Admitting The Obvious

Shank occasionally engages in self-reflection:

TORONTO — Some of the stuff I write on these pages doesn’t age particularly well.

Watching free agent-to-be Pablo Sandoval at the 2014 World Series, it was easy to urge the Red Sox to sign the Panda immediately. It was a perfect fit. No doubt. After all these years, you know the goods when you see it.

More recently, I anointed the Patriots Super Bowl champs a few days before the game was actually played. There was, after all, no way that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady were going to lose to a team coached by Doug Pederson and quarterbacked by Nick Foles. The Eagles simply had no chance.

In this spirit, I approached Bruins president Cam Neely at the Air Canada Centre during practice Wednesday to give him a chance to mock me in the wake of my preseason September column about the Bruins’ fourth-place ranking in our local sports market.

Read on if you like how Shank's bad column ideas come to the fore.