WHITECISE with John Whitesides

Some of you may have thought that with the offseason here there would be no content. Well, that's just not true. Tomorrow is FREE AGENCY FRENZY, today the US Olympic team invites are announced, and...

The Boston Bruins' strength and conditioning coach is here to PUMP (clap) YOU UP!

This week's episode is Abs and Lower Back, or the "Core" as its called. Get to it, cheering is tough work and you want to be in shape come October. Warning, video is like 20 minutes long.

...three months...

GO BRUINS!

NHL Draft, Round 1: Jordan Caron

Bruins have selected Jordan Caron as their first round pick. He's a RW out of Rimouski, Quebec. Initial research says that he is a little bit overly aggressive, and tends to think he's a little larger than he might actually be. Coming out of a 67 point, 66 PIM season with Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL, he's definitely a project pick. He will have to tone down his ego a little bit, but that's the price you pay for picking 25th overall. He does bring a hard shot, though, which is of course always welcome on this team.

GO BRUINS!

Draft tonight

Scuttlebutt ahoy!

Kaberle for Kessel!

Trading up!

Islanders take Tavares (really, the probably will).

I won't be around to watch by the time the Bruins probably pick 25th. Should be a fun time, though.

GO BRUINS!

NHL Draft Preview (ok more like offseason preview)

So if any of you are wondering what my thoughts are on the NHL, I did an interview recently. Here's a paragraph:

"If the Bruins trade Kessel, he will light it up for some other team. He got 36 goals this year and was out with Mono (haha, oh kessel...) to boot. The only guy who got within 10 goals of him was Ryder. I worry that they're going to make a move like trading Kessel or Bergeron, but both are excellent. Depending on how contract negotiations go with Kessel, I could see him moved."

And you can get to the full thing here: On The Bruins Offseason.

I now watch from the stands.

GO BRUINS!

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2009 (award) Winner(s)...

So the NHL had their 500/seat awards show last night and whaddya know? Boston cleaned right up. First Manny and Timmy accepted the Jennings award for fewest goals against from Lemelin and Moog, the last Bruins goalies to get it. Here's them accepting it:

Highlight quote is about 24 seconds in, Tim Thomas drops the one-liner

"Want me to say hi to your wife, Manny?"

All together now: OH SNAP!

Of course, we all knew that award was coming. The other three coming up were Claude Julien for Coach of the Year, Zdeno Chara for Defenseman of the Year, and Tim Thomas for Goalie of the Year.

Next up is a bunch of other awards that no one cares about, like the Pavel Datsyuk award for public speaking.

Then the Vezina. Now, if you don't know Tim Thomas's backstory, this may have less significance. He was drafted back in 1994 by the Nordiques, and when he showed up to training camp with the Avalanche a couple years later, he outplayed everyone but didn't get the gig. He played a couple games in the ECHL (think AA in Baseball), then the IHL (think A in baseball) and then went off to play in the Finnish leagues. He kept bouncing around, playing for the US world championship teams as well as Finnish and Swedish league team, with occasional stints in the IHL. in 02-03 and 03-04 he played for the Providence Bruins pretty regularly (and got called up to the Boston Bruins in 02-03 for 4 games and posted a 3.00 GAA). Then the lockout happened and he played for Jokerit Helsinki, a Finnish league team. Coming out of the lockout, the Bruins were thinking of picking up either Niklas Backstrom or Tim Thomas. Both were up for the Vezina trophy this year, so the scouts had some idea of what to do. Anyhow, through all of that Thomas didn't give up and kept on playing. Recently he signed a contract that will pay him 20 million dollars over the next 4 years, and I couldn't be happier for the guy. Here's the guy from Armageddon presenting the award:

Second is the Jack Adams award for Coach of the Year, presented by former Bruins coach, Pat Burns. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Jack Adams Award goes to..."Mon Ami, Claude Julien."

Third comes the one we've all been waiting for ever since the Vezina was handed to Timmy Tank Tornado Thomas: The Norris. Perrenial Norris winner Nik Lidstrom is in the running, high-scoring defenseman Mike Green is too, and of course Zdeno "Big Z" Chara. Chara was another guy who may not have ever made it to the NHL, and to be honest he wasn't that great at the beginning of his career. He's gotten better, though. Much better. Let's watch:

Lord, that was awkward. At least he remembered to thank his wife before being played off.

