Pump the breaks on B’s
Injuries make hard road to Cup
Chapter One in the Guide to Watching Professional Sports in Boston hasn’t changed much in the 21st century.
The year begins with everyone wrapped up in the Patriots’ annual playoff run and their almost-automatic bid to the AFC title game. There’s often a trip to the Super Bowl in the mix.
After that, well, after the a) rolling rally, or b) a week or more of blame assessment and finger pointing, we hunker down and rev up our interest in the Bruins and Celtics as they begin their stretch drives for the playoffs.
Both teams have been huge surprises. We wrote the Celtics off following the gruesome Opening Night injury that forced Gordon Hayward off the stage. As for the Bruins, there wasn’t a lot of Stanley Cup-or-bust talk to begin with, especially when they won just six of their first 17 games.
Yet as recently as 10 days ago a popular parlor game was being played throughout New England: Which team do you think will go deeper in the playoffs — Bruins or Celtics?
Each has defied expectations. Each presents itself as committed and in it to win. Each looks well-oiled and organized.
Not too much has changed with the Celtics in those 10 days, even if Al Horford has had some swing-and-misses and Kyrie Irving sat out last night’s game against the Bulls because of “left knee soreness.”
The optimist in me believes Horford will get his groove back. And for Irving if it turns out to be nothing more than a late-season let’s-get-him-off-his-feetfor-a-couple-of-days maintenance situation . . . fine. The Red Sox did it all the time with Pedro Martinez back in the day.
As for the Bruins, this is where the exclamation points suddenly are being twisted into question marks.
Question: Does the hockey operations department at TD Garden believe the Bruins have a chance to win the Stanley Cup this spring? Bruins general manager Don Sweeney gave the all-in signal when he engineered recent deals for veteran winger Rick Nash, defenseman Nick Holden and center Tommy Wingels. For added depth he signed 39-year-old free agent Brian Gionta, a former Boston College star who broke in with the New Jersey Devils in 2001.
If you’ve never seen a deep playoff run by the Bruins, you’ve never seen hockey. There haven’t been a lot them this century, but the 2010-11 Run to the Cup was exciting, electric, historic. It even had a soapoperish element to it with Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas and Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo trading snarky comments about pumping each others’ tires.
It wasn’t just Thomas’ goaltending for the ages that won the Cup back in 2011, but it was a very big part of the story. Thomas also delivered my favorite quote of the spring. Following the 5-2 victory over the Canucks in Game 6, with Luongo being pulled just 8:35 into the first period after allowing three goals, Thomas was asked what that must have been like for his adversary.
Thomas’ deadpan response was, “I don’t know. I’ve been through a lot of experiences, but that’s not one of them. So it’s not something I can personally speak about.”
So, yes, absolutely, sign us up for four rounds of comebacks, four rounds of sudden death, four rounds of eye-popping goaltending. And the off-ice war of words that add so much spice to the Cup tourney.
Here’s the problem . . . er, here are the problems:
— Veteran Patrice Bergeron is out for at least two weeks, after which his fractured right foot will be “reevaluated.”
— Rookie defenseman Charlie McAvoy suffered a “lower body injury” just 37 seconds into the Bruins’ 2-1 overtime victory over Montreal on Saturday, so we’re be doing a wait-and-see with the kid.
— Goaltender Tuukka Rask, too, is idled with a lower-body issue. He isn’t expected to be in net tonight when the B’s host Detroit at the Garden.
The Causeway Street buzz is that Rask is fine, that this is more about chill time than anything else.
Bergeron? The expectation is that he’ll be ready for the tourney.
McAvoy? You like to think the Bruins would have said something yesterday if his injury will keep him out for the remainder of the season. Who knows? What I do know is that B’s fans everywhere have been replaying McAvoy’s injury, over and over and over, in search of answers.
Even with all these guys, the Bruins face a tough road to get to the Stanley Cup finals. But this is the NHL, and the NHL is built with surprises in mind.
Imagine how crazy it’ll be around here if the Celtics the Bruins make it to the conference finals.
Alas, that seemed more of a possibility 10 days ago.