For the second night in a row, the Bruins battled hard, only to fall in the shootout portion of overtime, this time 3-2 to the Buffalo Sabres.
Fluto Shinzawa has head coach Claude Julien happy with his club’s effort, but feeling as if he’s living the movie Groundhog Day. Stephen Harris says that the Bruins shouldn’t feel that badly about last night’s loss.
Shinzawa’s notebook has rookie Blake Wheeler still adjusting to his role. Harris’ notebook has Manny Fernandez continuing his upward trend in goal for the Bruins.
Patriots
On Patriots Daily, Scott Benson has A Cautious Optimism about this team after Monday night.
So what was with the trashing of Matt Cassel yesterday on the Big Show? Yesterday’s script for the show must’ve included making sure to downplay and ridicule the quarterback’s performance in any way possible. We know the guy will never be Tom Brady, but give him some credit when he plays well, ok?
With the Patriots having played Monday night, Wednesday becomes report card day. Michael Felger offers up a uniformly positive report card while also asking what happened to the Broncos. Ian Clark has high marks all around for the Patriots. Even Ron Borges is hard pressed to find too many negatives from Monday night. Robert Lee says that the Patriots made a statement with their win over the Broncos. Ben Swasey looks at what a difference a week can make.
Christopher L. Gasper says that what could be Rodney Harrison’s final season in the NFL didn’t end on his own terms. Karen Guregian has the Patriots losing the Tom Brady of their defense with Harrison sidelined for the season with a torn quad. Mike Reiss looks at just what a huge part of the Patriots defense Harrison is and how the team will try to cover his loss. Hector Longo has the Patriots starting life without Rodney today. Rich Garven reports on the Patriots losing their defensive leader.
I’ll give you all you need to know about the column from Mark Farinella this morning:
Of course, the “In Bill We Trust” crowd will see this as just another example of the media whining and crying about how it gets no cooperation from the best coach in the league.
That’s because that’s exactly what your article this morning is, Mark.
Jim Donaldson would like the real Patriots to step forward. David Brown has a look at the dominant running game on Monday night. Lenny Megliola says that in this crazy season, the Patriots are as viable contenders as anyone else.
Guregian’s notebook has a look at the suddenly thin running back position. Lee’s notebook looks at the mounting injuries for the Patriots. Garven’s notebook says that BenJarvus Green-Ellis looks like a keeper.
Red Sox
Michael Silverman has Terry Francona and the Red Sox battling adversity this entire season. Adam Kilgore looks at just what a grind 2008 was for Francona. Bob Stern has more on the upcoming offseason for Francona, which includes back surgery and plenty of rest. Jeff Goldberg has more from the Red Sox skipper. Joe McDonald notes that the players weren’t the only battered ones at the end of the season.
John Tomase says that the Red Sox starters are fine, but that the club will still look to improve the rotation in the offseason. He also tosses out a few names that will be available. Steve Buckley says that the Sox better not trade Kevin Youkilis if they decided to bring in Mark Teixeira. It would be crazy to trade Youkilis, but I haven’t heard a single person suggest it. Most scenarios that have Teixeira coming here (including mine) involve keeping Youkilis.
Bill Doyle says that FOX can’t be happy with a Rays/Phillies World Series.
Shira Springer looks at the difficult job of baseball authenticators.
Silverman’s notebook has Francona explaining how he handled Jason Varitek in the postseason. Kilgore’s notebook looks at what the Red Sox would’ve done had they needed a closer in game 7.
Celtics
Marc J. Spears has his NBA preview, with the Celtics trying to repeat, and many of the top contenders making moves in the offseason to try and catch up. Spears focuses in on the New Orleans Hornets, who many feel are ready to make the leap this season.
Mark Murphy looks at Leon Powe and Bill Walker as players who underwent multiple knee surgeries before even getting to the NBA.
We want to be sure to remember Harry Mangurian, who passed away on Sunday. Mangurian had been a part-owner of the team with John Y. Brown, and then bought the rest of the team from Brown after Red Auerbach threatened to leave for the Knicks if Brown didn’t sell his stake in the team. The team came back to glory and won the 1981 championship under Mangurian’s ownership.
Murphy’s notebook has the Celtics ready to get the season started for real. Frank Dell’Apa has Gabe Pruitt once again impressing in his time on the floor.
Will Leitch has his mailbag for WEEI.com
Popularity: 9% [?]
Oh, ye of little faith! Borges hard pressed to find anything to complain about, you say? How about this: “Laurence Maroney…is out for the season with a paper cut … I mean a shoulder injury.”
