7:00PM January 30th, 2014
TD Garden, Boston Massachusetts
As someone who has watched sports long enough to realize that the term underdog should be taken like a grain of salt when it comes to games that do not involve the Oakland Raiders or the Houston Astros, I simply know not to call the Montreal Canadians an underdog going into this Thursday night match up with the Bruins. But nevertheless, what I will say is that when you put more weight on the last 10 games played by each of these teams, a strong constant emerges. The Montreal Canadians and the Boston Bruins are two teams that are moving in opposite directions...and you can guess who is trending upwards.
For those who have not heard, the Bruins are 5-0-1 in their last 6 games and are 6-3-1 in their last 10 games. That translates out to a pretty productive first month of 2014 as when you go beyond the win/loss tallies, the Bruins have been one of the most offensively potent teams in the NHL this month scoring 43 goals while allowing just 29. Going back to the statistics of their last 6 games, the Bruins have scored 6 goals in 3 straight games to compliment 9 more goals scored in the other 3 games played. If you don't feel like doing that math, that is 27 goals in 6 games or a goals per game average of just about 4.5.
I think everyone’s going. We haven’t really had any passengers from the goalie on out," Shawn Thornton said after Tuesday's win over Florida. "I think there’s obviously been a few stretches here, five-ten minutes that we get away from it a little bit, but we regroup pretty quickly and get back to playing our style of game. I think that’s helped us have success for sure."
For the Bruins, these last 6 games have been all about beating the other team and then beating them more as unlike tight but high scoring games (Game Five of last year’s Stanley Cup for example) the Bruins have not gone into the 3rd period tied or trailing since Sunday January 19th against the Blackhawks. Their defense has not been perfect and frankly, even their goaltenders have struggled but nevertheless when you are scoring as much as the Bruins have been of late that does not matter. But in this game there might be a need for a bit more of that defense, simply because each of the 3 teams they have scored 6 goals against this month none of them have had a very good goaltender. Fact is even in his struggles and his subordinate nature, Peter Budaj is still a much better goalie than Steve Mason, Ray Emery or even Tim Thomas and his haphazard defense. Additionally, of all the defencemen the Bruins faced in these 3 games, none could even be mentioned in the same sentence at PK Subban or Andri Markov.
But regardless of that, this is the Bruins/Canadians rivalry. That kind of rivalry that bring out the very best and worst in any player. Last time around there was the Max Paccoretty cheap shot on Johnny Boychuck and then a few years before that we saw the mid-season rugby scrum involving Zdeno Chara, Brad Marchand and even Tim Thomas that brought back strong memories of the 70's editions of these games where the phrase "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out" might as well have been born from.
Even for a Canadians team that has lost 6 out of their last 7 games, this rivalry is magic and has a way of throwing every kind of separation between these teams out the window and replacing it with the kind of excellence that Maurice Richard, Bobby Orr, and Terry O'Rilley brought to these games. No matter the year, no matter the players, in this the first Habs/B's game in Boston this season we will cheer, Thornton will hurl some jabs and if everything goes to plan, the Bruin will score 6 more goals.
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