What's Happened to the Bruins?

For the past two years you could see the Boston Bruins moving their way up the NHL charts with gritty play, hard hitting, B's hockey. After yesterday's 5-1 loss to the WORST TEAM IN HOCKEY, the Carolina Hurri-Whales, I was left wondering if this was going to become like former coach Dave Lewis' one year behind the bench. A team full of sometimes overpaid players who lacked the heart to pull a win our of their ass. To play hard (especially in front of your own home crowd) and just compete.

We saw what you see in the image to your left. Players "Ole'ing" the cellar dwellers into our end. Some people in the Twitterverse will place a lot of blame on the goalies. Yes, to some degree, they are paid to stop a small piece of black rubber. However when your defense (and not just Wideman) looks like they are paying more attention to what is on their DVR at home, they can't stop everything.

I point more to our forwards, more interested in fancy plays and not getting the gritty goals like in the past two seasons. Hoping for that highlight reel goal versus the pick up league rule of toss it at the net. Getting a body in front of the net (hello Recchi). Slamming people into the boards and then working to get the puck. Anything. Let's face it Kessel, for all his goals, was a streaky goal scorer. What worked for us last season was that other players would get hot when he got cold and then the B's were rolling four lines who were all scoring threats. This season no one is scoring.

No trade (Kovalchuk) will help the B's at this point. We could see a yard sale for this season following the Olympic break. We may squeak into 8th place for the playoffs. Or we will continue to crash and burn. It's not Julien's fault. Nor is it Chiarelli's.

Injuries to top players and a lackluster, apathetic supporting cast are more to blame than lack of scoring. Injuries I will give them a pass on. But in a city that loves their sports teams to wear their hearts on their sleeves, the Bruins haven't shown any. I don't know who said it but they were right when they though Neely should put on the gear again. At his age he'd be more passionate than 99% of this team.