Bruins 4, Habs 2: Everyone Go to Your Corners and Come Out Irrational!

I've already read a lot about last night's game, and the consensus seems to be that the Habs can take some sort of moral victory away from their 4-2 ("3-2 with an empty netter!" you might say) loss to the Bruins last night. Price played pretty well, the Canadiens didn't wilt under the B's physical pounding, BGL was a relatively effective foil for Chara, and but for a stupid penalty by Josh Gorges, or a late whistle on the first goal, or terrible reffing, the Habs had the Bruins. "A couple of bounces" you say ... "one more call going our way" ...

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Fucking bullshit. This series might not go five.

The Sky is Falling: They lost. To the Bruins. Chara was dominating, Kessel was flying, Lucic levelled a dozen people. The Habs spent huge chunks of time scrambling in their own end. Breezer was a fucking abomination, ZombiePleks was/is a fucking disgrace, D'Agostini looks like a career AHLer and Big Tits has lost the plot being stuck with those two millstones. BGL on the first line was a nice change-up that messed with Chara's head ... but Koivu and Kovy essentially played shorthanded on offense. Every time the Bruins looked interested, they nearly ran the Habs out of the building. The first Bruins goal was a gong show, with FOUR Canadiens allowing Krejci and Kessel to pop the puck loose and put it in. Argue whether the whistle was late all you want, but that was a joke. The bottom line from my point of view was this: The Bruins played like crap for long stretches and still won. The Canadiens played as well as they could (save for a couple of bounces) and still lost.

I'll get to the shit at the end of the game in a moment, but believe me, if it wasn't getting it's own paragraph, it would be in this section.

Plan a very short, token Parade: That was a hell of a performance from Price (not properly covering pucks notwithstanding.) He played calm, and looked square to the shooter. He made some very nice stops and gave the Habs a chance to win. If he keeps it up, the Habs won't suffer the humiliating beat down that every expert has predicted. The BGL experiment was an inspired gamble by Bob; it worked to a point. The Metro/Higgins/Tanguay line looked fantastic. The defence held its own under an onslaught of large, angry black and gold wearing fuckers carrying sticks. There are things the Habs can work on. It might just be too late for this year. At the very least, the Bruins know that they can be beaten. That's something positive, I guess.

And now, we come to the ranting, WTF is anyone thinking? portion of our program: Oh hell. Where do I start with this one? The bullshit at the end of last night's game has caused pretty well everyone to voice an opinion, and let's just say there is quite a range of viewpoints. Robert L at Eyes on the Prize has one viewpoint. Stanley Cup of Chowder has a different one. Naturally, Habs-haters worldwide can't resist jumping into the fray . Here's what I think:

I love Robert L's passion for the Habs and think his site is a treasure trove of history, game talk, and general Habs love. But he's off his rocker blaming that scrum on anyone other than Mad Max. I don't see Kessel saying or doing anything to warrant Lapierre's idiotic "message sending", and while I hate his Cro-Magnon guts, I see nothing wrong with Lucic jumping in to defend his team's leading goalscorer. Unless we discover Kessel insulted his Mom and sister, Lapierre acted like a classless shit.

I appreciate most of what Greek Lightning does for the Canadiens, but his brain must have left his body before he tried to throw that elbow at the end of the game. When you've already levelled someone from behind in a nationally televised game this year, you might not want to pull more stupid shit. Now, that being said, I've watched Greek Lightning for two full years in a Habs jersey and those are the only two times I've thought "oh fuck, that wasn't right", so everybody needs to lay off the "he's the scum of the earth" stuff. There's a big difference between Daniel Carcillo or Ryan Hollweg and Greek Lightning.

Ah, DOOM. Was it an eye gouge or a facewash? It looked a lot like DOOM, his arms being held by the ref, was pawing at Hunwick and got him in the eye. Intentional eye gouge? I hope not. But where is this camera angle where Hunwick is being held by anyone? In the video I see DOOM's arms mostly tied up and Hunwick's not. Later, there is a linesman between them, and DOOM definitely fires some punches into Hunwick (and Hunwick looks like he's trying to fire back.) I'm not arguing that he didn't do it, but somebody needs to stop fucking crying that DOOM took on a defenseless child in a streetfight. Fuck me, last week DOOM got mugged from behind by that asshole Lucic while he was tussling with Thornton and his face got shoved to the ground Steve Moore style. No outrage? Of course not. Habs haters are too busy cuing up the time Lucic beat a one-armed Komisarek and claiming he never drops the gloves.

Anyway, it all makes Saturday very interesting, and it gives all of us internet experts one more thing to bitch about. Classless Habs fans? Thug Bruins fans? No dog in this fight Leafs fans? Neutral corners 'til Saturday, all. (Hey, at least there won't be any ratings arguments about which team is getting the national broadcast, right?)