Ryan Dempster walks away from 14 million dollar contract with the Sox: How long term fatigue finally caught up to Dempster and ended his up and down MLB carrer

15 years after he first joined the league, 40,000 pitches after the first one he threw one, 5 teams after he was drafted by the Rangers in 1995, Ryan Dempster is stepping away from this game that has been his for a decade and a half.

Fact is nobody expected this. Even though he might likely be booted from a starting role mid-season and would make his biggest contributions to this team as a periodically penciled in middle reliever, Dempster still had almost 30 million dollars in contract money to be paid out to him over the next 2 years. That number alone would have made most stick around. But that is not what Ryan Dempster did. Frankly, you have to hand it to him for having this kind of assertiveness in knowing what is best for himself and his family.

In the 15 years since his first contract was paid out, Dempster has made close to 90 million dollars and has in 12 seasons posted an ERA above 4.5. It would be fair to say that Dempster has never performed with the excellence that his money most surely demands. And yet at the same time, if you subtract him from the 2013 Red Sox roster that won the World Series last year, a pretty decent void would be left wide open. While when you take into account the money Dempster was paid last year, each of his 8 wins cost the team about 1.6 million dollars, he was not all that bad especially towards the end of the season.

After starting the year an abysmal 2-6, Dempster turned things around going 6-3 in his final 9 decisions of the year. Those 6 strong victories included key outings in both Chicago and Detroit towards the end of the year when the Sox were competing tooth and nail with the Oakland A's for the number one seed in the AL. But come playoff time it was clear that compared to John Lackey, Jon Lester, Clay Bucholz or even Jake Peavy, Dempster was nothing more than a side note and so he was confined to the bullpen for all of October. There he made 3 appearances (1 in each series) and at least in the first two was not half bad allowing just 2 hits a combined 18 pitches. 

The 3rd of those outings of course came in Game 1 of the World Series where Dempster blew a shutout by allowing a home run and 1 hit after that in the 8th inning of an 8-0 game.  

Honestly, that probably did not cause Dempster to much mental strife. Having played 597 games in the sport of professional baseball, Dempster has most surly had his low points and so he knows how to deal with them. But at the same time those 597 games have also spawned hundreds of bright spots that take to form of the 132 wins Dempster has led whatever team pays him to. Twice he has been an all-star and in 5 postseason games, he has grabbed the ball.    

But he is tired. 

"But I just feel like where I'm at with my health, how I feel personally, I just feel like it's in the best interests of both myself and the organization and the team to not play this year. I don't feel like I can compete or produce the way I'm accustomed to." Dempster said. 

According to Red Sox GM, Ben Cherrington, part of Dempster's decision to leave had to do with a nagging neck injury that he could not seem to shake. 

"Talking to Ryan, even before he came down here today, there were mixed emotions on his part," Farrell said. "He's had a great career. You congratulate him on that, but I think when the end is nearing [and] ... the physical side of things take away from the performance, you empathize with that and know you can't go on and play this game forever." 

Additionally, from what we have heard from the entire Red Sox organization since Dempster retired, though he was not necessarily the best pitcher on this roster, he was one of the most liked as his humble but humorous personality made it so that both Cherrington and John Farrel were sad to see him go. 

"In a career full of earning respect and building respect, he's ending his time with the Red Sox in a way [winning the World Series] that only bolsters that, strengthens that feeling about him," Cherington said. "It was ultimately the right thing to do in his mind. That doesn't mean it was an easy thing to do, and I have great respect for him making the decision that way."

Over 15 years these things, no matter how thrilling begin to take a toll on your body and while he has never been a man prone to injury, Ryan Dempster is a classy player who knows when it is time to call these up and down years in baseball a career. That time is now.  

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A different man: Through 2010, Bode Miller was one of the greatest skiers in history but when his brother died he gained a new kind of motivation to win in Sochi

Writing this article was a spur of the moment thing, a feeling in my sparked by this outpouring of raw human emotion on the part of Bode Miller. Meer minutes after realizing the last installment of this utopian story of skiing for Miller, he sank into a slump and draped his arms over a short fence as tears streamed down his cheeks.

