Behind The 8 Ball

Well, the title of this post makes as much sense as Shank writing about Boston Bruins hockey, which is why it's done with such infrequency.

Shank took advantage of the Bruins' 1 - 0 loss to Detroit on Friday night to accentuate the positive things about this year's Bruins team and their run into the playoffs:

You knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

It doesn’t matter that the Bruins won the Presidents’ Trophy. That might as well be the James Polk Trophy.

It doesn’t matter that the Bruins lost only four times in regulation over the final 36 games of the regular season.

It doesn’t matter that Boston scored 84 more goals than its opponents, winning 54 games in a season that was mildly reminiscent of the 1970-71 campaign when the Bruins dominated hockey, then lost in the first round to a Montreal Canadiens team with a young goalie named Ken Dryden.

No. These Bruins don’t do it the easy way and the NHL — unlike other sports — makes it possible for you to play a tough team in the first round even after you dominate the field during the regular season.

I think it's called scheduling, actually.

And now with the Bruins tying the series with this afternoon's 4 - 1 win over the Red Wings, do we get a Shank column about the Bruins on Monday that completely contradicts what he wrote on Saturday? Stay tuned!

A Tale Of Two Columns

Dan Shaughnessy, June 18th, 2013:

Before this Stanley Cup Final is over, the Bruins will be our Boys of Summer — on skates. And at this hour they are a feel-good team on a par with the 1967 Red Sox, the 1970 Bruins, and the 2001-02 Patriots.

There was a rainbow over Causeway Street when fans filed into the West End ice palace before Game 3 Monday night. By the end of the evening, Garden legions were thinking about the silver chalice that is the pot of gold in the National Hockey League.

On the latest date an NHL game has ever been played in Boston, the Bruins defeated the Chicago Blackhawks, 2-0, to take a 2-1 series lead in the Cup Final, which resumes Wednesday night at the Garden. If the Bruins win Game 4, they will have a chance to hoist the Stanley Cup on the ice of the United Center in Chicago Saturday night. Call JetBlue and American Airlines ASAP.

OK, that would be getting ahead of ourselves. But it’s easy to get swept away by the Black-and-Gold tide washing over New England in the spring/soon-to-be-summer of 2013. The Bruins are the team you love to love.

Dan Shaughnessy, two days later:

If you really want to know the truth, we were getting a little greedy about the whole thing.

It wasn’t a matter of if the Bruins would win the Stanley Cup. It was all about when. And where.

Would the Bruins win it in five in Chicago Saturday night? Or would they win it in six back at home on Causeway Street?

Six would be nice, we reasoned. The Bruins haven’t won the Stanley Cup on home ice since Mother’s Day 1970, when Bobby Orr flew through the air.

The parade route was another hot topic. Down Boylston Street seemed like a good idea. That would certainly be a triumphant moment after everything that’s happened this spring.

And who was the favorite for the Conn Smythe Trophy — Tuukka Rask or Patrice Bergeron?

So many premature questions. So many premature thoughts.

So, who was it getting ahead of ourselves, again?

Boston Bruins Death Watch - II

Dan Shaughnessy Watch, March 10, 2016:

In true Shank Shaughnessy fashion, he will bury both of these teams once they're eliminated from the playoffs.

Not a very tough call, was it? Looks like Shank's enjoying one of his favorite pastimes again, running people out of town:

It looks like John Farrell is going to keep his job longer than Claude Julien.

Mercifully, it is official: The Bruins are not a playoff team. Five years after winning the Cup, three years after getting to the finals, two years after compiling the best overall record in the league . . . the Bruins are not one of the top 16 teams. For the second straight year. And yet there is still a Preserve Claude Society that will insist Julien should be Bruins Coach For Life.

Sorry. Claude has been nothing but class and professionalism. He is the winningest coach in team history and he brought the Cup back to Causeway Street. But nine years is enough. Nobody gets to do this forever. The Bruins have to rebuild and Julien might not be the guy for a team of youngsters.

It took Shank this long to figure it out? It wasn't obvious when the Bruins traded away Tyler Seguin?

Then again, not every Boston Globe sportswriter agrees with this assessment:

Put away that pink slip for Claude Julien. He isn’t packing up and going home yet and neither are the Bruins.

