The Bruins So Far

Players from the 1972 Stanley Cup Team helped current players raise the Championship Banner Thursday Night

Where to begin? The banner raising ceremony was beautiful. It literally gave me chills and brought a tear to my eye, and that's not easy to do. No other professional sports team could pull off something like that, it is an ability truly unique to Boston sports. Things looked pretty good for the first 15 minutes. Brad "The Rat" Marchand had scored and put the B's on top and the momentum was completely in the Bruins' favor. Then, the adrenaline wore off. Yikes. The second half of the first all the way through the second period was an ugly thing to watch. Watching it on DVR, it reminded me of the 2009-2010 Bruins team that we all despised so very much. Old Man Czech scored his 1,600th point and newbie Jakub Voracek, who I have to admit has a crap load of skill, scored with like 2 seconds left in the first and the Flyers were up 2-1 just like that. The third period looked great for the Bruins though. They played great, were skating well, were making plays and creating opportunities, but they just couldn't put anything behind Bryzgalov, who looked pretty damn good all night. After some thinking, I've come up with a small summary and a couple ideas that could be beneficial to the team moving forward:

• Tyler Seguin looked awesome. The third line of Seguin - Kelly - Caron had a great game. They cycled the puck well and created a lot of opportunities and were probably the Bruins' best line of the night. But, I think Seguin should be playing with more skilled players, like Bergeron and Marchand.
• KHL needs to be broken up. Like immediately. I've seen how they operate during the regular season. They have one stellar game then about 3-5 games where you wonder if they're even on the roster. Which brings me back to Tyler Seguin. As much as the team's success is the #1 priority, his development is a very close #2. Break up the top line and play Seguin with the likes of Horton/Lucic/Marchand and Krejci/Bergeron will create some serious scoring threats. Not to mention the fact that opposing defenders will be shitting their pants watching the kid fly up the ice off a pass from one of the best playmakers on the team (both Krejci and Bergy). Of course, once the playoffs roll around KHL will need to be reassembled because we all saw the kind of damage they do in the postseason, but keep Seguin with Bergy and Marchand and the other teams will be scared. Literally.
• Tim Thomas looked stellar between the pipes despite giving up two goals in the first, but what are you gonna do when you have one of the best players to ever play the game bearing down on you (Jaromir Jagr) and one of the most underrated young players in the league (Jakub Voracek) sitting right in front of the net? But, Timmy is getting old and at his age playing him too much will only hurt the team, so expect Tuukka Rask to get plenty of starts this season. I'm expecting a great year out of Tuukka. He was hurt last year and is in a contract year, not to mention he's gonna want to prove to the league that he can be a stellar #1 netminder in the league for years to come and that he wasn't just a flash in the pan in '09.

This will be an interesting year for the Bruins, and I for one am really looking forward to it. Here's to another great year of hockey!