Anyhow, a great night for everyone from Boston up for an award, and then I'm sure the afterparty was great too or whatever, but I didn't pay 500 to attend so I can't be sure.

Sigh...I wish there was some real hockey...

Draft in a week or two, but the Bruins have the 25th pick so it's tough to get THAT excited about it. I updated the hockey-reference pages for Thomas, Julien, and Chara, and they are just awaiting approval at this point.

Still Pretty Pumped for next year.

GO BRUINS!

Summertime and the living's easy

A couple of things are happening around, but not THAT much. First, I took your suggestions from the other day and put up an ad on the Scott Walker Hockey-reference.com page. Go check it out!

Second, last night was the 500th sellout at Fenway Park. Here's Jason Bay on the day:

"We got the win, but more importantly I got to meet Bobby Orr."

Wait, what?Hell yes. This is awesome. Right before the seventh, Bobby came out of the Green Monster and said hello to Jason Bay. They were apparently supposed to meet before the game, but didn't have time. This is better because we all get to see it. Sox and Dawgs has a video, to boot.

Bobby Orr smiling is one of the finer things in life. Here are some more pictures of that:The only NHL trophy Bobby Orr didn't win twice was rookie of the year.He sure did win 2 Stanley cups, though. Putting Boston in for 3rd-longest draught for cups of an original six team, in front of Toronto (1967) and Chicago (1965).Whatta Guy.

Oh, and tonight is the NHL awards show. Tim Thomas, Zdeno Chara, and Claude Julien are all in Vegas right now getting ready to maybe win the Vezina (best goalie), Norris (best defenseman - Orr had 8 of these, which still stands as an all-time record), and the Jack Adams Award (best coach), respectively. Good luck to them!

The awards show will be on Versus at 7:30 in the US, CBC at 8:30 in Canada.
GO BRUINS!

Brudeur is a Fraud On the Vezina

One blog I really like is Brodeur is a Fraud. They do a lot with goalie stats.

Recently they weighed in on The Vezina from a statistical standpoint. It will be given out Thursday. Some think that Steve Mason should get it, because he played more games than Thomas. Here's what BiaF had to say about that:

"If Tim Thomas played in 11 extra games and faced his usual shot rate, he could have allowed 5 goals against and lost every single one of them, and he still would have a better winning percentage and save percentage than Steve Mason."

Burn.

It's a great article, instead of copying and pasting everything here, I'll just point you at it: Brodeur is a Fraud.

Good luck to all the bruins in contention for awards on Thursday night (I think it will be shown on either Versus or NHLNetwork), and all the ones playing in the celebrity poker tourney Thursday morning.

Oh and this saturday the NHL Network will be showing a marathon of all of the Stanley Cup Final games, starting at 8am. Game 7 will be shown at 8pm. Conversely, you can watch them now on hulu. Game 7 was the most-watched NHL game in the US in 36 years.

GO BRUINS!

Being Bitter in the Offseason: Scott Walker

Well, I just bought the sponsorship for Scott Walker's hockey-reference page.

It's 255 characters. It can't have profanity, but there is a lot of leeway otherwise.

I need something good for this, but need help from you, our dear reader(s).

Go hog wild, leave it in the comments. Because "Fuck Scott Walker" won't pass the censors.

Yes, every post has to end with

GO BRUINS!

Yup, look at that. CBC is awesome.

This video's been making the rounds on the internet, it's awesome. CBC showed it at the end of their game 7 coverage.

(link for folks who it doesn't load for automatically)

If hockey coverage in the US was half as good as this, more people would tune in.

Next year, I want to see our boys in black and gold make it past halfway through the playoff montage.

KPD is talking some smack about the Bruins not re-signing Kessel this offseason. I'm not even going to link to it, it's in the globe, go read it there. Hey good job Kevin, I bet you riled some folks up with that one.

GO BRUINS!

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2009 Stanley Cup Champions...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

As y'all know by now (and I hope you were watching, ridiculously good game) the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup last night.

Wow. Great season, y'all. The draft is in a couple weeks, and awards, and free agency frenzy day, and...

Well, what I'm saying is even though it's nice out, hockey isn't totally dead. I'll put my take on updates here as need be, but likely won't be doing a daily thing until it makes sense again. So I urge you to subscribe to a feed over on the left there, or to the emails. I don't spam or anything, and you don't have to keep coming back and hoping there's something new all the time.

