday Feb. 10 in Boston, but with the way the Sharks are playing lately, they might not even be in this discussion by the time Big Joe Thornton and Co. rumble back into town.

In the calendar year of 2008, the Bruins went 50-18-12 in the regular season, winning 112 points from 80 games. What Claude Julien has done on Causeway St. is truly amazing.

Elsewhere…

Washington 4, Buffalo 2

Watching the Bruins game on NESN as I was, it was delightful to hear all about Chris Bourque’s first NHL goal every opportunity anyone got. Guess what: I don’t give a rat’s ass about Chris Bourque. His dad last played for the Bruins like 10 years ago and the younger Bourque never put on a Bruins sweater. Why should anyone up here care?

Toronto 4, Atlanta 3

Bryan Little has 19 goals this year? Colby Armstrong has 10? The hell? And hey, Curtis Joseph won his 450th career game tonight. He’s only 34 behind Ed Belfour for third all-time, and it’d be a hell of a thing to see him knock Everyday Eddie out of the top three. Elite company even if he doesn’t, but great career outta Cujo.

Montreal 2, Tampa Bay 1

What’s gotten into Tampa Bay lately? Guess that Marty St. Louis rant about no one caring very much finally worked. They’re getting good results from teams ranging between middling and good and seem to generally be playing well. Were it not for Mike Smith’s complete ineptitude in all things shootout-related, they might’ve even won this. Then everyone would really get talking. But because they didn’t, who cares, I guess.

Detroit 4, Chicago 0

Seems like one thing Detroit is good at is beating teams that are coming in white-hot. They kicked the Sharks’ teeth in 6-0 a few weeks ago and pummel Chicago tonight to snap a nine-game winning streak. If they decided they wanted to play like this every night (and with a team this good it seems to me that their problem is work ethic), they’d win the President’s Trophy in a walk.

New Jersey 4, St. Louis 3

I honestly had no idea this game was even going on tonight, if I’m being honest. Zach Parise had two more goals tonight (that’s 21 for those scoring at home) and Manny Legace gave up four on 24 shots. Not good. You really have to feel for St. Louis though. They’ve used roughly 13 goalies this year and not one of them has been anything better than mediocre.

Philadelphia 3, Vancouver 2

Mats Sundin practiced for the first time all year today, a practice so momentous that it was streamed live on the internets for everyone from Surrey to Vancouver Island to pleasure themselves to. Sundin’s mere presence, it turns out, does not inspire wins. Philly scored early in the first, late in the first and early in the second and the Canucks spent pretty much the rest of the game scrambling to catch up. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. Too bad for Cory Schneider though. He played well and it was a truly entertaining game. Can’t really say the same for…

Ottawa 3, Edmonton 2

Here’s how bad the Oilers are: they’re so bad the lights didn’t want to come on for 25 minutes before the start of the game, possibly for fear of upsetting all the Oil fans at Rexall Place. Here’s how bad the Oilers are (pt. 2): they’re so bad they lost to the Senators. At home. Hahaha. Dany Alfredsson and Jason Spezza both had a goal and an assist for the Sens, who snapped a 400-game losing streak. After the game, Craig Hartsburg mumbled something about breaking that line up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 2:57 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.