For several seconds, this scene was broadcast to the world for these tears came in the middle of an NBC interview. For several seconds, we watched as Miller, this famed, calm in the face of competition man was overcome with deep, raging emotion that poured forth in this deep, gut wrenching fit of sadness. Unlike these scenes we see of the champion crying these were definitely not tears of joy, they were tears of sadness, all stemming from one thing, the loss of one person. That person was Bode's brother who passed away last April. 

Born in October of 1977, Bode Miller was a mountain boy from the start. Within just a few weeks of his birth, his parents and all 4 of their then born children picked up and moved to an isolated cabin in a small town called Franconia. With a name that sounds fresh out of some story about magicians and a magical journey, Franconia was a town nestled between the green slopes of the Mt Lafayette and the ragged cliffs of Cannon Mountain, a vastly successful skiing destination and so Miller was born into this culture of mountain living and held within it for the better part of his childhood. Their house had no water or electricity and frequently got buried by the feet of mountain snow that that part of New Hampshire would regularly endure. But it was with these storms, these bouts of frigid cold that those closest to Bode began to recognize his skiing talents. Before long, Cannon's slopes became a regular destination for the Millers and just as quickly, he even outgrew that. Miller was locked in with a full scholarship to  Carrabassett Valley Ski Racing Academy before he even finished his junior year in high school. It was at Carrabassett that Miller first snagged the attention of the US Alpine Skiing team whom he would eventually be a part of for the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano Japan. 

At last, big bad Bode had arrived. 

Since then, Miller has become without a doubt the greatest male alpine skier in the history of the sport and had already racked up a phenomenal 7 medals in major races before he even hit his 30th birthday.  Of course, it was the 2 silver medals in Salt Lake City, 2002 that were the most remembered. 

From the beginning of his career to this present day, Bode Miller has been a man who has won races by doing things other racers will not even think about. He takes tighter lines in slalom, hits jumps with more speed in downhill and super G and simply stays in the racing tuck, longer and in more technical situations than anybody else in the sport. 

Though this reckless style has certainly brought about its fair share of crashes Miller came into these Sochi games coming off a 1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze, performance in Vancouver and sitting just 1 medal away from breaking the all-time record for most won by a men's skier. 

Long story short he got it done. After finishing 8th, 12th and 7th in his first 3 races of these games, Miller had one last shot and though he made mistakes, though he nearly skied off course midway through the Super G, Bode tied for bronze and so the legacy had been completed. But as we begin to get some time between that moment and this present moment, the lasting memory of the 2014 Super G final in Sochi Russia will not be the actual race. No, it will be what happened after it, the interview. 

To give a little more background, just as Bode Miller loved and dominated his route to skiing fame, his younger brother Chelone Miller loved snowboarding and was following a path similar to that that led Bode to Nagano 1998. Chelone of Chile as he was called by many, was a gifted freestyle snowboarder who was favored to be sent to Sochi with the US Olympic team right alongside his older brother. 

But nevertheless, early last April, Chelone was found dead in a van he was confirmed to have been living in. An autopsy of his body later revealed that he had suffered a seizure while sleeping in the van and died shortly thereafter.  

Ever since the inevitable call that told the still living Bode Miller of his 29 year old brother's passing, Bode has been a different man. According to many who ski with him he has been more composed, quieter and obviously struggling with the immense grief that this tragedy has forced his family to deal with. And yet he still had one drive, one feeling that he wanted to win one final race, one final medal for Chelone and as the games begin to wind down, he knew that Sunday was his last chance.  

As NBC's cameras panned in on the starting gates atop Rosa Kutor, the venue for Olympic skiing in Sochi, Miller could be seen looking to the sky and whispering some unknown phrase that was soon whisked away by the clouds and the frigid wind of that day. And then the beep came, Bode flew out of the gates and dropped into his tuck before pushing 70 miles per hour and exploding down this 1.3 mile downhill course.  

Upon the announcement of his time and the bronze medal, Bode won with it, he was immediately swarmed by reporters, one of whom had a man with a camera behind them. NBC's Christen Cooper conducted the interview that was not even broadcast live for the event was put on tape delay so as to allow it to be locked into the primetime. At first, the questions were normal, asking about the race, what this medal meant to him, so on and so forth. But when Miller said that this bronze was different because of the turbulent year he had dealt with, Cooper began to assault him with questions about his brother. 

"I know you wanted to be here with Chelly, really experiencing these Games. How much does this mean to you to come up with this great performance for him? And was it for him?" She asked. 

"I don't know if it's really for him but I wanted to come here and, I dunno, make myself proud, but" he replied before tears began to stream down his face and he trailed off. 

The interview should have stopped there...but it did not. 

"When you're looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there and it looks like you're talking to somebody. What's going on there?" Cooper pressed and at that point, Miller completely broke down, slumping against a fence and letting lose all the sadness he had carried and allowed to drive him through these games.  

Faintly, one could hear Cooper whisper sorry to a non-responsive Bode Miller.  

You see Sochi 2014 has been a strange Olympics. For all the worry or fear of attack we felt leading up to these games, the Russian security force has done a pretty good job keeping things under control. And so that allows for us to peel back that far superior subject of attention and look at how much emotion an Olympics like this can solicit from a competitor. In a race that received far less attention than this, Ronald Mulder though he had won speed skating gold but watched at the victory was stolen from him by a timing error. A few days later, TJ Oshie pulled off his heroic shootout performance to send the US to the quarterfinals. But this was different. With Bode Miller this kind of emotion had nothing to do with the race that preceded it.  

In the wake of most likely the final race of Bode Miller's career, his sadness was our sadness because nobody could watch someone like that, cry like that, for a reason like that and not feel sympathy. 

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Patrice Bergeron is better than Alex Ovechken? Yeah...by alot

Patrice Bergeron is not a name unknown to Bruins fans. For 9 years and 6 beyond the conclusion of this one, Patrice Bergeron has and will likely be the face of this Bruins offence. He was, is and will be the cool headed under pressure, unselfish but sick handed backbone to this team that many Bruins fans have not seen since the days of Orr and then later on Raymond Borque.

And yet in this day and age, he is underrated. Underrated compared to Zdeno Chara, underrated compared to Brad Marchand and labeled inferior to most other big time players on most other  teams.

He is mislabeled.

You may call be crazy but I say this. When you take into account their contributions to their team that are represented by more than statistics, Bergeron may be the best leading player in the entire hockey league. Today I will narrow this down to the conversation of just two men.  That is Bergeron vs. a certain man named Alex Ovechken and yes, Bergy is better. But hear me out.

Born in September of 1985, Alex Ovechkin has been the perennial leader of the Washington Capitals. At 28 years old, the Capitals remain the only team Alex has played for in the 8 seasons since he was drafted number one overall and frankly, the Capitals have never had anything to complain about. 656 games into his career, Ovechkin has scored 411 goals 4 times scoring 50 or more in 1 season while also adding 4 dominant 100+ point seasons.

All and all, "Ovi" as he is called by his fans has averaged 1.16 points per game since joining the NHL 8 years ago. This season, Ovechkin leads the league in goals with 40 and since the last month of last season has actually nabbed 54 goals. He is without question the hottest player in hockey. But the best?

Just as Alex Ovechkin has pulled away from the pack, Patrice Bergeron has stayed with it, bettering the quality of play of his entire team. Statistically, he is on the good side of mediocre scoring just about 20 goals per season and assisting on around 30 others. But as reflected by the one stat that everyone overlooks, there is one category that Bergeron is numerically stellar at. Over the course of his career, Bergeron is a +95 while the all mighty Ovechkin sits at just +65 and is actually -17 in this 40 goal 2014 season. 

You see+/- is a strong indicator of a players value to his team solely because it measures how many more or less goals scored by your team when you are on the ice than allowed by your team when you are on the ice. For Bergeron's being a +95 that means that though he definitely did not assist on all of those goals he not only played a role in goals scored by his team but back checked, threw hits and played smart on defense in order to limit the number of goals scored against his team that would shrink his differential that is represented by the +/-.  

It is the intangibles of Patrice Bergeron that make him great and Claude Jullian recognizes that. 

"To me, he’s always been that guy that’s that perfect fit. He’s as reliable defensively as he is offensively. He’s going to give you a fair amount of production and a fair amount of points, yet he’s going to give you that same kind of, I guess, comfort feeling in your end of the ice as well. Those guys are hard to find and when you have them, like I said, you try to hold onto them.” 