The saying goes, "there's always next year."
Next year starts today.
GO BRUINS!

Game 7

The sun has risen.

Before it rises again, the Stanley Cup will rise above the heads of the national champions of the NHL 08-09 season.

A little inspiration for the pens fans in the audience. I'm only mildly ashamed to admit that shit like this gets me a little choked up.

From SLaBD.

You want stats? Here.

8PM. NBC. Go Pens.

Lazy Links: It's almost game 6 edition

I feel much better after that last post, and sorry to all who had to witness it. Sports fandom isn't always the prettiest thing, but it's a ton of fun and what's why we're here. Anyhow, here's some lazy links to wet your mouth before game 6:

• Puck Prospectus: Is David Krejci the next Adam Oates, Mark Taylor, or Jason Allison?
• Stanley Cup of Chowder: Reminds us its Milan Lucic's 21st birthday.
  
• Here Comes the Bruins: It's a couple days old, but the Star Wars/Stanley Cup comparison still rings true. (and is super-nerdy.)
• Matt Kalman points out that the Bruins have a grand total of 4 (5 if Alberts signs with the Flyers) draft picks this year. Might be time to cancel that trip.

Game six is tuesday night, party at your house! Go Pens. Check out thepensblog and Puck Huffers for that stuff.

Can't sign off without a little

GO BRUINS!

The one where Cornelius swears about the playoffs

I've been on a pretty even keel about this, but I figure I should just dump all of this right here, right now. Mom, you might not want to read this one. It's not very good and there's a lot of swearing.
Fuck You, Carolina Hurricanes.

Fuck Scott Walker, Fuck Eric Staal, Fuck Chad fucking LaRose, fuck Ryan Whitney too. Oh and Cam Ward, I hope you get passed over for olympic consideration. Really, I do. Brodeur/Luongo/Fleury instead or something.

Did I mention fuck Scott Walker?

You know when that game 7 went to OT, you got a bad feeling. When Scott fucking walker batted the fucking puck out of the fucking air to score a fucking fuck fuck goal to end the bruins season, you were either going to kill the guy next to you or internalize it.

That's why you, my wonderful reader(s) is/are getting this rant now.

Like that time you were on summer vacation and the dog you'd had since you were 6 couldn't make it up the stairs anymore so you had to take it to the vet on the way to the beach, and you didn't cry until months later.

But enough about me.

Where was I again? Oh yeah. Fuck the Hurricanes.

Fuck you, you little bitches got swept the fuck out of the Eastern Conference Finals by a team that finally played like they should have against your little shit team.

Yeah, I said it. Jersey probably should've beaten you, but Brodeur was too busy thinking about donuts to stop 2 goals at the end of the last game.

I don't like your team. Yes, it's because you beat us in the playoffs. You'd feel the same way. Go ahead and hate or gloat or whatever. The Bruins wouldn't have rolled over and been swept by the Penguins.

And you did. You couldn't handle the power of the Malkin-Crosby supergroup. Whatever.

Mrs. Walker, I hope you have a full recovery. I also hope Scott gets hit by a bus. Is that wrong? No, that's being a sports fan. Fuck 'em.

One last thing: the commenting folks over at Canes Country? Nice talking to you hicks, but you should learn things like what a reply button thread is on the SBNation platform, and what "humor" is. Also whoever that one guy was during game...6, maybe? Anyhow, commanding folks to do your bidding over the internet is, well, it's not really all that amusing or interesting.

Just like this rant. But I had to get it out sometime, and now was as good as any.

And even after all that, I loved beating the Habs.

I'm looking forward to next year already.

GO BRUINS!

Pens Win 2, tie series

2 Interviews, that is.

Malkin:


Talbot: (look at his eyes!)

I know these are a little old, but they're hilarious. Go pens.

Krejci re-signed, and that is awesome.
Kessel for 4.25 cap hit for 4 years? 5 years?
Almost definitely a pipe dream.
I am not Chiarelli, I am not a GM, I'll leave that to him.

Last Versus broadcast of the year. Hoping for 2 more pens wins on NBC before mid-june.

GO BRUINS!

KREJCI RE-SIGNED!!!!

The Bruins Re-Signed David Motherfu- (Shut your mouth) Krejci this afternoon.$3.5, $3.75 and $4 million per year
This is the best news. The Best. Here's some Bad Horse for you: