*
THE SPORTS WRITER TO BE IS MAD
(again)
by John Doyle, sportswriter2b.com
The Boston Bruins have been eliminated by the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Montreal beat the Bruins last night at the Fleet Center, 2-0, clinch the series, four games to three, after having trailed in the series three games to one after four games.
What galls me most about the way the Bruins cheesed this series away is that I actually cared about this series. Despite my growing disinterest in the Bruins and the NHL (bordering on outright contempt), I decided to pay attention to this series because it was, for me, a throwback to a bygone era. Boston-Montreal in the playoffs, a seemingly annual rite of spring up until about a decade ago, seemed to have gone the way of the Hartford Whalers and rotary telephones. This was due in large part due the NHL changing their playoff format to de-stress divisional rivalries, and the overall crappiness of both the Bruins and Canadiens.
But here we were, Spring of 2004, and the Habs were in town for the playoffs for the second time in three years. Sure, the NHL was a shell of the league I once knew and loved. Sure, the league had pretty much betrayed loyal hockey fans and sold itself out under the delusion that there was money to be made marketing themselves to hicks and rednecks. Sure, the league was running itself into the ground by giving way too much money to hockey players, who used the cash to by cellular phones, Ferraris and Armani suits, but still kept their ridiculous mullets. And sure, due to the league's windmill-chasing and failure to keep salaries and overhead low, it was headed toward a gut-wrenching and potentially fatal labor dispute that is poised to shut down the league for months if not years. None of that mattered. The Habs were in town for the playoffs, the Bruins seemed determined to avenge their inexcusable loss to the eigth-ranked Canadiens in 2002, and for one brief moment (specifically after Glen Murray's overtime goal in
Game 4), the NHL was exciting to me again.
New England was ready to forget the Bruins' miserable performances in games
five and
six during the fast and furous action of game seven last night at the Fleet Center. How can one not love a Game Seven that enters the third period scoreless? But then
Richard Zednik cheesed
Andrew Raycroft, the Habs took a 1-0 lead, and did not look back. Now, once again, Montreal is in the second round, and
for the third year in a row, the Bruins have failed to find themselves among the NHL's Elite Eight.
One needs to look no further than my column of April 7 to understand why I think the NHL needs a serious scrubbing. I will not get into that again today. And look, I am not saying that a win last night would have made me forget about the league's problems. And I certainly do not suggest that had the Bruins not p*ssed the playoff series away, they would have been successful in rounds two, three or four. And had they gone all the way, I doubt it would have meant all that much to me. But when I am able to put my distaste for the NHL aside and embrace this opportunity to root for a local sports team that was such a large part of my youth, not to mention one that had been up
THREE GAMES TO ONE in this series, then yeah, it hurts when they cannot beat the damn Habs.
*****Getting my mind off the Bruins, I attended my first New Hampshire Fisher Cats game at Gill Stadium earlier tonight. I will have a full review of the events in an upcoming blog.
As of this morning, when one types the words SPORTS WRITER into Yahoo.com, this page comes up fourth out of eleven and a half million. Type in JOHN DOYLE SPORTS and this site is ninth out of 419,000.
*