Whether it be his 60%+ face off percentage, his mind numbing capabilities on defense or that ever present ability to score just when his team needs it most, Bergeron is a selfless player who's contributions to his team outweigh those made to his stat sheet. I don't know about you but to me a good player not only scores but makes those around him better. Bergeron scores, Bergeron fights but above all, he really does make those around him better. 

He is a good player, much better than Ovechkin. 

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The empire is growing: A look at the history of sliding sports and how the United States is finally winning their sledding races

Fact is nobody expected that the United States Olympic team would be able to top their historic 37 medal performance in Vancouver 4 years ago. Nobody could or would even dream of predicting that this depleted US team would win with the dominance and ease that they did in those Olympics. 

Those people were smart for as we now sit over 1 week into the games the United States has won just 4 gold’s, 4 silver medals and a consolation prize of 8 bronze medals. As we delve deeper, the Olympic medal table reveals that of the 166 medals handed out to winners in 13 sub categories of events only snowboarding has been on dominated by the Americans as 3 of their 4 gold medals in these games have been one by American Snowboards. But what has taken many by surprise in these games is a subtle proficiency by American athletes in a branch of sports that normally confined to the NBC late night broadcast slot and is rarely cast a second look by viewers. 

That subcategory is sliding and includes the sports of Luge, Skeleton and Bobsleigh. 

Already, the United States has won 3 medals at the home of sliding in Sochi, the Sanki Sliding center all before any winners in the bobsleigh competition have been named. With one silver and one bronze medal won in Skeleton and 1 bronze medal won last night in the Luge competition, the United States is moving into uncharted waters as coming into Sochi 2014 they had not won a medal in luge or Skeleton since Salt Lake City 2002 .  

Even for those who do not know anything about these sports, the sheer fact that in one games, the United States had doubled their combined Luge/Skeleton medal count from Nagano, 1998 to Vancouver 2010 must be impressive.

But nevertheless, knowing a little about the Luge/Skeleton aspect of sliding only further explains the sense of accomplishment this American team must be feeling right now.  

Fact is the entire sliding story begins from the same place around the same point in time. Though the idea of sledding as both a means of entertainment and also travel across the snow laden hills of northern Europe is said to have originated back in the 1400's, it was in a small Swiss town called St Moritz that people first started sliding competitively. At that time the idea of a highly competitive winter games like the modern day Olympics had begun to sweep the modernized world while many adrenaline junkies began to realize how fun it was to jump on top of something that would propel you to speeds then rarely even achieved in a car. A man named Caspar Badrutt quickly recognized this and originally used old delivery sleds he found in trash cans in St Moritz to provide those reckless tourists with one huge reason to book stays at his hotel. 

Though that initially caused problems when his guests would collide with pedestrians in the streets, the occasional broken limb or aggravated group of passers by gathering in Badrutt's lobby meant nothing to him when he soon realized how much money this new, commercialized sledding, was bringing in. By the mid 1920's arrived, Switzerland had gone into full sliding mode. When the games finally came to St Moritz in 1928 though neither luge nor skeleton was included in the schedule, bobsleigh and a now defunct form of sliding called toboggan were and so that sledding crazed host nation of Switzerland put great emphasis on how they performed in the sports first real test.  

Though sliding was torn from the games 4 years later and then the games altogether were cancelled as World War II ripped through the planet, the success of bobsled in 1928 was remembered 20 years later when once again St Moritz was penciled in as host.  

In those Olympics, bobsled was retained while the much slower, toboggan was dropped to make room for Skeleton which involved a racer diving headfirst onto the sled and steering it with his or her feet. While bobsled remained heavily dominated by the Swiss, the Skeleton competition that year signaled a grand expansion of competitive sledding across Europe as for the first time in the sports history, the competition involved riders from countries other than Switzerland. Those Skeleton races were cumulatively won by Nino Bibbia and finished with riders from 4 different nations penciled in as top 10 sliders. 

For the United States and Canada however, it would not be until the 1980 games in Lake Placid that they would begin to take a real interest in anything to do with sliding. And even then they never managed to succeed on the track. But regardless, from those games on the entire world was all in on sliding.  

From 1980 on, luge was all the rage as in every games since, long, twisting, steeply banked ice tracks have been a snaking constant throughout every host city and no matter what, their icy white bodies have been the speed charged venues for this annoyingly simple but small detail oriented sport of sliding.   

