Dreaming... Of A Lot Of Scoring!

Isn't it beautiful to behold now: Tyler Seguin, the Rawhide Kid himself, shooting 'em precisely and accurately as his entire team appears to be firing off on all cylinders, winning games handily by such scores as 9-0 and 7-2...

Ah, don't you long for those days when the only lashes seen in these hockey arenas are the long eyelashes of Seguin groupies, trying to lure him to their beds? No tomahawk slashes from mischievous slow players trying to prevent greater talent from doing what they do best: carrying the puck forward and lodging it in the net! Don't you remember all those beautiful goals the Bruins scored on their postseasons of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and even 2013 and 2014... eh? Seguin was potting quite his fair share of those; when he was on his game, of course.  And there it is again: a hat trick for the kid! Way to go... kid!

No, this is not 2012 and defending STANLEY CUP CHAMPION BOSTON BRUINS playing up to their full potential: no, this is actually... Team Canada. 2015.

They beat everybody: USA, Germany, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Belarus, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Tyler Seguin (dare we say ''the once and future Bruin'' now? Hey - you never know!) has not the usual suspects as teammates anymore: those we won a Stanley Cup in his very first try at it. Instead, he is scoring alongside talent such as Sean Couturier, Cody Eakin, Tyler Toffoli, Aaron Ekblad, Jordan Eberle, Nathan (not Horton) McKinnon, Jake Muzzin, Matt Duchesne and even the execrable Claude Giroux. Hmm... Maybe the Boston brass should look into trading for one or two of those guys... eh?  Don Cherry would recommend so, I am absolutely sure about it!

Coached to score without regard to balloon up the margin of victory by one Todd McLellan, this collection of supposedly patriotic snipers truly seems destined for gold - unless the referees have something to say about that! Bad refereeing has been the only thing preventing Canada from raking in all the gold medals over the years, or so have alleged many beer-guzzling observers as the odd authentic sportscaster, at times. Regardless of the veracity of those claims, maybe this Toddster is the kind of coach the Boston Bruins should be looking at in order to fully exploit the offensive talents the organization already has on hand - as those they could be acquiring in the coming months, via free agency, trade or draft! Pastrnak, Spooner, Griffith, Khokhlachev, Ferlin, Robins (hey - he's a Bobby!) and Florek are all Bruins of the future who, along with the existing big league finesse players on the roster (need we go through the list again? Sigh! Okay, here we go: Krejci, Bergeron, Eriksson, Marchand, Connolly, Lucic, Smith, Kelly, Talbot and Soderberg (?) - for it is bye bye Paille and Campbell, for sure! And maybe a few more on this roster...)  so need a new system that deviates from the old one-goal defensive system Claude Julien seems to love so much; a new system that promptly and properly opens the floodgates for the offensive weapons on this team to score lots and lots more goals!

Like they used to do, somehow, back in the day... And that was not all that long ago, actually...!

McLellan: the Bruin coach to take the team in this bold, new offensive direction it needs to undertake right now! Well, perhaps... And, this time, not only Don Cherry might agree with me, but one Joe Haggerty, too! (I just like the fact the names rhyme, really, that's all: I do not now nor will I ever have the same degree of admiration for Joe as I do for Don - come on!!! After all, they call one guy ''Grapes'' and the other they call ''Hags'' - and that says plenty, if you ask me! But that's another story...)

One sees what the lack of scoring punch (or the lack of willingness to implement a system of play that calls for an offensive mindset rather a defensive one) can do to a team with higher aspirations: the Boston Bruins are certifiable contenders, they entered the disastrous 2014-2015 season as such and had won the President's Trophy the season prior! But they were inconsistent on the score sheet throughout the year - and wound up missing the playoffs entirely because of that!  Their detestable arch-rivals up north were getting by through stealing one-goal games with a truly exceptional (as in: it won't happen again) seasonal performance from their goaltender: but their lack of scoring talent caught up with them in no time come playoff time; they barely stole victory from Ottawa before being dumped by a true scoring machine such as Tampa Bay. Boston can compete with those high-octane scoring machines and is the only eastern team that can match the western juggernauts - when they play to their full offensive capabilities, that is!

