I had a co-worker a couple of years back who was one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet. Friendly, genial, helpful. And every once in a while he’d go off on a diatribe about liberals that would make anyone near him  raise an eyebrow, if not two.

I have a notion that’s how it is with the Boston Bruins and their teammate Tim Thomas.

If my co-workers and I were invited to the White House, I have no doubt whatsoever that my aforementioned co-worker would decline the invitation, and none of us would be surprised. According to media reports, Bruins’ management was aware that Thomas would not attend the White House reception for the Stanley Cup champs on Jan. 23, but the players were not. But it’s almost impossible to believe that they didn’t see it coming.

Here’s the statement from Thomas:

“I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT”

and the statement from the Bruins:

“As an organization we were honored by President Obama’s invitation to the White House. It was a great day and a perfect way to cap our team’s achievement from last season. It was a day that none of us will soon forget. We are disappointed that Tim chose not to join us, and his views certainly do not reflect those of the Jacobs family or the Bruins organization. This will be the last public comment from the Bruins organization on this subject.”

Full disclosure: I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. And I adhere to Voltaire’s dictum: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

That said, it was not the time nor the place for Thomas to make a political statement. An invitation to the White House is an honor that should be accepted no matter who’s in charge. We’re not talking about canoodling with Robert Mugabe or Momar Ghadafi here. This is the president of the United States – OUR United States (Tim Thomas is an American); I was no fan of George W. Bush, but I know he’s an inherently decent human being who was doing the best job he could, and if he invited me and my co-workers to visit, I’d put politics aside and visit.

(And for those who wish to point out that Theo Epstein didn’t visit when Bush was in office and the Red Sox were invited, he was wrong too.)

What really bothers me about this whole stramash, however, is not Thomas’s politics (though really, if you want to live in a country with boundless freedom and no taxation, I hear Somalia is the perfect place), it’s the fact that he called attention to himself on a day that was meant to honor and celebrate his team. That’s a selfish, self-centered act, and is absolutely contrary to what the Bruins stand for.

And for that, I’m disappointed in Tim Thomas.

(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

November 21,2011 wasn’t an ordinary day in the NHL. November 21 marked the retun of the greatest player in the history of hockey – nay, the greatest player in the history of any sport! The only reason the NHL exists is to provide a platform for his awesomeness. The King has returned: Sidney Crosby.

But it’s not only for a lowly hockey goddess to remark upon the blessedness of the return of Sidney Crosby, which has saved the NHL from the End Times. There are many in the chorus of the lowly peons who are dancing in joy and weeping in ecstacy.

Versus spokeman: Of course we dumped the Bruins-Canadiens game for The Return. After all, who cares about the greatest rivalry in the history of sports when you can show The King scoring at will against the sorriest team in the NHL? It’s a no-brainer!

ESPN spokesman: Hockey? What’s that? Oh, Crosby’s back? Hey, we love hockey!

Tim Thomas: Yeah, I know Cary Price and I were both coming off shutouts, and I extended my personal shutout streak to 133 minutes in a nail-biting 1-0 win in Montreal, but Sidney Crosby is much, much more important than the defending Stanley Cup champion playing a team that had beaten them twice last month.

Anders Nilsson: I may be a 21-year-old rookie who was making my first NHL start, but I’ll put my 4.25 GAA up against anyone in the league! Oh, um, sorry. Ahem. I’m honored to have been the worthy challenger for His Majesty in his return.

Pierre McGuire:  You talk about the all-around superstar that Sidney Crosby is, it’s been a Crosby-palooza tonight.*

NHL: Let’s hope every player in the league has learned an important lesson. Headshots were fine as long as the targets were guys like Marc Savard. But Sidney Crosby is our bread and butter. He and Ovechkin are the only players ESPN viewers can name. It behooves us all to pay proper tribute. All together now!

NHL players: Hail Sidney! All hail The King!

* I am not making this up.

 

Photo by Terry Moore

They obscure a player’s vision. They’re uncomfortable. Tough guys don’t wear them. Hockey is becoming overprotective.

Sound familiar? Those were the arguments used by hockey “purists” not so many decades ago against goalie masks.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and you can trot out the same old arguments against helmets.

Fast forward a few more, and now it’s visors. Some things never change.