Those who want to run the Bruins coach out of town if the team coughs up a playoff spot for the second consecutive season are going to have to put a few more pins in their Julien voodoo dolls between now and the season-finale Saturday against the Ottawa Senators.

Were you thinking of someone in particular with that comment, Chris?

Enough All Right, Shank

Dan Shaughnessy believes his Boston Globe readers are stupid, gullible and have short / nonexistent memories. This might be the explanation for him to write the following faux fanboy bandwagon column, presumably without the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness:

Never a doubt the Bruins were better team

Enough.

Enough of John Tortorella and his annoying press conferences. Enough of the goal-challenged Rangers pretending they had a chance against the Bruins. Enough of the antics of Derek Dorsett. Enough silly talk about the Bruins blowing another 3-0 series lead.

The B’s Saturday night put the Rangers and their fans out of their misery with a 3-1 Game 5, series-clinching victory over the New Yorkers. The Bruins advance to play the Penguins in the conference finals, starting next week at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. It’ll be Black & Gold vs. Black & Gold. Sidney Crosby is the only thing standing between the Bruins and another trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

It’s nice to have the Rangers in the rearview mirror. New York was merely an annoyance in Round 2. There was never a moment when the Rangers looked like the better team. They deserved to be swept, and were spared that indignity only because Tuukka Rask slipped on the ice at Madison Square Garden in Game 4. This led to a lot of hysteria about 2010 and the B’s collapse against the Flyers with Rask in net.

The word 'never' would apply to the columnist himself, wouldn't it? Once again, note the passive tone of 'Enough silly talk about the Bruins blowing another 3-0 series lead' and 'lot of hysteria about 2010 and the B’s collapse against the Flyers with Rask in net, as though he didn't have a damn thing to do with any of it:

But they will be reminded that three years ago — with Tuukka between the pipes — they blew a 3-0 series lead against the Flyers.

They will be reminded that they seem to have a big problem closing out playoff series.

They will be reminded that they gave away Game 4 in Madison Square Garden. Big time.
...
Or they’ll have to come back to New York and there will be thousand more reminders that Rask was between the pipes in 2010 when the Bruins blew a 3-0 lead against the Flyers.

Do these sentences sound like someone who supposedly never had a doubt about the Bruins winning this series? To me, it sounds like a columnist who at best takes his readers for fools and knaves, at worst openly lies to them.

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!

Unforced Error

You'd think that local sports teams would exercise greater levels of due diligence on prospective team members, especially in light of the Ume Udoka situation. It looks like the Boston Bruins didn't get the memo:

The Bruins tarnished their brand, and for no good reason

There’s honor in the brand of the Boston Bruins, perhaps more than the team’s ownership has ever understood.

The Bruins and their fans have always stood for something around here, a tad different from our other three franchises. The Bruins have been around much longer than the Celtics or Patriots and play in a house populated by rowdy, respectful, demanding folks who probably make less money but tip better than fans of our other three teams.

The Black and Gold have lived up to the love of their fans most winters since they first skated here in 1924. They are usually competitive, traditionally pugnacious, and ever-accountable. And Cam Neely — a big, tough, skilled leader first brought here by Bruins godfather Harry Sinden in 1986 — has been a worthy steward of the franchise since taking over as team president in 2010.

All of which made it so crushing to see Neely and the Bruins blunder into one of the worst decisions in team lore, bringing distraction and dishonor to the Hub Home of Hockey just when the surprising Bruins were off to their best start (10-1-0) in franchise history.

Read on as Shank gets to mount the Shetland Pony high horse once again.

The Big, Bad Bruins

Did I say 'The Big, Bad Bruins'? What I meant was a Bad Bruins column by Shank:

Bruins are back home, and so are Cup hopes for yet another season

Can someone tell me what that headline's supposed to mean?

The 2024 Red Sox and Patriots are bad teams, as they often were in the old days.

The ‘24 Celtics are defending NBA champs, as they often were in the old days.

And the Boston Bruins are once again what they have been for most of this century. They are better than the average Bears . . . good, but not great. They will be in the playoff hunt. And if they enjoy a good run in the spring, they have an outside chance to contend for the Stanley Cup.

They'll contend... by bowing out in the first round, like they've doing often in recent years.

