Old Time Hockey

It's funny how Shank only seems to write Bruins playoff columns after a loss, isn't it?

It was shaping up as a perfect Marathon Monday.

Postcard weather. A seamless 26-mile Boston Strong race with the usual thousands of feel-good/inspirational stories. A third straight win for the Red Sox at Fenway. And finally . . . the Bruins brought the NHL playoffs back to the Garden and recovered from a 3-0 second-period deficit against the Ottawa Senators.

But they could not finish. The Bruins battled back to a 3-3 tie, and gave us some great hockey, only to lose in the sixth minute of overtime on a power-play goal by Bobby Ryan after a cheesy
roughing penalty on Bruins forward Riley Nash. Garden fans peppered the ice with water bottles to show their disgust with the zebras. Ottawa leads the series, two games to one.

It had been more than 1,000 days since the last Stanley Cup tournament game at the Garden and this is not the way we visualized the Bruins’ return to the playoffs.

I can count the number of this year's Bruins columns by Shank on one hand, and he wants us to buy that load of crap?