It took the visionary Jacques Plante to make goalie masks acceptable, and it didn’t hurt that he was one of the best at his position. It took the death of Bill Masterton – and ten long years of debate and heel-dragging - for the NHL to bow to the obvious and protect the players’ craniums. Will it take the death of another player to finally convince the league and its players to protect their eyes?

Perhaps it will, because it didn’t take this:

And it didn’t take this:

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Johnny Boychuk’s slapshot has been clocked at 105 mph. Everyone praised Stamkos for returning to the game after the shield dug a substantial chunk out of his nose, but everyone seems to have dismissed or not even considered the very real possibility that if he had not been wearing it, the puck would have struck him right between the eyes, and it’s very likely the Lightning would have been dedicating this season to a dead teammate.

The NHL is the only hockey league in the world that does not require its players to wear visors. Rookies come into the league today having worn visors their entire lives. Thankfully, the majority of players are keeping them on – the NHLPA, according to the Associated Press, says more than 65 percent of players under 30 wear visors. But if one player is killed or disabled because he doesn’t wear a visor, that’s one too many.

Visors aren’t magic. Nobody believes that wearing one will keep a player safe from all harm. But protecting eyes, like protecting genitals, should be a no-brainer. Anyone want to suggest players forego playing with a protective cup?

And to paraphrase Mae West, macho (like goodness) has nothing to do with it. A puck, stick or skate doesn’t care who is or isn’t a tough guy. If a player wants to fight, he can take a second to flip his lid, just as he drops his stick and gloves.

The CBA is up for renewal this summer, and hopefully the leadership will take these warnings to heart and protect the players from themselves. If a few holdouts are adamant, follow the protocol established by the helmet rule and grandfather visors in. And hopefully a couple of decades from now, we can all look back and laugh at the idea of NHL players not protecting the most valuable of God’s gifts – their sight.

 

Photo via Getty Images

 

Dear Sirs or Madams:

A couple of weeks ago, the Boston Bruins won their first Stanley Cup in 39 years. More than a million fans packed

the streets of Boston to celebrate, and many more longtime fans from all over New England, the Canadian Maritimes, North America and around the world, reveled in the victory. Reports are that Stanley Cup champion gear flew off the shelves, with stores barely able to keep up with demand.

But this fan wants more. And this fan believes that many of her fellow Bruins fans want the same thing: A boxed DVD set.

I don’t want a highlights DVD. The one you’re selling appears nice, and I’ll undoubtedly purchase it. But what I want is a boxed set, like the ones sold by MLB for their World Series winners. As a Red Sox fan, I own the 2004 and 2007 sets, which include not just the World Series games, but the ALCS wins as well (alas, not the ALDS. Tsk.)

This is where the NHL can do MLB one better. Give Bruins fans a DVD set with all 16 victories. And make them complete games, start to finish. None of this editing the games down to two hours, as you’re doing on the NHL Network. I want every moment, start to finish. I want every glorious second of the victories over hated rival Montreal. Every glorious second of the revenge match (sweep! sweep!) against Philadelphia. Every glorious second of their grind-it-out wins against Tampa Bay, up to and including Tim Thomas embracing a tearful Marty St. Louis.

I don’t want just the final against Vancouver. That’d be like receiving nothing but steak in a four-star restaurant. I want the fine wine, the garlic-mashed potatoes, the fresh asparagus.

And for the homemade chocolate cake, I want a bonus DVD of the celebrations, from Zdeno Chara hoisting the Cup to the parade.

You’re on the right track with the Blackhawks DVD set from last season. But five games isn’t enough. Not remotely enough.  

I want 16 games. I don’t care whose feed you use, though if you’re asking, the enthusiasm of Doc Emerick or Jack Edwards would be preferable to Bob Cole’s “meh, the Bruins win in OT,” though his calls do offer comedic value. The production effort is minimal – just chop out the ads (and the between-period analysis if you wish); no other editing required. Charge $150 for the set, and have it on the shelves before Christmas. It’ll sell itself.

Please, NHL, I’m asking you nicely. If that’s not good enough, I’ll beg. I want this with the burning heat of a thousand suns, and if you consider the number of Bruins fans out there, you’ll be making a profit on this faster than you can say “fat free-agent contract.”

Sincerely yours,

Savvy

Photo from boston.com

 

One May 29, venerable hockey writer Stan Fischler tweeted the following:

The Bruins have less of a chance to win The Cup than Atlanta has of retaining the Thrashers.

