When the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins get together, you know the players are going to bring a little something extra—and so do the fans.
But sometimes with emotions running high, lines inevitably get crossed. Such was the case during the Bruins’ 4-3 shootout win over the Habs Wednesday night. In what appeared to be a frightening incident, the Bell Centre crowd stood and passionately cheered when Bruins captain Zdeno Chara was face down on the ice after being hit in the throat by a puck fired off the stick of Tomas Plekanec.
From the video above, we can learn three things that don’t go mix together well: silly string, a mascot and a disgruntled Boston Bruins fan.
However, as a result of the footage captured of said Bruins fan taking umbrage with Tampa Bay Lightning mascot ThunderBug and her silly string antics, she—yes, she—has become a cult hero and a YouTube sensation.
Apparently, the Boston fan who hit ThunderBug from behind during the Jan 17 Lightning-Bruins game was taken away by ushers but later returned to his seat. No harm, no foul.
Thanks to President Barack Obama, Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand has a new nickname. You can now refer to him as “The Little Ball of Hate.”
The Boston Bruins visited the White House on Monday in honor of their Stanley Cup championship in June, and Marchand stole the show.
“Brad Marchand went into the season playing on the fourth line, but ‘The Little Ball of Hate’—What’s up with that nickname?—scored five goals in the last five games of the series,” Obama said to the laughter of some of the politicians and others in attendance.
With all of the love that Ottawa Senators fans showed for their team through the voting process for the 2012 NHL All-Star Game—they singly-handedly voted in five Sens players—it’s only fitting that the most popular Senator, Daniel Alfredsson, would be named teamed captain.
The other team captain is none other than “the Big Z,” Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara.
Alfredsson and Chara were teammates for four seasons in Ottawa (2001-02 to 2005-06), and they have both had terrific seasons thus far.
Hockey fans across North America have had Jan. 7 circled on their calendars since the release of the 2011-12 NHL schedule.
That’s because the much-anticipated date marked the first meeting between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins since their emotional seven-game Stanley Cup Final series from last season.
And while the Bruins took home the Cup last season, it was the Canucks who were victorious today, holding the B’s off to secure a 4-3 win.
Tyler Seguin learned the hard way that nobody in the Boston Bruins locker room is above the team.
If you were looking for him on the ice Tuesday night in Boston’s game against the Winnipeg Jets, you were looking in the wrong place. That’s because a perfectly healthy Seguin was sitting up in the press-box of the MTS Centre for the Bruins‘ first visit to Winnipeg in almost 16 years.
As harmless as it may seem, head coach Claude Julien benched the 19-year-old star, whose 13 goals and 25 points leads the Bruins, because he overslept the team’s breakfast and meeting earlier in the day.
With Veterans Day having just recently passed, all 30 NHL teams have taken part in the holiday by doing their part show appreciation for our armed servicemen.
But the Boston Bruins went above and beyond the call of duty.
In what is easily the best hockey video of the 2011-12 season thus far, Darren and Lori Jacobs the, parents of Lt. Charles Jacobs, were surprised when their son showed up at TD Garden for a Bruins game over Veterans day weekend. Charles has been in Afghanistan with the 182nd infantry of the Massachusetts Army National Guard.
However, with Milan Lucic’s hit (which was either intentional or unintentional depending on what city you are from) on Ryan Miller in Saturday night’s game at TD Garden, the two now seem to be sworn enemies for life.
The incident occurred as Lucic was chasing down a loose puck that got away from him on a potential breakaway. Miller thought he could beat Lucic to the puck, so he came out of the crease to clear it away. Lucic ended up crashing into Miller, with his arms up, knocking off Miller’s mask, practically decapitating him in the process.
As the 2010-11 regular season played out, most people believed that the Edmonton Oilers made the right decision in selecting Taylor Hall over Tyler Seguin with the first overall pick in the 2010 NHL draft.
While Seguin was spending half of his rookie season watching Bruins games from a press box, Hall was already developing into quite a hockey player. Although Seguin was fortunate enough to earn a Stanley Cup as a member of the Bruins in 2011, Hall was clearly the better player throughout the season.
If there was one theme in the month of October in the NHL, it was to expect the unexpected.
With that in mind, as hard as it may be to believe, the current NHL standings are in fact correct.
So, where to begin?
How about over in the Northeast Division, where the last team you would expect to be at the top would be the Toronto Maple Leafs (7-3-1). However, the only thing that might be more surprising within that division is that the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins are dead last (4-7-0)—not only in the division, but in the entire Eastern Conference.