They need this new direction and they need it NOW!
It is not too late to recoup what this team deserved to reap as long as the talented nucleus remains: they should have won more than one single cup between the years 2009 and 2014. And they can still get at least another one and match the extraordinary (and, yet, still underachieving) Bobby Orr era... which we celebrate the 45th anniversary of right now, hmm?

Ah, The Way We Were...

The tradition we have got to get back to...

The delightful end of *their* 100th anniversary - 

when the Bruins closed the century of CHanadiens!
DIE, CH, DIE: 1909-2009

And ultimately... the Stanley Cup! 

Dream On... Rusev!

Cena... Cena... CENA!

Not only did John Cena link up our very own Bostonian Dreams and Bulgarian Dreams blogs here in very much the wrongest way possible - he did so by adding insult to injury and passing off dishwater as something ''better'' than our own personal favorite... Samuel Adams!

How dare you, Cena - how dare you???

Okay, first things first: we don't really give a damn about ''anything WWE'' - what they do, what they say, what they imply... It is all hogwash to us!  "Kayfabe" - right? Hogwash, in the common man's lingo! Fair enough, purist Ric Flair? Wooooo! Also, it may be good to point out now that we care not much at all about the ''people's favorite way to get drunk'' - in other words, ''ale, beer, lager - it's all the same crap to us too!''  We prefer a good bottle of vinho here, in Luminousland - wine! Da! Hence, we joyously lump them all together: all the rabble, in one heap pile! Isn't it what the one who caters to these masses does in the first place - huh? (Talking about Vinnie Mac now - the vile Vincent Kennedy McMahon! Everybody hates Vincent - he's no Raymond! But that's another story...) And so... To make it short... if you don't like it - bite it? And if that's not the rightest thing to do, either, do not even bother pointing it out - not to us! Do it with someone who gives a damn...! Like The Rock or some jabroni from Tinseltown, land of make-believe... REAL thespians, though; not like all of these more-than-mediocre talents so *desperate* to be recognized as ''artists'' that they joined the Titan Sports Circus in order to get a crack at being on television, maybe making a straight-to-DVD movie or two, perhaps even being somewhat considered to be a part of the entertainment industry... but barely!

Having stated all that, however, we must stress the point here, if it isn't evident yet: we care about what messages are sent the massholes' way! Not the knuckleheads, not the slapnuts - the massholes! Massachusetts-born... a-holes? Yeah - those! Hence, when we see one of their favorite sons, John freakin' Cena, who hails from Boston, MASS alright, saying such atrocities as ''I have been drinking Miller - because it is the champagne of American beers'' - we have to cough, belch and vomit with the utmost disapproval. Especially when he is selling that piss-poor crap to a Bulgarian - someone who hails from my second or third adopted land (I lost track - sue me, willya?)

But we're getting sidetracked here...

Back on track - NOW:

MILLER SUCKS, CENA 

AND BUDWEISER TOO! 

SAMUEL ADAMS IS THE BEST 

THE BEST!!! 

REMEMBER THAT, CENA?!?

  

And it freaking looks like a championship belt, 

this Boston Ale label...!!! Wow! Woooo! 

We didn't want to believe it, 

but the fans were right on this one: 

CENA SUCKS!!!

And that is the saddest aspect 

of the whole darn thing here...

We might as well stick with Old Man Flair after all...

AND

Reminds us of yet another grappler... 

What was her name again... in-ring name, duh... 

ah yes - Beth Phoenix! Is that her? 

Never Mind!!!

Dreamed Up Vs. Dreary Reality

Memories of Seth Griffith's spectacular goal 

-as well as David Pastrnak and Ryan Spooner goals-

will carry us through these unsavory Bruinless playoffs now...?

NHL.com's BRACKET CHALLENGE was a painful one to accept - 

but, as usual, we didn't back out of the challenge; 

we never back out of ANY challenge!