He wasn’t alone. The vast majority of hockey experts, from Puck Daddy to ESPN to THN, picked the Vancouver Canucks to easily skate off with the Stanley Cup against the overmatched Boston Bruins. After all, the Canucks had scoring powerhouses Henrik and Daniel Sedin, Selke Trophy finalist Ryan Kesler, and Olympic gold-medal winner and Vezina finalist Roberto Loungo. The Bruins? Sure, they had their own Vezina candidate in Tim Thomas, but their top regular-season scorers (Milan Lucic and David Krejci) had totaled just 62 points each. Zdeno Chara was a Norris finalist and former winner, but had been panned by some as overrated and overhyped. Thomas? A freakishly lucky goalie whose success rested largely on the Bruins’ defense-first system. Or so many said.

The Canucks, NHL royalty as the Presidents Trophy winner with the best regular-season record, looked down their noses at the rag-tag Bruins as the media all but crowned them champions before the first puck drop.

The disrespect manifested itself in Game 1, when Alexander Burrows bit Patrice Bergeron’s finger during a scrum, and continued in Game 2, when Max Lapierre taunted Bergeron by shoving his fingers at the Bruins center’s mouth.

And that’s when Nemesis stepped in.

Today, nemesis refers to someone’s particular enemy, but in ancient Greece, Nemesis, according to Wikipedia, “was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). The Greeks personified vengeful fate as a remorseless goddess; the goddess of revenge. The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νέμειν [némein], meaning ‘to give what is due’”

Nemesis showed up at the TD Garden with revenge on her mind; the Bruins blew the Canucks out in Games 3 and 4 by scores of 8-1 and 4-0, respectively, to even the series.

The Canucks pulled ahead 3-2 in the series after returning to Vancouver and winning 1-0, but apparently hadn’t learned their lesson. Loungo criticized Thomas’s goaltending technique, calling the one goal allowed one he himself would have stopped due to his superior positional play. Given a chance to clarify his statement the next day, he plaintively said he had “pumped (Thomas’s) tires all series,” and that Thomas has said nothing nice about him.

What kind of professional athlete, one making $10 million per year, needs validation from his opponent? As Thomas said after Game 6, “I didn’t know it was my job to pump his tires.”

Perhaps Loungo took his cue from his coach, who whined that Thomas played too far out of his crease and made a formal complaint to the NHL about him. Or Daniel Sedin, who allowed a 5-foot-nothing rookie (Brad Marchand) to use him as a speed bag late in Game 4. What kind of a man – what kind of a hockey player? – allows that to happen? What member of the Bruins wouldn’t have knocked Marchand into the middle of next week?

So Nemesis had to be smiling on Game 7 as Thomas solidified his Conn Smythe trophy, as Marchand and Bergeron scored two goals each (talk about divine retribution!), and Chara lifted the Stanley Cup to the rafters as  the Bruins celebrated their first Stanley Cup since 1972.

Postscript: The night of Game 7, there was a total lunar eclipse over parts of Africa and Asia. The last time the world witnessed a lunar eclipse was Oct. 27, 2004, the night the Boston Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918.

Photo from boston.com

On Monday night at TD Garden in Boston, Boston’s Nathan Horton was knocked out of the game and into Massachusetts General Hospital by a vicious late hit from Vancouver’s Aaron Rome.

On Tuesday morning, the Bruins announced that Horton would miss the rest of the playoffs with a severe concussion.

Tuesday afternoon, NHL disciplinarian Michael Murphy announced that Rome would be suspended for four games.

So we are supposed to feel sorry for… Aaron Rome?

According to Manny Malhotra, we are:

“It’s devastating,” said center Manny Malhotra. “To be so close, to be playing in your dream, to now have it taken away, it obviously hurts a lot. That being said, he’s still a huge part of our team in that room. Just his attitude, his mentality, his focus, he’s going to help our guys a lot. I think as a group we don’t agree with the suspension.”

Here’s an idea: You don’t want to miss the Stanley Cup playoffs, don’t leap off your skates and drill a guy in the head more than a second after he’s released the puck.

Canucks coach Alain Vigneault says Rome “isn’t a dirty player, never has been, never will be.” Whether he is or not is irrelevant. It was a dirty play.

Here’s Andrew Ference in February, after teammate Daniel Paille (not a dirty player; never disciplined before) was suspended four games for a head shot on Raymond Sawada (who was unhurt):

“It’s a bad hit, right?” said Ference. “You hear it from every player after they do it, they feel bad, and same thing, I talked to Danny [Paille] and he feels bad.