In 2014, almost 100 years after sliding became a real sport, competitions like luge, skeleton or bobsled are sports of subtle strategy. While in the 70's winners would win by 2 or 3 seconds, now the winners win by 10th's and 100th's of a second and that is truly unfathomable. In these games, one mistake means the race is over, one little nick of the wall, one break of the aerodynamic form dashes your hopes and forces you to wait 4 more years before your next chance. 

But at the same time, luge, skeleton or bobsled are simple sports that are easy to master. You see stories like that of Olympic hurdler, Lolo Jones who managed to become a bobsled pusher in just the 2 year break between London and Sochi or those of Alex Demchenko who at 42 years old has competed in more Olympics than anyone else in history and even now is still going strong as he was won 2 silver medals already in Sochi.  

Sliding is unique. It relies on humans who shoot down a lethal ice track at 70 miles per hour and win races by hundredths or even thousandths of a second and know that 1 mistake ends their race immediately. In something as simple as sledding, with as simple a goal as "get on the sled and follow the track", these sports are a kind that is very rare in the modern competitive scene and even more rare in that of the United States. We can master, soccer, dominate basketball and yet it has taken 100 years to master the art of laying down and getting from point A to point B really, really fast. 

But now there is a future. Operating off of their long awaited sliding success in Sochi, this American team has opened the door to their successor, digging the groves in these sliding surfaces and paving the way for the United States to take over yet another global sport. 

The empire is growing. 

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What Michael Sam has done is brave beyond words...but it should not have had to have been

So what guys, Michael Sam is gay. But that does not matter, this is football that we are talking about, not an episode of the Bachelor. Being gay has never been something that has raised a question regarding performance in sports and with Michael Sam there will be no difference. 

That is what I wish I could say. But I cannot. 

This is a big deal, this is historic and this is an opportunity for the NFL and one of its teams to make a statement that it has moved beyond a culture of discriminating against someone for anything more than their skill set. As we look back this is a concept that has reigned strong as every single barrier to someone's reaching their dream fell and is not one simply confined to barriers regarding homosexuality. 

On a mid-August Washington DC afternoon, a man named Martin Luther King took to a little wooden podium bent on conveying one concise message. On that day that was one whose air was cleansed by King's words of liberation we were given words that will forever go down as ones to be applied not only to civil rights fights but to every instance of human oppression for years to come. 

Contained within his description of the most famous dream in American history, King said that he dreamed that one day his children "would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

In the few days since Sam announced that he is gay we have seen an outpouring of support from the NFL's players and coaches. 

“Should I really care?” an unidentified NFL GM said. “Is it going to be that big a deal? Aren’t we beyond this?”

“It’s not a shocking thing to me, and it won’t be to our organization,” another GM said. “You’ll have old-school guys on your team saying, ‘Are you kidding, putting this guy on our team?’ And you’ll have other guys say, ‘Who cares? I knew two gay guys who came out in college.’ ”

Fact is, thought it sounds harsh and cutting to an outsider people not caring, not freaking out like this is some kind of heroic story to be compared to someone overcoming a broken leg or terrible illness remains a kind of acceptance and recognition of what Sam's sexual orientation is: something that we shouldn't even be talking about as a news story. It is just who he is.   

But there is talk about it being "weird" or "abnormal", a flip side to the acceptance of those first two GM's quoted here. 

“We talked about it this week,” a third GM said. “First of all, we don’t think he’s a very good player. The reality is he’s an overrated football player in our estimation. Second: He’s going to have expectations about where he should be drafted, and I think he’ll be disappointed. He’s not going to get drafted where he thinks he should. The question you will ask yourself, knowing your team, is, ‘How will drafting him affect your locker room?’ And I am sorry to say where we are at this point in time, I think it’s going to affect most locker rooms. A lot of guys will be uncomfortable. Ten years from now, fine. But today, I think being openly gay is a factor in the locker room.” 

What that GM does not see is the "SEC Defensive Player of the Year" recognition next to Michael Sam's name. What that GM does not see is the historic season Sam put up in 2013 leading the SEC in sacks and tackles for loss. The statistics alone would and should go far enough to label him a well suited winner of that Defensive Player of the Year Recognition.