Memories of the many promises of this campaign, early on in training camp as we recalled already here, which had prompted EA Sports, proud makers of the NHL 15 game which sports future Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron on its cover, to declare that the Bruins would be tops in the course of this 2014-15 campaign... Further more, the projection had in fact predicted a Bruins-Kings finals for the Stanley Cup! Both teams, as we know, failed to even qualify for the playoffs this year; both the top seed in the East and defending cup champion OUT OF IT, right off the... stick?  The projection had further predicted a total of 103 points for the Bruins, which wasn't far off, to tell the truth. What was far out was to project that those 103 points would be tops among all the Eastern Conference clubs and yield yet another top seed overall in the league! In reality, the Bruins would gather 96 points: and it wasn't good enough to capture a second straight President's Trophy at all, no! They would actually find themselves two points short of a qualification for the post-season with that, as we saw a mere few days ago...! What a nightmare!  One that neither EA Sports, nor any one of us here at Bostonian Dreams could have EVER PREDICTED, indeed...

Dream Finale...?

It's the final game of the season...   April the 11th, 2015...

The captain of the team, Zdeno Chara, is playing on, even though he's hurting all over (...)

The team has under-performed throughout the season, dating back to last year's playoffs even, plagued by all sorts of injuries, too. But they battle on, even as they teeter on the edge of the abyss: and an abysmal non-playoff qualifying year appears to be more than a very plausible end to it all, at this time...

They learn that their rivals for those last two playoff berths are doing well: better than they presently are. And to think that, a mere few days prior, they sat comfortably atop both of them in the standings, having all but clinched that first ''wild card'' spot already...

But that is the thing: it was all but officially clinched.  Ottawa made a push, so improbable and so impressive though it was, that they leapt ahead and past the Bruins, and they overtook that spot, relegating our B's to the situation they were in then: to fight until the last puck drop for the very last berth, the second wild card.

The fight was on: and it was with old rivals Pittsburgh Penguins that it would take place.  The final game of the season would decide it all: the luck of the draw had the Pens play the lowly Sabres in Buffalo - an easy task if there ever was one.

Meanwhile, the Boston Bruins, the best team in the East just one year prior -the certifiable Beast of the East- had to match up with newly-confirmed juggernaut Tampa Bay. The Bruins had won 2 out of 3 games against the Lightning; however, the Lightning had also been coming on strong towards the end of the season, which was good in and by itself for it was all done in their attempt to disallow the atrocity of seeing the Montreal Canadiens finish atop the division - which is an abomination sans nom right there! The Lightning hates the Canadiens even more than the Bruins do, this season: for the simple reason that the Hateful Habs halted their playoff push so very prematurely last year, too, when the Lightning's top goalie was out with an injury himself... The Habs had swept the Lightning, i fact: ever since, much like the Boston Bruins of 2008-2009, the Lightning was merciless towards the Canadiens, not giving them an inch and having won every single game against them afterwards. That non-meritorious sweep was to be avenged - and it would be, just the Bruins had done to the Canadiens in 2009, the Habs' centennial, sweeping them in four straight in the first round - so the Lightning would do to the Habs in 2015, in the second round.

But back to THAT GAME... Bruins vs Lightning, with the Bostonians' dreams of playing for the cup again on the line...

The Boston Bruins did not hold their fate in their own hands - and they knew it very well. They were dependent upon the Sabres -of all teams- to make it into the playoffs. In order for them to squeeze in, the Buffalo Sabres (a lowly team, bottom-of-the-standings dwellers, comprising several former Habs such as Gionta and Gorges) had to find a way to defeat the Penguins simultaneously while the Bruins did their part by defeating the Lightning. What did the Sabres do? They didn't hold their end of this. They dropped the ball - or the puck, in their own net. They lost to the Pens, who were, themselves, playing for their playoffs lives, let's not forget that!

Learning of this as they still played in Tampa - trailing the Lightning by one goal, on top of that - what did the Boston Bruins do?

They dig deep into their resources and tied the game nonetheless.

The game went into overtime... and then a shootout. They lost the game only then - on one shot, one lucky bounce, during a shootout; as it had happened too many times during the course of this season to forget as it is... Once again, Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Loui Eriksson, David Krejci (even at 50%...) - they all gave it their all, to the very last...

Even if the season was already over.

Those are the Boston Bruins. Those are the true champions I know and have known since the days of Rick Middleton... Charlie Simmer... Keith Crowder,... Cam Neely... Dave Reid... Randy Burridge... Steve Kasper... Craig Janney... Bob Joyce... Vladimir Ruzicka... Bobby Orr and Ray Bourque, of course!

The dream ended valiantly, this year - as it does every year: win or lose, they fight until the end.

It was just that much obvious in defeat, this time around, than it was, say, in 2011 when the cup was won - at last... Or in 2013, when the cup was stolen from us, by a mini-Chicago blitz in game 6...

Boston will be back.
The Bruins will rise again.
The dream continues...

And that is why, *we* can carry on 

dreaming about the CUP... 

while others foolishly 

carry on dreaming

about frivolities!

But That Is Another Story!

Dream Year Turned Nightmare - 35.0, at the very least!

At the beginning of the year, the Boston Bruins still had a top contender. They also still had Johnny Boychuk to solidify their blue-line and power plays! The G.M. had made it clear and a very public conscious effort to ''keep the players that won the cup together'' - however, lots of them were already gone from there: Tyler Seguin, Nathan Horton, Andrew Ference, Shawn Thornton, Michael Ryder... And Boychuk would soon follow, too.  Without all of those guys, the Bruins were simply no longer the ''exact same team that won the cup'' - nope.

So it is such a great surprise that they faltered as they did; that they couldn't live up to that reputation of perennial contender?  Sure, they still have Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg - all playing at considerably less than their full potential, alas, with the one notable exception of Bergeron, perhaps.  Horton's replacement was Iginla? Gone, too. Seguin's replacement was who - Jordan Caron? Matt Fraser? They're both gone as well! Shawn Thornton may be effectively replaced by Maxim Talbot but, somehow, the old Merlot Line is simply not even close to the shadow of what it once was!  It would pick up the offense in those close games when the top three lines were momentarily silenced by intense coverage from the competition; be it Daniel Paille, Gregory Campbell or Thornton himself, big goals would come from these unexpected sources at the most crucial times, especially during the playoffs.  It sure didn't happen with any kind of regularity throughout this latest season; and it sure didn't have a chance to happen during the post-season, as the Bruins didn't make it there!  :-(

Two points - two measly points short of a participation in the big spring tournament!  The Bruins could have shown the Rangers something; even in this state, they could compete!  But they were two points short from qualifying.  How many points were lost, this past season, that would have been the Bruins' usually, in recent times, without any difficulty whatsoever?  Losses in shootouts were numerous: you get one point for those, but it is clearly not enough!  Losses to sworn enemies hurt the most, no matter which form they take: and, in recent years, they should have never been that many against the Canadiens... Capitals... Panthers, with whom the Bruins were competing for a playoff spot... Senators, who finally got that spot... Penguins?  At least the Bruins beat the Penguins this year! Oh - the Sabres!  You know you're not at your best when you drop one or two to Buff-a-loooooow. Those were points in the bank: instant standings boosts that the Bruins failed to collect, quite incomprehensibly indeed.  Maybe the Bruins were collectively tired?  So were the Kings: the only thing worse than failing to qualify for the Big Dance after being first overall and winning the President's Trophy is to have won the Stanley Cup like the Kings did - and then not qualify for the playoffs the very next year. The Los Angeles Losers... sorry, Kings... were too tired from having been in two finals in three years, winning both times - vanquishing in long, hard-fought battles the tenacious, vicious Blackhawks on their way there... Something the Bruins could not do in their Stanley Cup final in 2013, after winning it in upset fashion against over-rated Vancouver in 2011 and being upset in the first round as the defending champ in 2012, by the unscrupulous Washington Turds... Capitals, Still... The way we were: those were good times, in comparison! I mean. It goes without saying that, for both the Kings and the Bruins, the 2014-2015 season is one to be forgotten!

Small consolation to be had, at least: the Bruins got one the nod from NHL.com itself - one of the top ten goals scored during the 2014-2015 campaign!  Too bad it was scored by someone who didn't stay with the big club all year through: Seth Griffith.  Maybe, if you<re lucky, you can still see that goal being scored (against hated New Jersey and their Revere of a goalie, former native son then turned Canuck now a Devil, whatsisname... Cory Schneider, is it?) over and over again, as he so deserves it, right here: at the NHL videocenter, nothing less!