“You can’t be a hypocrite about it, though. I’ve thought about this a lot and had plenty of time to put things in perspective over the last year. Sidney Crosby has been very vocal about the head shots and blindside hits since he suffered one in the Winter Classic, but what did Crosby say after Cooke hit Savvy last year? Nothing.

“I thought a lot about that. You want to be a good teammate, but you shouldn’t be a hypocrite about it.” 

So here’s the question: If that was Henrik Sedin being strapped to a backboard and carted off on a stretcher, would Alan Vigneault be protesting that it wasn’t a dirty hit?

Photo: Nathan Horton from Getty Images

Riddle me this: Why are the Stanley Cup playoffs like old age?

The answer: Because neither one is for sissies.

It’s been a couple of days since the Boston Bruins beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. I think I’m starting to recover. I can actually watch the DVR now (for the fifth time – or is it sixth?) without twitching and flinching at every Tampa shot.

But Friday night almost did me in.

I was at work. I’m a newspaper editor (yes, we still exist!), and at times I work in news, at times in sports. In the sports department, we watch games on TV. In the news department, those of us who are fans watch surrepticiously. Unfortunately, I can only see the TV in the news department if I turn and crane my neck. Once, when I did so earlier in the playoffs, my co-worker across the desk got up and turned the TV off. I managed not to kill her (she is a nice person, really; she just has a blind spot when it comes to sports).

This time around, I didn’t chance it, just followed the game on NHL.com’s Icetracker, and via the Bruins’ Twitter updates (turning the notification sound so low that only I could hear it). I stayed busy, keeping the nerves at bay by throwing myself into my work.

Unfortunately, work petered out just after 10 p.m., as the scoreless game moved well into the third period. I picked up my phone, announced I was going outside for a break, and headed for the parking lot.

9:00 to go. Timeout Bruins.

I sat on a bench, hunched over, staring at the phone, as the seconds crawled by.

Shot toward Thomas. Deflected wide, but not far off.

Oh, thanks. Very reassuring. I leaned over, muttering, c’mon guys, c’mon, c’mon…

Bruins score! Horton!

I leaped off the bench, cheered, danced.

1-0 BOS. Horton (Ference, Krejci)

“When?” I asked the phone. Usually Bish (John Bishop, the Bruins’ PR man) gives the time of the goal. Not this time. I imagined the Garden, the noise, the crowd going wild, Krejci and Horton celebrating… I got up to pace. Surely there must not be much time left. Surely. Back and forth I went, back and forth…

6:00 to go.

SIX MINUTES!?!!?

Huge save by Roloson on Ryder.

Rydes!! Gah!!

Tampa Bay continues to be relentless.

OK, I didn’t need that.

Just under 2:00 to go.

I paced maniacally, watching the digital numbers change in the upper right corner of my phone, trying to prove to myself that time had not stopped.

Stoppage with 44 seconds left in regulation.

My heart was ready to burst out of my chest.

B’s control…. win!

I screamed up at the cloudy sky. I danced a quick jig, then ran inside, to the TV in the sports department, and watched the Bruins celebrate. I cried a little.

Then I went back to my seat. The editor across from me looked up. “Are you OK?” she asked.

“I had to go outside. I was too nervous to watch the game,” I said.

She shook her head and laughed. “It’s just a hockey game.”

No, no it isn’t. Trust me on this one. It isn’t.

Photo: Boston Bruins courtesy of slidingsideways at bestlaidplans.org

For a full calendar year, the Boston Bruins and their fans heard it: Chokers.

The Bruins couldn’t finish off the Philadelphia Flyers after taking a three games to none lead in the 2010 Eastern Conference semifinals. They were the worst chokers in the history of sports! They were the first NHL team EVER to lose after taking a 3-0 advantage! (Actually they were the third, but to some ::cough::Puck Daddy::cough hyperbole is much more fun than reality.) This would hang over their heads FOREVER!

Well, not quite. More like 360 days, to be exact.

Lessons learned by the Bruins, changes made. By the front office, which over the summer brought in a big, sniping wing in Nathan Horton and a solid, grinding center in Greg Campbell. Which added even more forward depth at the trade deadline in Rich Peverley and Chris Kelly. Not this year would the Bruins be left to depend on a European reject (Miro Satan), a fourth-line PK specialist (Dan Paille) and a player who never should have seen the ice (Marc Savard) as a “first” line.

