L10: 7-3-0: Capital Tour

So the Bruins have gotten off to a hot start, Thomas going undefeated and 7-0-0 and Rask getting screwed and going 0-3-0, including tonight's (last night's?) effort, coming in down 0-3 and still getting the L. It's nuts. They've also played in the capital city of 3 different countries so far.

The Bruins are nice enough to provide the last two years side-by-side with the current year on their website. 10 games in the last 2 years? Bruins beat Ottawa to improve to 5-4-1 in 09-10, and Thomas had just put on a clinic shutting down Edmonton and Vancouver in back-to-back shutouts in '08. The Bruins were 5-2-3 then. Now?

7-3-0

2-2-0 home

5-1-0 away

So that's not bad. Not bad at all. Next stop is gonna be goal differential:

+14

The best in the league. Leading the team in individual +/- is none other than, you guessed it:

Milan Lucic.

This is in part to Thomas's 3 shutouts and altogether unreal hot streak in the beginning of the season, and also due in part to the offense, which is a breath of fresh air this season. The Lucic-Krejci-Horton line are all individually rocking a PPG for the moment, with Horton (6) and Lucic (5) leading the way in goals. The players without points this season are Dan Paille (scratched after the first game, quite possibly heading to Providence) and McQuaid (1 point in 32 career regular season and playoff NHL games).

#73: 4-4-8

One nice thing to see is the resurgence of the good Michael Ryder. Despite being one of only 3 players with a -1 (Paille and Recchi are the others), he's been scoring at a pretty good clip, 4th on the Bruins behind the Mushroom Kingdom.

Basically what I'm saying is this team is a hell of a lot of fun to watch right now.

L10 Highlight:

Tyler Seguin's first NHL goal

Tyler Seguin has been playing pretty well for a kid who is as old as your average college freshman. He's scored goals in 3 countries on two continents. Best part? Jordan Caron has been about as good, especially joining Patrice Bergeron on the PK (and otherwise) for what I like to call "The French Connection."

Most common forward lines, by percent ice time (per Dobber Hockey)

Lucic-Krejci-Horton (The Mushroom Kingdom)

Marchand-Campbell-Thornton

Bergeron-Caron-Wheeler

Ryder-Seguin-Recchi

Non-Bruins NHL spotlight:

Steve Stamkos is literally on fire right now. 10-10-20, +9. Ridiculous.

Stammer rules, get used to it.

By the time you read this I'll be sleeping through my alarm and hurrying off to Boston Sports Blogapalooza! I'm pretty psyched, last year was a lot of fun and hopefully this year will be too.

GO BRUINS!

Trip Report: Prague Pictures!

So I didn't spring for a data plan in Prague so instead of twitpic-ing every photo I'm putting a little picasa gallery or two here of all of the pictures. Should be good if you want to see some and haven't seen a ton already:

Bruins In Prague Day 1	Bruins in Prague Day 2

Suffice to say, it was a lot of fun watching with the Czech crowd. On the first day they pointed out a couple of famous (and not-so-famous) Czechs in the crowd that had played in the NHL, including Jiri Slegr. Additionally, the penalty graphics were pretty sweet, with a cartoon ref doing the motions and a sweet fire graphic exploding behind him. I took probably 5-6 pictures of that between days. You know, phoenix kept taking penalties.

Anyhow, game stories. There was a slovakian gentleman sitting in front of me in the first game who clued me in to the fact that "Chara" in slovakian is pronounced "Hara" like the beginning of "Chanukkah." Pretty interesting tidbit, I thought.

Other things of interest: Ilya Bryzgalov is a great goalie, but Horton owns. OWNS. Check this out, from after the second game:

And then of course the second game (on at 10am Eastern) was even better. First fan-favorite Milan Lucic potted a blast on Illllllyaaaaaaaa, assisted by the Goomba. Then of course the Goomba put in his own. And then, well, this:

Yeah, that ruled.

Congrats to Tyler on his first NHL goal. It was a doozie.

Thomas got an assist on that, as well as this little honor:

More stories as time allows.
GO BRUINS!