This is pretty much the way it’s been since Bobby Orr last skated on Causeway Street. The Bruins have won one Cup (2011) since 1972, and even though they had a Full Throttle offseason, they’re not likely to contend for the chalice in the spring of 2025.

Shank mentioning Bobby Orr is the hockey equivalent of him mentioning Larry Bird in any given column.

The Bruins welcomed their cult back to Causeway Thursday and delivered a 6-4 victory over the hated Montreal Canadiens. It was the Boston franchise’s 101st home opener.

Cult? Like the Manson Cult? Branch Davidians? Blue Oyster Cult? Or - The Cult?

Here's where the column turns into real crap:

It was a nice introduction for Cam Neely and Don Sweeney’s Full Throttle pickups. Moneybags center Elias Lindholm (seven years, $54.25 million) had one goal and two assists and big defen$eman Nikita Zadorov (six years, $30 million) assisted on two goals. Newcomers Mark Kastelic (two goals) and Cole Koepke (one) also scored for Boston. Meanwhile, $66 million goalie Jeremy (puck stops here, buck stops here) Swayman made 20 saves in his first game since hitting the sweet crease jackpot.

Is it me, or is it scumbag behaviour for a sports columnist to resort to low hanging fruit and basically complain about the salaries of professional athletes? And - note the '$' when describing Zadorov. It's a sign of a shitty person if you ask this cat.

Shank's Annual Boston Bruins Column

Nothing like a little bandwagon hijacking where the Bruins are concerned:

They’re responding to a new coach, have a former MVP on the third line, and plenty of locker room leadership. No wonder the Bruins can’t lose.

The Bruins were already good. Then they changed coaches and got better. Now they are playing the best hockey in the NHL.

How did this happen?

There was a lot of negativity on Causeway Street when Cam Neely and Don Sweeney fired Bruce Cassidy in June. The demanding Cassidy, a fan favorite, had coached 399 games and taken the Bruins to the playoffs in six straight seasons. He came within one game of winning the franchise’s seventh Stanley Cup in 2019.

But Jake DeBrusk didn’t like Cassidy and asked to be traded. Brandon Carlo told The Athletic he felt “beat down” by Cassidy. David Krejci went home to Czechia for the 2021-22 season.

In true millennial fashion, player empowerment trumped player accountability. So Cassidy was fired, Sweeney explaining that the coach’s style “takes its toll.”

“I had a long history with Bruce,” Sweeney said before the Bruins’ 3-1 victory over Tampa Bay Tuesday. “I respect the hell out of him. He’s a fantastic coach. But sometimes you just take the pulse of where your team is at and where you think you can get to, and you make a really tough decision. This was difficult.”

We'll see how long two things hold up - the Bruins' record and Shank's non-hostile treatment of the team.

DHL Dan CLXV - Bruins Playoff Run Column

Shank calls his old pal Harry Sinden to get his take on this year's Boston Bruins:

What Harry Sinden thinks of these record-setting Bruins, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if the Red Sox are in need of a Chaim-lich maneuver . . .

▪ The Bruins are favorites to win the Stanley Cup. They have four regular-season games remaining and a shot at the NHL’s all-time records for wins and points. They have a chance to go down in history as the greatest NHL team of all time.

Time to check in with Harry Sinden.

Harry is the Bear in Winter, the godfather of the Spoked-B, a man who came to the Bruins in 1961. He was Bruins head coach when 18-year-old, wiffle-haired Bobby Orr first played in Boston in 1966. Together, they won the Cup in 1970.

Harry will turn 91 in September, has been married to Eleanor for 70 years, and is still on the Bruins’ masthead as “Senior Advisor to the Owner and Alternate Governor.” He is the man who drafted Don Sweeney in 1984, and traded for Cam Neely two years later.

How The Game Is Played

I'm not talking about hockey, but rather Shank's sporadic coverage of it. Ninety-plus games in, behold, his fourth Boston Bruins column this hockey season:

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Bruins are running downhill on the way to the Stanley Cup Final. Each series has been easier than the one before.

These Cup playoffs for the Spoked-B’s have been like a NASA countdown.

Seven games . . . then six . . . now perhaps four?

Liftoff.

Bring on the San Jose Sharks or the St. Louis Blues.