And lessons learned by the players (those who remained;  almost half the roster turned over this season). Never, EVER take your foot off the gas, and never take anything for granted.

But probably the biggest factor in this series was the simplist: The good health of David Krejci, aka Flyer Killer (since last year’s playoffs, Boston is 10-0-1 vs. Philadelphia with Krejci in the lineup). Four goals (three game-winners), five assists, plus-6 in four games. The Flyers targeted Krejci (and let him know about it), but with Milan Lucic and Nathan Horton on his wings, this time things were different. As Scott Hartnell discovered in Game 4, when he tried to put Krejci over the boards into the Bruins bench, only to have his head almost removed from his shoulders by Lucic.

Other than goalie Tim Thomas, who stole Game 2 (Boston’s only real difficult game, which they won 3-2 in overtime), the other beast of the series was defenseman Dennis Seidenberg, who led all skaters in ice time (29:02, 36:26, 28:16, 25:43), recorded three assists, and finished at a staggering plus-10. One Boston TV sports announcer reminded us, in tones tinged with surprise, that, oh yeah, Seidenberg missed the playoffs last year (severed wrist tendons). No shit, Sherlock.

Some (not the majority, to their credit) Flyers fans and media have protested that the Flyers couldn’t overcome their myriad injuries. The biggest factor in the series, some say, was the loss of Chris Pronger. Sure, I’d accept that, if you weren’t all shouting “CHOKERS!” at the Bruins last season. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Nobody who thumbed his or her nose last year can use injuries as a excuse. Sorry. The Flyers lost because the Bruins outhit, outhustled and just flat out outplayed them, at every position.

Pass the sugar.

(Photo courtesy of slidingsideways at bestlaidplans.org)

Bob Ryan is a longtime sports columnist for the Boston Globe. His particular focus is generally basketball, but he writes about everything, including the Boston Bruins. So with the Bruins returning from their (mostly) Western road swing with a 6-0 record, and Thursday night defeating Tampa Bay 2-1 to claim sole possession of second place in the Eastern Conference, it’s not surprising he was on the job. 

Ryan dutifully chronicled Thursday night’s game here, noting that the last time the Bruins had had such a successful road trip was in the 1971-72 season, when they last won the Stanley Cup. Then he dropped this little bombshell:

… the question right now is whether or not this team is worth a serious emotional investment on the part of any Bruins fan.

Um, what?

A “serious emotional investment”? Isn’t that, y’know, what being a fan is all about? Isn’t that the whole point? What kind of “fan” studies the standings, sees a seven-game win streak, and says to him/herself, “hmmm, well, they’re winning, looks like they have a shot at the Stanley Cup, I guess I’ll be a fan now. Say, who’s this Krejci fellow? And how do you pronouce that?”

No. Those aren’t fans. They’re bandwagon-jumpers. Or what hard-core Red Sox fans cynically dubbed “pink hats,” the people who climbed aboard when the Red Sox won their first World Series in 2004 and suddenly became Fashionable.

Of course, this doesn’t just happen in Boston. When the Blackhawks won the Cup last spring, out of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) clogging the streets of Chicago for the parade, how many of those folks, do you think, had stuck with that team through thick and thin, suffered through the bad times, watched the drafts in which they selected Kane and Toews, dared to hope and cheer and dream?

Most importantly, how much did that parade mean to those fans, who never lost faith?

Nobody’s going to turn away bandwagon fans. They fill the arena, they create a buzz, they encourage the players (everyone likes to be loved and talked about). I for one am happy to welcome anyone who wants to be a Bruins fan.

But, y’know, there’s something to be said for swimming through bitter waters until you reach the sweet. You simply can’t appreciate having without going through the wanting, the dreaming, the hoping. When, someday (hopefully soon), the Bruins win the Stanley Cup, my tears — and those of my fellow black-and-gold faithful — will be all the more blessed, because we didn’t “decide to make a serious emotional investment,” we were there already. Fans — real fans – keep the faith.   

 Photo from boston.com

Statement from Pittsburgh Penguins owner Mario Lemieux, in the wake of a game Feb. 12 in which his team and the New York Islanders combined for 346 penalty minutes, 10 ejections, 15 fighting majors and 20 misconducts, leading to suspensions for three players (two from NYI, one from Pittsburgh), and a $100,000 fine for the Islanders:

“We, as a league, must do a better job of protecting the integrity of the game and the safety of our players. We must make it clear that those kinds of actions will not be tolerated and will be met with meaningful disciplinary action.

“If the events relating to Friday night reflect the state of the league, I need to re-think whether I want to be a part of it.”

Hypocrisy is such an ugly thing. Especially from someone who we’re supposed to admire. But it just goes to reinforce the lesson that greatness on the playing field or on the ice often does not translate to the real world.

Mario Lemieux dares to speak of “protecting the intregrity of the game” when the team he owns leads the NHL in penalty minutes (1,113), majors (63) and penalty minutes per game (19.2),

He has the unmitigated gall to speak of the safety of the players when he employs the biggest cheap shot artist in the game, Matt Cooke.

Mario Lemieux weeps his crocodile tears about “travesty” and a “sideshow” while Marc Savard sits at home in a darkened room and wonders if he’ll ever live a normal life again, let alone play the game he loves.

I don’t for a moment condone what the Islanders did. But I can understand it. You get abused often enough, eventually you’re going to fight back. Unfortunately the Islanders brought a gun to a knife fight, but the brawl(s) never would have happened at all if the Penguins hadn’t laid the groundwork, not only with the Islanders, but with the entire league. Mario Lemieux can point a finger at the Islanders and the NHL all he wants, but the person he really needs to be pointing at resides in his mirror.  And if he really wants to take his stick and his puck and go home, there’s just one thing to say: Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, Mario.

“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” – Hosea 8:7.

No, it’s not Tyler Seguin, the Bruins’ #1 choice (#2 overall) in the 2010 draft. And it’s not Jordan Caron, their #1 choice in 2009 (#25 overall). Nor is it Joe Colborne, #1 in 2008 (#16 overall). Caron and Colborne are playing in Providence with the AHL Bruins, and Seguin is doing fairly well in Boston but not exactly setting the world on fire.

No, the Bruins’ top rookie, a guy who in the past month has played himself into the Rookie of the Year conversation, is none other than Brad Marchand.

Who?

A native of Nova Scotia, Brad Marchand is a 5-foot, 9-inch, 190-pound (10 pounds of which appears to be
nose and eyebrows) ball of fire who was the third pick of the Bruins in the 2006 draft (#71 overall), behind Phil Kessel and Milan Lucic. He played the 2008-09 season in Providence, putting up 18 goals and 41 assists in 79 games, and adding seven goals and eight assists in 16 playoff games. But his biggest claim to fame in the P-Bruins’ final playoff series vs. the Portland Pirates is that he somehow managed to goad a Portland player into coming off the bench and attacking him during a game.

You could say that Brad Marchand made his name as an agitator.

He scored 32 points in 34 games in his second year in Providence and earned himself some time in Boston, but only recorded one assist in 20 games. Determined to make the big club this fall out of training camp, he outperformed veteral Daniel Paille and earned a spot on the fourth line alongside center Greg Campbell and Shawn Thornton.

Dubbing themselves the “Merlot Line” after the maroon color of their practice jerseys, the Marchand/Campbell/Thornton combination was the Bruins’ fourth line in name only. They were the go-to guys when coach Claude Julien wanted to get the Bruins rolling with their relentless forchecking and tenacious play. Thornton, who had never scored more than six goals in his NHL career, has seven already this season.

It took Marchand some time to find the net – he finally potted his first NHL goal on Nov. 3, appropriately enough, on a shorthanded breakway, showcasing his PK ability, his shot, and his speed:

But it really wasn’t the job of the Merlot Line to score, rather to agitate the opposition.

And did they ever. Though known as something of a punk in the AHL, Marchand (at the request of Julien) has toned it down a bit in the NHL, though he’s still a threat to draw penalties with his hard-charging style of play, and he doesn’t hesitate to throw a verbal jab when he can or stick up for his teammates, despite his small stature.

But as solid and impressive as he was on the Merlot Line, Marchand really started to take off due to an injury to Milan Lucic in early January, which caused some line shuffling. Paille took Marchand’s spot alongside Campbell and Thornton, and Marchand was moved onto a line with Patrice Bergeron and Mark Recchi. And the result was magic.

