A Cautionary Tale

The Boston Bruins currently have the best record in the NHL. Leave it to Shank to mention potential adverse results once the playoffs come around:

What happened in 1971 should be a cautionary tale for this year’s Bruins

The 2022-23 Boston Bruins are the best team in hockey, enjoying what might end up being the greatest regular season in the 105-year history of the National Hockey League. They are favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

But more than in any other sport, the best team doesn’t always win in hockey.

Ask the 1970-71 Bruins, or any old-timers who followed that powerhouse all those years ago.

The Bobby Orr Bruins won the Cup in 1970 and ’72, but the best team of that golden era was the ’71 team. The ’71 Bruins won more games, scored more goals, and piled up more points than the Cup teams that bookended them.

And they never made it out of the first round of the playoffs. The mighty Bruins were beaten in seven games by the hated Montreal Canadiens and kid goalie Ken Dryden, who had only six games of NHL experience before the playoffs.

Running into one of the five best goaltenders of all time will likely result in bad things happening to your team, and that's part of the 1971 loss to the Canadiens. Also - the rest of the Canadiens' roster wasn't too bad, either!

The Stupid, It Burns

And it apparently spreads. What hath Shank wrought?

Claude Julien is in the room thinking about how to defer the puck drop. #fireclaude

— Fluto Shinzawa (@GlobeFluto) January 1, 2016

Wish Finally Granted

The bad news - the Bruins lost game 7 to the Canadiens, 3-1.

The good news? It's Shank's last hockey column for months and months!

This point cannot be stressed enough: when a local team loses, Shank puts forth far more effort and verbiage into his columns. I think it's equivalent to shoveling more dirt on the grave to make sure the dead guy's good and buried.

OK to melt the ice at the New Garden before Thursday night’s Barry Gibb show. Perhaps the surviving Bee Gee can dedicate “Tragedy” or “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” to the 2013-14 Bruins.

The Bruins dissolved in front of our eyes in Game 7 Wednesday night. They were dominated by the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1.

Ugh.

This one goes into the Boston Professional Sports Hall of Pain, right there with Ken Dryden stuffing the Bruins in 1971 and too many men on the ice in 1979. It goes in there alongside some of the Red Sox collapses of the last century.

And who better to escort the 2013-2014 Bruins to that Hall of Pain than our very own Nabob of Negativity, Dan Shaughnessy?

Please Stop Writing About Hockey - II

Shank's Tuesday afternoon column is, well, let him say it:

Call me a homer. Call me predictable.

Throw in some lame song lyrics, rehash one of your previous Bruins / Canadiens columns, work the Red Sox into the column again and...

We have no shortage of hyperbole when it comes to Hub vs. Habs in playoff hockey.

Another underwhelming column, to say the least...

Please Stop Writing About Hockey, Shank

Not to go on a rant here, but today's column on the Bruins 4 - 2 win over the Canadiens (or, in Shank's self-satisfied mind, the Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge) is Shank at his laziest worst. It sucks so bad I refuse to sample any of it in this post. It's his typical cookie-cutter, formula driven piece of utter garbage, completely flooded with cliché after cliché after cliché, toss in a few annoying samples of the French language, and what Shaughnessy column is complete without not just one, but two Red Sox references?

I can barely contain my enthusiasm for his next cliché riddled piece of Bruins prose...

I'm Shocked!

Shocker # 1 - Bruins beat the Canadiens, 1 - 0, in overtime last night.

Shocker # 2 - Shank does a column on a Bruins win.

MONTREAL — Matt Fraser was standing in the hallway, shoeless, skateless, wearing the Bruins’ hero jacket, and still sweating from overtime. He said he’d had lunch at Chipotle in Providence Wednesday before he got the call to the Stanley Cup playoffs. He said he’d topped off lunch with some frozen yogurt. He thought back to his youth hockey days “playing in outdoor rinks in Canada.’’ He said he had to remember to call his parents. He said, “I’m still shaking with excitement.’’

The Bruins beat the Canadiens, 1-0, in overtime on a goal by Fraser off a scramble in front of the net 79 seconds into the fourth period of Game 4 Thursday. This spectacular series is now guaranteed to go at least six games and Fraser has secured a place in Boston sports lore.

It's a typical Shank type of column - focus on the outstanding player, give the standard game recap and make at least one inane comment:

If Norman Rockwell had dabbled in hockey, he’d have created Matt Fraser.

Killing Me Softly

Shank's Thursday column expands on the Bruins - Canadiens series and focuses on the best player in the series so far, P.K. Subban:

MONTREAL — He is Pernell Karl “P.K.” Subban, and you cannot take your eyes off him. He is Montreal’s best player and he is the man who is thus far killing the Bruins in their conference semifinal series.

Subban is everywhere on the ice. He is in the middle of all the action. He has scored three goals in three games and he is, in the words of former Celtics general manager Jan Volk, “the consummate provocateur.’’

It is hard to remember anyone who has made more news in the first three games of any playoff series. Subban has 6 points in three games and has been involved in multiple controversies. He has thus far been better than (gulp) Zdeno Chara.

Overall, a pretty good column by the Shankster; his better columns, naturally, come at the expense of the local teams. Funny how that works!

The Boston Globe's Answer To Old Faithful

Is there anything more predictable than a Shank column on the Boston Bruins following a playoff loss?

MONTREAL — The Bruins are the better team. This is what the hockey folks keep saying (someone forget the personal pronoun there? - ed). This is what the regular-season record shows. The Bruins won the Presidents’ Trophy, earning home ice advantage throughout the playoffs. The Bruins are better than the Canadiens at the five-on-five game. The Bruins play a heavy game. They will overwhelm Montreal with Maximum Heaviosity.

Hmmm. This sounds like what folks in Detroit were saying last October when they played the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. The Tigers were clearly better. Just like the 2007 Patriots were clearly better than the New York Giants. Just like the ’84 Lakers were better than the Celtics.
...
Still, there is something nagging about this series.

If I hadn't been reading this crap for the better part of three decades, I'd say that the thing nagging me would be Shank's relentlessly negative tone of a solid majority of his columns, especially the ones involving Bruins playoff losses.

Buoyed by their Game 2 comeback at the Garden, the Bruins arrived in Quebec prepared to assume the role of Big Bad Bears. The Bruins’ decidedly bland postgame remarks from Saturday had been magically manipulated by the locals to make them appear cocky and ready for a fall. The Montreal Gazette led its Tuesday sports section with a nifty column by veteran Pat Hickey under the flaming headline, “Habs play down Boston’s trash talk.’’

Or as we call it in Boston, stealing a page from the Shaughnessy playbook. Great job, guys!