It’s strange. Has there ever been a championship run in which each round got easier? Certainly the 2004 and 2007 Red Sox were more tested in the ALCS than in the World Series, but they did not experience anything like what we are seeing in this magical — dare we say easy? — run to the Final. Those Sox faced much tougher competition in the second round than they did in the first. Only the World Series (both sweeps) was easy.

It’s never easy, of course — unless it’s the Patriots in the AFC East or the 2018-19 Red Sox against the AL bum-of-the-week clubs. Winning at the playoff level is always rugged and hard.

Do any of you think Shank watched any of last night's game? That Bruins win was not easy.

Let's set aside the obvious bullshit praising the Red Sox; he's been taking dumps on them nearly every day from Spring training until they got hot two weeks ago and now pretends to be on their side.

I've helpfully pointed out the theme that Shank is using in his not so genuine praise of the Bruins, and longtime readers will recognize it right away when compared to many of his Patriots columns. By claiming the Bruins' playoff run is easy (and in the next breath saying it's not easy), Shank nonetheless creates the impression, however false, that a Stanley Cup for the Bruins will be easy. If they do not, Shank will then take the mother of all shits on the Bruins for not winning the Stanley Cup because it was supposed to be easy.

And that's how the game is played.

DHL Dan CCXXXII - Hitting The Century Mark

As the Boston Bruins turn 100 today (Happy Birthday, Bruins!), Shank writes one of his three yearly hockey columns to commemorate the event:

There is so much to remember in 100 years of Bruins hockey, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while refusing to take the cheese on the Juan Soto nonsense …

▪ The Bruins turn 100 Sunday and plan a centennial birthday party before their 3 p.m. game at the Garden against the Montreal Canadiens.

Nice symmetry there. The Montreal Maroons were the Bruins’ opponents for their first game ever — a 2-1 win at Boston Arena Dec. 1, 1924.

The Zamboni of those days was a horse-drawn, plow-like scraper followed by a team of broom-toting sweepers (no jokes about slow horses playing for the 2024 Bruins).

As much as anything, Sunday’s celebration will be a salute to the Hub’s hockey culture, and the grip the Bruins have had on this region for as long as Jimmy Carter has been alive.

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 Long March

Shank's first column on the Boston Bruins in two months, naturally, comes after a loss. Would it be fair to question whether Shank's been advised by his boss not to write about the Red Sox for a few weeks?

We should know by now that the Bruins never, ever do it the easy way. They rarely get the job done in five games. It’s usually seven.

And so the Bruins must return to Toronto to give the emboldened Maple Leafs another shot Sunday night.

With a chance to close out the desperate Leafs, the Bruins dropped a 2-1, Game 5 decision on Causeway Street Friday night and now must go back across the border before they can advance to the second round of the 2013 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Careful, B’s. The Maple Leafs are to the NHL what the Red Sox were to the American League before 2004. They are an Original Six team in a hockey-crazed town and they haven’t won a Cup since the Dave Keon team of 1967. When you get ahead of them, three games to one, it’s a good idea to put them away. The Bruins couldn’t do that and you know the good folks of Toronto will go all Kevin Millar on us. They’ve got Phil (rhymes with Schill) Kessel in Game 6 and anything can happen in Game 7.

This column irritates in so many ways. In addition to the negative timing & angle (as this column comes after a lackluster loss, we expect no less from Shank!), he is compelled once again to make numerous references to the Red Sox, which no Shank column should be without, provides (if that is the right word) a paint-by-numbers recap of the game (better read elsewhere) and offers little in the realm of substantive analysis. Like last night's game, this is a half-assed effort by the home team.

And Shank, as has been mentioned before, continues to dwell on the Bruins' loss to the Flyers three freakin' years ago:

“We played good in the second half of the game,’’ said Rask, who was goalie when the Bruins blew a 3-0 series lead to the Flyers three years ago. “We have to take that with us and start the game up there like we finished here. We have to learn from it.’’

Other than the obvious point that Shank just loves beating up on the home team when they lose, I fail to see any reason whatsoever why this needs to be brought up time and time again.

DHL Dan CCXXIX - Riding The Pine

The Bruins' David Pastrnak got benched earlier in the week, and Shank recalls another Bruins benching:

David Pastrnak’s benching recalls an earlier event that didn’t sit well with Cam Neely, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while calmly reciting Lou Gorman’s mantra: “The sun will rise, the sun will set, and I’ll have lunch” …

▪ Bruins coach Jim Montgomery benched his best player, David Pastrnak, for the third period of a win over the Kraken at the Garden last weekend.