Since joining the wiley veteran Recchi and Bergeron, one of the most complete players in the NHL, Marchand has scored seven goals and added four assists in 13 games. His plus/minus in those games is +12, and overall he is tied for fourth in the NHL in plus/minus at +21 (with Bergeron, among a few others), tops among rookies. He also leads the NHL in shorthanded goals with four, is sixth in rookie goal-scoring with 13 and second in shooting percentage at 15.5.

He’s come out of nowhere, surprised just about everyone (except maybe himself), and, just as he forced himself into the Boston lineup, he’s forcing himself into the NHL’s collective consciousness. He probably won’t win the Calder Trophy, but he certainly deserves the NHL’s attention.

Photo courtesy of bestlaidplans.org

It’s not surprising that the plot of the classic hockey movie “Slapshot” (yes, it does actually have a plot, not just Paul Newman one-liners and the Hanson brothers) concerns the future and viability of a minor-league team. Those of us who follow minor-league hockey are well aware that this is a recurring theme.

Even one of the original American Hockey League franchises – Springfield, Massachusetts – was and is not immune to the spectre of losing its team. In fact, it’s already happened relatively recently, when the Springfield Indians were sold and moved to Worcester in the fall of 1994, only three years after winning their last Calder Cup.

Fortunately for Springfield, General Manager Bruce Landon was able to secure a new AHL franchise, and with help from a group of local investors, ice the Springfield Falcons that fall.

Unfortunately, instability at the NHL level with the Falcons’ parent franchises has filtered down to the AHL level for more than a decade. Originally a farm club of the neighboring Hartford Whalers and Winnipeg Jets (an odd situation, caused by their being one more NHL team than possible AHL affiliates), the Falcons lost the Whalers when they moved to North Carolina and became the Hurricanes. The Jets carried on their affiliation through their move to Phoenix, but then the Falcons moved on to connections with Tampa Bay for two years, and then Edmonton until this year. None of them were particularly happy marriages, mostly because struggling NHL franchises don’t usually sustain successful AHL franchises. And the bottom line, of course, is always winning.

Accustomed to a successful hockey franchise (the Indians won back-to-back AHL championships in
’91 and ’92), soured by bad and way too distant relationships with their parent franchises, and put off by horrible teams, fans lost interest and attendance dwindled. The worsening economy of recent years didn’t help either, nor did a perception of downtown Springfield as an unsafe place.

Constant appeals for season-ticket purchases accompanied by dire warnings that Springfield could lose its hockey franchises appeared in the local news every summer and fall in recent years, but many hockey fans shrugged them aside until last month, when news broke suddenly that the franchise had indeed been sold.

However, the purchaser — Charles Pompea (“Who?” everyone said) a retired steel executive who lives in Florida – announced immediately that he purchased the team with the express purpose of keeping it in Springfield. Turns out he’s originally from Connecticut, and plans to be in Springfield this weekend to see his team in person for the first time.

After the announced sale, news came out that the team had been closer to disaster than anyone had imagined. Landon reportedly spoke to more than two dozen other possible ownership groups, and all but two (and those two were not serious candidates) would have moved the franchise away from Springfield.

On the heels of the announced sale, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Falcons’ latest parent team, announced that they will pick up their option for next year and remain in Springfield for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately the Blue Jackets are struggling, and those struggles have had ramifications for the Falcons in the form of call-ups and a shorthanded team. Springfield has a very good chance of missing the playoffs, which are the lifeblood of a minor-league franchise.

However, they’re giving a good effort every night, fans seem interested, and Pompea has said he wants his team to be involved in the community. The marriage is back on solid ground, which is great news for one of the storied franchises of the AHL, and for minor-league hockey.

Imagine an NFL quarterback dropping back for a pass. He scans the field, looking for an open receiver, as defensive linemen and linebackers struggle mightily to flush him out of the pocket. Finally one breaks through and slams the quarterback to the ground for the sack.

And then an offensive lineman punches the linebacker in the face.

Ridiculous, you say? Well, something akin to that has been going on with increasing regularity in the NHL in the past few years, as it seems more and more often players are responding to a solid check on a teammate by dropping the gloves and pummeling (or being pummeled by) the “offending” player.

This has got to stop. Since when did a clean check become a fighting offense? Why does Mark Stuart have to protect himself when Anze Kopitar gets caught with his head down? Watch…

The worst part of this whole episode is that Stuart broke his finger in that unecessary fight, had to have surgery, developed an infection and missed months of action. He returned for the playoffs but obviously wasn’t himself. All because of some stupid, misguided “code of honor” or some damned thing.

