Sunday, December 14, 2008

Game 30 Recap: BRUINS 4 THRASHERS 2 RYDER RYDER PANTS ON FIRE

Well, that was a fun game. Football's a-coming, so let's get this recap party started.

NOTE TO NHL.TV: I am not going to get XM radio, ever, now that you're making me watch a 30 second ad for almost every 10 second clip. Seriously, c'mon. That's just crappy planning. Maybe for the longer clips it makes some amount of sense, but really? For a 10 second highlight I have to watch the SAME commercial at twice the volume of the clip?

Phil Kessel entered this game with an active 14-game point streak. I was wondering if that would continue. Luckily, Mr. Kessel wanted it to. Krejci pokes it to Lucic, Lucic to Krejci. Krejci puts a beautiful pass from the wall accross the slot to Kessel. Kessel shoots, but hedberg gets it. Gets it right back to Kessel. Kessel takes advantage of Hedberg being down, moves it to the other side of Slater, and GOAL.

1-0. You're screaming about the 15-game point streak.

Playing defense, Krejci gets the puck at the Bruins blue line. Wheeler starts moving in the right direct, gets the pass from Krejci. Wheeler skates it into the zone with Ryder on the wing. Wheeler goes right, realizes he's dragging the d, and drop-passes to Ryder. Ryder goes left, skates around Hainsey, and backhands one in. GOAL.

2-0. Ryder's 9th of the season.

With less than a minute to go, Oystrick proves the dump and chase tactic works. He gets the puck at the top of the circle. Five-hole.
2-1.

Not much happens for most of the second. Then Valabik runs Kessel. Let me rephrase that. The 6'7", 240-pound Slovakian Boris Valabik was roughing up 6'0", 180-pound Bruins Leading Goal-Scorer Phil Kessel. He gets called for that, but Zdeno Chara decides it's time to teach a lesson to his buddy. Here's hockeyfights.com's video:

Their coverage is here. How do you fight your idol?
Chara gets 17 minutes of penalties for it, Valabik gets 5 for fighting, 2 for roughing.

A couple minutes later, Vyacheslav Kozlov takes a hooking penalty. Atlanta doesn't get to touch the puck during the powerplay, though. Savard gets the faceoff to Lucic-Hunwick-Wideman-Kessel-Hunwick-Wideman-net. The announcer has just barely enough time to introduce the powerplay before the GOAL.

3-1. Wonderful Puck Movement.

3rd period, 15 minutes in and Michael Ryder shows us some skill. Krejci gives it to him and goes to the bench. While his linemates are getting back to the Bench, Ryder looks like he's going to lazily skate it in to give them time. Then after crossing the blue line, he sees he can get past Hainsey. He puts it in gear and skates around hainsey. Then he puts the puck between Oystrick's skates to himself WHILE deking out Hedberg. He's got net for days on the other side of Oystrick. GOAL.

4-1. 10th of the season for Ryder, he had 14 total last year. 5 minutes to go. Looks pretty good.

Marty Reasoner makes up for a penalty earlier by dinging one in off the post from the point.
4-2.

Bruins shut down the Thrashers for the rest of the game, even though they pull the goalie with like 2 minutes to go and Ryder scores the empty net with -0.01 seconds in the game. One person throws a hat, because it didn't really count.

Game.

WIN!

Record: 21-5-4 (Streak: W2)
Home: 11-1-1 (Streak: W11)
L10: 8-2-0
vs. ATL: 3-0-0
December: 5-1-0
GO BRUINS!

2 Comments:

TravBot said...

More like "1-0. You're TEXTING about the 15-game point streak."

Unknown said...

Eh, what can you do?