And it was no big deal. After taking responsibility for a bad turnover in the game, Pasta said, “I don’t want to be any distraction to our team,” then two days later led all Bruins forwards with 22:18 of ice time in Toronto.

I don’t remember Manny Ramirez, Tom Brady, or Larry Bird getting benched very often. It’s a hockey thing. And it’s usually not a big deal.

Except for once around here when it was.

In January of 1996, 34-year-old rookie Bruins coach Steve Kasper sat Cam Neely and Kevin Stevens for a game in Toronto that ended in a 4-4 tie. Neely, a nine-year Bruins veteran and alternate captain who was playing in the final year of his career, did not take it well, and neither did Bruins fans.

Heartbreaker

Like the sun rising in the east and the proverbial bear crapping in the woods, a Bruins loss is enough for Shank to pounce and go negative after a single game.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — They are 4,029 kilometers from home, taking on an entire country, attempting to do something they have not done since the Nixon administration.

It is not going to be easy.

On a day when natural disasters plagued fans back in Greater Boston (what is it about the Bruins and power outages in the finals?), the Bruins dropped the first game of the Stanley Cup finals in excruciating fashion last night, losing to the favored Vancouver Canucks, 1-0, on a Raffi Torres goal with only 18.5 seconds left on the clock.

That’s right, people. The Bruins and Canucks skated to a scoreless tie for 59 minutes and 41 1/2 seconds before Vancouver won it when Torres slipped the puck past Tim Thomas after a terrific pass from Jannik Hansen on a two-on-one.

The Bruins played well, but this was a crushing defeat. Boston went 0 for 6 on power plays, including a four-minute stretch in the first period, and an 83-second five-on-three in the second. Boston has converted only 5 of 67 power plays in this amazing playoff run.

How do you know he's now off the bandwagon?

Your Bruins are in a little bit of a drought when it comes to this event.

Classic Shank negativity reverberates throughout the entire column. There's also a new angle I've detected in some Shank columns, especially this one - ever get the feeling Shank's lecturing you? If that's not a turnoff, I don't know what is.

Old Time Hockey, Eddie Shore

Thar she blows - Shank's first column on the 2018-2019 Boston Bruins!

Bruins channel their Big, Bad days in physical master class

There was great buzz in the arena and a sprinkling of good signage when the Bruins came out for warmups before Saturday’s Game 2 against the Toronto Maple Leafs. In a town that’s gone soft on its teams — rarely is heard a disouraging word about the sacred Pats, the smug Sox, or the ever-glass-half-full Green Team — Bruins fans have retained their edge, dignity, and demands.

There is no fooling these people. Put a bad product on the ice or show something less than 100 percent effort and they will come at you with pitchforks. The B’s fan dynamic is almost exactly what it was 40 years ago and this is a good thing.

The Bruins rewarded their fans with bone-crunching hits in a 4-1 victory Saturday night. It was the total opposite of Boston’s dead-ass, 4-1 loss in the series opener. Playing one of their best games of the season, the Bruins squared the series with 60 minutes of blood and thunder hockey.

The only real surprise here - this column was written after a win, not after a loss.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

Ten days after predicting doom and gloom for the Bruins, Shank pretends to care about the Game 7 win over the Canadiens.

Of course he doesn't give a shit - he spends half the column telling us what massive choke artists they are / were :

Round 2 starts this weekend on Broad Street in Philadelphia against the Flyers. For sure, there are plenty of Philadelphia stories to be told, but let the Bruins and their fans enjoy last night for a few more hours. Had the Bruins lost to the Canadiens, it could have been a franchise-altering defeat, with dire consequences for coach Claude Julien and general manager Peter Chiarelli.

But this time the Bruins did not choke it away. Sure, they blew a 3-2 lead in the final two minutes of regulation, and they failed to convert on a single power play for another night (0 for 21 for the series), but who cares when you win it in OT? These Bruins become the first team in franchise history (in 28 tries) to win a series after falling behind, two games to zero.

Game 7s have not been the Bruins’ friends in recent years. The Pesky-Dent-Buckner-Boone torch has been passed to Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, and Andrew Ference. Julien has been in the Hub of Hockey for four years. His first three seasons ended in Game 7 defeats, the last two at home. Finally, he gets some relief and vindication.

From a Game 7 win emerges a comparison with Bill Buckner. I imagine Shank could wait until they actually choke again to make the comparison, right?

But we don’t care about any of those things today.

Nah, we'll just write a whole freakin' article about 'those things' instead!

Tough To Stomach

The only bad thing about this time of year is Shaughnessy covering hockey.

I couldn't agree with that comment any more. Shank's Friday column is, naturally, the Bruins 4 - 3 double OT loss to the Montreal Canadiens, so let's drop some names to make it look like he knows what he's talking about:

Paying homage to Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard, Milt Schmidt, and Guy Lafleur, the Bruins and Canadiens skated toward midnight in the first game of their 34th playoff series Thursday night. It was spectacular hockey and at times it felt like they’d still be playing when folks from Northeastern University lined up to get diplomas Friday morning, but it ended badly for Boston when P.K. Subban blasted a slapper past Tuukka Rask in the fifth minute of the second overtime.

Montreal 4, Boston 3.

Ugh.

This was a kick to the stomach. The most-hated guy on the most-hated team came into our town and won it with a blazing slap shot in the early seconds of a power play. The Bruins had outplayed the hated Habs for almost all of the third and fourth periods, outshooting Montreal, 28-12, in that 40-minute stretch. But they were beaten after Patrice Bergeron lost a faceoff in the Boston zone at the start of a penalty kill.

Throw in some inane comparisons, mention with fantastic glee the Canadiens' historical playoff success against the Bruins, and feign solidarity with Bruins fans:

And so, we worry.

He's not worrying one damn bit - he's busy pounding water so he can take a huge piss on the Bruins if / when they lose the next game.

Historical footnote - this is the DSW's 1,500th post - whoopee!

Two Newspapers In One

The Boston Bruins haven't been playing well recently. Bruins beat reporter Fluto Shinzawa doesn't think coach Claude Julien should get shitcanned:

This is no time for Bruins to fire Claude Julien
...
In times of crisis — an accurate description for the current segment — it would be easy for Neely and Sweeney to execute change by sacking Claude Julien. Coaching changes can sometimes initiate short-term spikes.

The harder thing would be for the bosses to do nothing. Which is precisely what they should do.

The Bruins are who they are. As projected before the season, they are a team engaged in a dogfight to qualify for the playoffs. That they remain in the hunt is partly because of Julien’s guidance.

Then there's this guy:

Are we still supposed to be patient with coach-for-life Claude and the Bruins???

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 22, 2017

If Shank watched more than a single period of Bruins hockey this year, I'd be shocked.

Like He Really Cares

Shank's trying to bullshit us again:

A year ago at this time, all we cared about was the Bruins’ shot at the Stanley Cup

Remember the last weekend in May of 2019? One year ago? It felt like the only thing that mattered was Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, featuring the St. Louis Blues and your Boston Bruins in a packed TD Garden on Causeway Street.

Here on the Globe sports pages, we had you covered from crease to crease and everywhere in between. We talked to Bobby Orr about his memories of playing the the Blues in the Finals way back in 1970. Orr spoke of the old days, then went out of his way to defend 42-year-old defenseman Zdeno Chara, who was getting some criticism on local sports radio.

"I've been hearing a lot of crap recently about Z,'' said Orr, who rarely says anything controversial. "Are you kidding me?''

In that same Sunday sports section, we had a lengthy profile of Chara written by Christopher L. Gasper (whatever happened to that guy?). We had a nifty account of a Red Sox loss to the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. The story was accompanied by a photo of Red Sox manager Alex Cora making a mound visit to talk things over with Sox lefty David Price (whatever happened to those two guys?). The Red Sox were 27-25, still claiming that it wasn’t a mistake to shut down all of their starters throughout spring training.

Yes, indeed - lots of Bruins coverage at the Boston Globe. Shank cared so much about the Bruins / Blues Stanley Cup finals he didn't write a column about the series until the Bruins lost in Game 2, three days after Shank's purported interest in the series. For the record, Shank did columns for the remaining games, but let's not try to rewrite history here by claiming ex post facto that he gave a shit until the Bruins lost, which is classic Shaughnessy.