Let’s face it, the guy’s an incontrovertible prick.
This is exacty why I don’t read Ron Borges. There is no doubt in my mind that if he was questioned about his Maroney comment (“Ron, do YOU KNOW the extent of Maroney’s injury?”) He would blame it on Belichick, (“well, this kind of speculation is what happens when the head coach is so secretive about injuries”)
no doubt in my mind at all.
If Texeira is brought in, then one of three players must be dealt – Big Head, Lowell or Ortiz. You can’t play 4 guys at 3 positions. Big Head can jump between the 3 spots; Lowell can play 3rd or dh; Ortiz can dh; Texeira plays 1b or can dh. The problem is you can’t move players around positions like it’s fantasy baseball. They primarily play 1 position, and occasionally play somewhere else. Now the hard part. Lowell has minimal, if any, trade value b/o injury/age/salary. Ortiz has more trade value, but his age, wrist, only able to dh and down stats for 2008 aren’t good signs for trade value. That leaves Big Head as the only player out of the 3 with any value – can play 2 positions glod glove-like, excellent obp, showed power, all of his batting stats are on an upward trend, good salary. So if Boston fans want Texeira, say good bye to Mr. Sweat.
Sam, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you don’t care much for Youkilis since you never want to type his name.
You could have made the same argument before the ‘08 that the Sox should have dealt Coco Crisp because there was no place to play him, but look how much he wound up contributing to the club.
The point is, Lowell and Ortiz are both injury risks given their ages and recent history, so I don’t think it would be that big a deal for the Sox to sign Tex and hang on to all three of those guys. It would probably wind up working itself out. But it’s a moot point because I doubt the Sox will give Tex the best offer.
What do the Sox do if Lowell and Ortiz return healthy, and now they have 4 guys for 3 positions? Sit one every game? That’s really cost effective. Of course it’s not as bad as paying a guy 14 million to only play 109 games. I don’t think they should trade Youk; he produces, he has gotten better each year, and he’s signed for cheap money. The only interest they have in Texeira is to drive up his price to the Yankees. My point is more towards the absurdity of the article since it doesn’t make sense for the Sox to do it, and potentially have so many guys for so few positions. Now spending the money on a good starting pitcher, not Burnett, makes more sense. Having too much starting pitching is a good problem; too many positional players doesn’t work.
Sam, the beauty is that the Red Sox have the resources to sign a big-name hitter like Teixeira and a big-name pitcher like Sabathia, which obviously only a handful of MLB teams can do (in fact only a handful of teams could afford one of them).
I would like to see the Sox hang on to Youkilis as well. Right now it is far from a given that Lowell and/or Ortiz are going to remain healthy for an entire season, so they are going to need production from as many sources as possible. To be honest, the way Youk plays the game I wouldn’t be surprised to see him sustain an injury at some point as well.
Perhaps getting into the Tex bidding will merely be a tactic to drive up the price for whoever does land him, but I think the Sox are serious in their pursuit and they should consider him, as their lineup has some problems in the ALCS against Tampa Bay’s good young pitching.
I know I’m about 4 years late to this party, but the hockey shootout has GOT to go. I hated it when Hockey East experimented with it in the mid nineties and I don’t like it now.
Does anyone happen to know what Boston’s record was last season in Shootouts? It was definitely below 0.500. It almost seems like 0.000. Anyway, it would be interesting to see how many more points the team would have accumulated if they had risen to 0.500 in Shootouts, and whether that would have elevated them into a higher playoff position. With only a few points separating teams at the end, I’m convinced the B’s would have leaped into one or two higher spots in the playoffs.
The Bruins were 6-7 in shootouts last year. The other 65 minutes is more important.
What do you mean? The shootout takes away all that crappy stuff, like hitting, passing, screening, unexpected bounces, defense, board play, power plays, face washes, cross checks, poke checks, offsides, cycling in the corners, slap shots, deflections … and it turns the game into baseball, and who doesn’t like baseball better than hockey?
The sooner those inu-nit-wits poke their heads out of their igloo trailers and figure out that the only way to make money is to get rid of their commie team-first attitudes and glorify individual accomplishments, the sooner they’ll realize that there is no “$” in T-E-A-M!
The best thing about BenJarvus Green-Ellis? His name sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.
How can you not like a guy who has two first names and two last names?
And has parts of three other Patriots’ names in his name–it’s like Ben Watson, Jarvis Green and Ellis Hobbs collided into each other and out came a young running back.
“Benny Green with the TD!!!” [/Gil Santos]