Of course, true fans cannot dismiss the season's accomplishments with the back of the hand like that - simply because the team failed to compete for the greatest prize there is to be won there. The heroics of the ever-consistent and perseverent Patrice Bergeron, the often (but not always) clutch play of Brad Marchand as well as the courage of one Zdeno Chara who, though with a broken fibula, played the remaining games of the season still! Wow!  The captain of the team showed uncommon bravery and resilience by playing over 24 minutes per game while he basically skated on a broken leg!  Bravo Zdeno! Too bad it was all for practically nothing, ultimately... (Well, we collected *one* point, in that last game there: the loss to Tampa Bay, in overtime, in the final game of the season!)

The general manager is to be dismissed, ironically just as he dismissed the remaining members of the fabled ''Merlot Line'' which so often carried the Boston Bruins to success in the post-season in recent campaigns, when the top three lines were, indeed, being momentarily shutdown by the opposition's coverage. Who can possibly make someone like Maxim Talbot start scoring clutch goals though - hmm? A new general manager is to be found now; and his list of tasks is growing by the minute, really... Trade Lucic? Or Marchand? Rethink the team philosophy completely, maybe? Because crushing and banging the other team does not yield results anymore in this league: playing physical is good for the spectacle, at times (as if hockey fans and, more specifically here, Boston's ''gallery gods'' were such bloodthirsty fellows. In fact, they are all such types, across the NHL fanbases: they relish toughness, fights, as if ice hockey were truly the new gladiator games of the modern era! But we are digressing right now...) but playing like that does not net the goals necessary to win the damn contests!  Several teams are experiencing this, right now: the Ottawa Senators went on a stunning 23-1-1 (or something like it) run just in order to qualify for the playoffs; had they not done that, the Bruins would have trumped them for that second wildcard and final spot!  But they accomplished the feat not solely due to their toughness, no: it was the miracles that their one-hit wonder Hammond the Hamburglar was accomplishing between the pipes that truly did it for them!  Once he began slumping, their wins were a hell of a lot more difficult to obtain: and the tough play wasn't cutting it for them either, just as it did not for the Bruins this season.  A change in philosophy is imperative for the Bruins - for they have got skill and tons of it still (despite having gotten rid of tons of it throughout the years: Boyes, Kessel, Seguin are but three of them...) And if said change can only be accomplished through a change behind the bench - then so be it!  Bye Bye Claude Julien!

All is well up in Providence, meanwhile... It is at least that! The Providence Bruins made it to the playoffs; with the added assistance of Pastrnak, Spooner, Trotman and Griffith, they should do well against any and all opposition. (Watch out, Hartford Wolfpack! Watch out, AHL! For these Bruin kids are the real deal: they will hoist a Stanley Cup one day - soon!)

The Providence Friars won the National Title - over Boston University, on top of that! Aye, destiny is sometimes that cruel to Boston: remember all the times we were on the verge of a championship only to see it snatched from us at that last second? It happened so many times to the Bruins, Red Sox, Revolution; to the Cannons too, I'm sure... The Patriots? Well, there were those two Super Bowls that got away: the one against the Bears of the 80's was normal but the two against the Giants (I always typo them as ''Ginats'' first - maybe I should not correct the typo anymore...) were just too much... But those are other stories!

Let's Hear It For Gray!

This year marks the 225th anniversary of a most impressive feat - whether mercantile in nature or not! (Hey - we all know that what pushed the Portuguese to find the fabled Passage to the Indies was... well... mostly mercantile, commercial and financial reasons! But that's another story...)

Today in History - April 10th, 2015

-

1790 - Merchant Robert Gray docked at Boston Harbor, becoming the first American to circumnavigate the globe. He sailed from Boston in September 1787.

1849 - William Hunt of New York patented the first safety pin.

1864 - Austrian Archduke Maximilian became emperor of Mexico.

1919 - Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, was ambushed and killed in Morelos by government forces.

1942 - Japanese soldiers herded U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war on Bataan in the Philippines and forced them to march to another camp. During the six-day "Death March," more than 5,200 Americans and many more Filipinos died.

ALL - View all events for Today in History, April 10th.

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Robert Gray - another tangible link between the two proud traditions of navigation and avant-garde feats of all manners and all sorts: Boston and Portugal!