And to the, players not being comfortable with having a gay guy in their locker room, part of that GM's quote, I have two things to say. Number one: that is not Michael Sam nor that GM's problem, that is the problem of the teammate of Sam's who has a problem with it. Number two: he said that in 10 years it may not be a problem. Well "it" has already been proven as not a problem by the fact that never in all the years of professional sports have we seen an instance of a player who has eventually come out as gay cause any sort of problem within a lockeroom. 

Additionally, might I point out the highly inappropriate comments and struggles regarding Richie Incognito and Johnathan Martin earlier this season and how much of a locker room disturbance that DID cause. I don't know about you but I think examples like that prove that we have bigger problems in sports than something so childish as a player showering next to one teammate but not another.

But as we have been shown already in this article, no matter how inclusive this society has become in some rights, no matter how much of the nation is currently included under the swath of where same sex marriage is legal, there remains ignorant people who are stuck in a kind of discriminatory belief that should have died with the Jim Crow laws of the 1960's.

“Unfortunately,” a scout said “this is a lot more okay in society than it is in lots of locker rooms. Some locker rooms are still stuck in the ’50s.” 

For Michael Sam, what he has done is an act included in a realm beyond that which the term brave presides over. He is a hero and to the gay community a man who if drafted will have to blaze a path through a proverbial forest of oppression as thick and rooted in time as one of the redwood forests of the American southwest. 

But none of this should have to be this way. 

Loving someone has nothing to do with football and it never has. Yet as Michael Sam comes out, people act like it does. 

Finally I close things out with one final message. 

Newsflash, Tom Brady likes women. Oh...you knew that? Well then, I rest my case. Being gay is not a disease, not something that can tear a locker room apart and while it may be treated like it is, it is no more of a news story than that regarding the sexual orientation of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Vince Wilfork.

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Leaving with a bang: Bruins light up Senators in final game before Olympic break

During the Go Titletown preview of Saturday afternoon's game with the Senators we talked about what kind of taste this Boston/Ottawa game would leave in our mouths. If they lost, if they messed up like they did Thursday night in St Louis than the taste would be like that of some sweet and sour chicken minus the sweet. But if they won than the taste would be one of sweet candy that would last for two weeks. 

Let me just say this. We’re not eating any chicken in Boston tonight. 

The Bruins obliterated the Senators Saturday afternoon assembling their largest scoring output of the season and their second 5 goal victory in as many weeks. For the Bruins who knew they had to finish strong, this game quickly turned lopsided as Boston scored 2 goals in the first period alone. 

Their first goal was scored just over 2 minutes into the game when Patrice Bergeron used a stellar burst of speed to break up the middle towards Craig Anderson. As Bergeron crossed the blue line with the puck on his stick, he dumped the quick pass to Loui Eriksson and then took it on the return as he roared unchecked through the faceoff circle. Though the pass surely stretched him to the limits of his reach, Bergeron utilized a quick tap of the puck to settle it before yet another lunging jab at it lofted the shot past a disoriented Craig Anderson. 

As Bergeron celebrated the goal just behind the net, radio commentator Jack Edwards seemed to describe the play best. "How's that for effort?!" 

5 minutes later, effort combined with execution once again as Boston stretched their lead to 2-0 with Chris Kelly's 4th goal of the year.  Through 1 period, the Bruins had out-shot their opponents 11-6, their goalie Chad Johnson had continued his shutout streak to one 5 periods long but most importantly, the Bruins had not yet turned their sights to the break looming before them. And it showed. 

With 2:42 to go in the 1st period, Kevin Miller took on a man in Zach Smith who was 3 inches taller than he and outweighed him by over 20 pounds. Yet in true Bruins fashion, Miller took the role of orthodontist when he made out to rearrange Smith's facial geography. 

17 minutes into the game Bruins fans had just been treated to one of the biggest beat down by a Boston player all season and from that point on, this game turned from competition to clinic. Within 11 game minutes of the Miller fight, Patrice Bergeron solidified the clinic nature of this game when he caught Eric Karlsson standing still and tucked the puck between Anderson's leg and the post. As good as that goal was, the fact that Bergeron skated around both Karlsson and Anderson like they were beanbags was truly embarrassing for the Senators.

In fact less than two weeks after they beat the Flyers so bad that their captain called it their most embarrassing game of the year, the Bruins once again drove an opponent to a point where they verbalized their discomfort with the loss.

Jason Spezza called this game "embarrassing" while coach, Paul McLane sternly joked that "we probably owe them some money for the clinic they put on today"

Haha...that's funny, because it is true.

By the end of the second period the Bruins led 4-1. 

Before 5 minutes ticked off the game clock in the 3rd period, that lead had been stretched to 5-1 and by 10 minutes in it was 6-1. Though Ottawa eventually scored again, the "killer instinct" that has been ever present this season in Boston shone through when Carl Soderberg snapped his 9th of the year past Robin Lehner to seal the Bruins' biggest offensive output of the season. 

In their final game before the Sochi break, the Bruins treated their motivation like they would on any other day in any other situation. They came out flaming and scored, hit and fought with a fearsome edge. All season long this Bruins team has won off of a youthful drive like none other and Saturday was no different, well except for the numbers that drive produced.

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Finishing strong: A preview of the Bruins final game before the Sochi break

Boston Bruins (36-16-4) vs Ottawa Senators (26-21-11)
February 8th, 2014, 3:00PM
TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts

Hockey is a grueling sport that takes a brutal toll on one’s body and yet, nobody likes stepping aside for a weird 2 week break from action. But nevertheless, with the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi already behind us, the nearing beginning of the men's hockey tournament can be shown most fairly via the geography of the NHL schedule at this point in the year. After Saturday afternoon's game with the Senators, the Bruins will not play again until the 26th of February. To state things plainly, that truth means that the Bruins want to finish strong by playing a great game this afternoon. 

56 games into their season, the Bruins have quietly assembled a 7 point lead on the Lightning for the Atlantic Division lead and have allowed fewer goals than any other team in hockey. Amidst a season that has sported injuries across the board for Boston, the Bruins remain the favorite to get out of the East come playoff time and frankly, these past few games as we lead into the Olympic Break have been a big reason for that. Since the middle of January, the Bruins have gone 7-1-2 and with the exception of their game against the Canadians have beaten all their opponents via an extraterrestrial scoreing attack and a revamped goaltending core. 

"Our guys have done a really good job," Julien said after the team's brief practice Friday at Ristuccia Arena. "Even yesterday, we should have been at eight wins. We really played well, and I thought we had as good an opportunity to win that game as any. There was a tremendous amount of effort and focus. From the back end, we're missing a lot of key elements there and it didn't seem to matter. I'm looking to see the same thing [Saturday], the same kind of effort from everybody.

"If we can finish with that type of a game, there's a pretty good chance we're going to win, and [it's] a pretty good opportunity for us to leave on a positive note. I always find those things are important to leave on a positive note and feel good about yourselves. No matter what, if we can give that kind of effort [Saturday], it will have been a successful segment." 

The Bruins could have had 1 more win in this stretch if it were not for what happened Thursday night in St Louis. After the Blues nabbed 2 timely goals in the first two periods, the Bruins came out ready for blood in the 3rd and scored twice to tie the game. It was the first time all season that they came back from a 2 goal deficit at any point in a game and managed to push the contest to overtime. 

But once there, things turned sour once again for Boston as before they could get to the shootout where the Bruins have been okay in this season, TJ Oshie stole the puck at the top of the crease and basically jammed it past Tuukka Rask to win the game. 

"It was a lucky bounce that it went there," Oshie said of the play. "I saw it laying there and kind of started jamming. It might have went under his arm or something. A lucky bounce and we'll take the point for sure."

Neither Oshie nor Rask really knew where the puck was. Such an ending made this stellar clash between two teams of such skill just a little bit worse for hockey fans. Rask echoed this frustration and as he skated off the ice he seemed obviously disappointed with that final play. 

"It hit Oshie's skate and it hit the back of the net and it was on his stick," Rask said. "Then he backed it off my pad, I guess." 

While that game was the first in which the Bruins came back from a 2-0 deficit, it was also the first time this season that they lost in the OT period.  But as they play the Senators today, they look to forget that. 

There remains just 1 more game before the NHL season  goes on hiatus and so the Bruins look to finish strong. As they make the trip to Sochi or wherever they will be spending their break, they know that for their fans, for themselves, a loss today would be tough to swallow and would stew so brutally for the entire duration of this week. A win however, well that would be like a sweet blast of a caramel candy that takes 2 weeks to fully melt away. 

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