It’s one thing if it’s a dirty hit. If a stick goes high, or it’s knee-to-knee, or a head shot. And I realize that to players on the ice, the action is lightning-fast and at times a clean hit can appear dirty. But the majority of these “sticking up for my teammate” retaliatory attacks are unwarranted. Players don’t need their teammates running around like assassins trying to “protect” them from one of the basic parts of the game – rough, physical play. If a guy’s that delicate, he shouldn’t be playing professional sports in the first place.

Fans need to realize this too. It’s amazing the amount of comments you see on Internet chat sites about this. Oddly enough, it’s most often the posters who advocate for “old-time hockey” who insist that guys should throw down if an opposing player so much as breathes hard on one of theirs.

Just as an example, there were Bruins fans howling for T.J. Oshie’s head when he hit David Krejci a few weeks ago along the boards. Let’s take a look…

I love Krejci, but I saw nothing wrong with that hit. Krejci suffered his concussion because he banged his head on the dasher, not because of the hit itself. Oshie did nothing wrong.

I have nothing against fighting in hockey. There’s a time and a place for it, and sticking up for a teammate is certainly one of those times. But picking a fight because someone gets hurt playing a dangerous game is ridiculous. And fans have to stop insisting on that response, or else start following gentler sports, like tennis.

Last March, NHL senior vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell declined to suspend Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke for a deliberately dirty hit that knocked out Boston’s Marc Savard. In his ruling, he mourned the fact that he could do nothing about the hit (which is a fallacy, as I blogged about here). And then he pointed out that he had coached Marc Savard, he liked Marc Savard, and oh, he felt just terrible about it.

In 2007, Colin Campbell wrote the following emails (discovered by intrepid hockey blogger Tyler Dellow to be regarding Marc Savard) to former director of officiating Stephen Walkom:

“Your answer re: his high stick calls and the score of the game were horse [bleep]. The 3rd call on [player] was while they were down 5 on 4 and on a def zone face off vs that little fake artist [player] I had him in [city] biggest faker going.”

“I know Murph and Kinger like [player] as a player but my view of him is this exactly… he puts his whining ahead of the game.”

Of course the main point of the email revelations is that this is the head of discipline for the NHL, writing to the head of officiating, complaining about calls made on his son. That’s bad enough in its own right. But these comments about Marc Savard — and you know this is only the tip of the iceberg; how many other players, coaches or officials does Campbell hold a grudge against? — absolutely reek of pettiness, vindictiveness and, combined with his post-Cooke hit comments, flat-out hypocrisy.

And this man is the sole arbiter of justice for the National Hockey League.

This is something that might be brushed off, as Campbell himself (who called it “much ado about nothing”) and NHL vice president Bill Daly (“Any suggestion that Colin Campbell performs his job with any less than 100% integrity at all times and in every decision he makes is way off base and just factually wrong”) have attempted to do, if Campbell had been the model of consistency and reliability when it comes to meting out discipline. To say he hasn’t is something of an understatement.

Whether you want to label it the “Wheel of Justice” as Yahoo’s Puck Daddy does, or the “Secret flow chart,” as described by DownGoesBrown, NHL justice under Colin Campbell has been a punch line. Only it’s really no joke when players have no idea what constitutes suspendable offenses. Jack Edwards is probably most accurate when he calls it “dart board justice.”

To put it bluntly, a trained chimpanzee could do as good a job. Better, because a chimpanzee doesn’t have any secret grudges or hidden agendas. That Daly actually uses the word “integrity” in describing Campbell is something of a sick joke.

That Campbell is being defended so vehemently by the powers-that-be in charge of the NHL just goes to show you what a good ol boys’ club the league is. That such a beautiful sport, played by (a majority of) decent young men, is in the hands of these incompetents is pathetic.

And perhaps just as reprehensible is the response (or lack thereof) of so many in the “mainstream” hockey media. For every Kevin Paul Dupont, who writes in the Boston Globe that Campbell should go, there is a Bob McKenzie, who astoundingly tries to spin in a video at www.tsn.ca that Campbell’s March ruling on Cooke actually proves that he’s not biased. I never thought Bob McKenzie was George Orwell.

So what can we, as hockey fans, do? All is can suggest is to keep the conversation going. Push for a change — suggested and endorsed by many — to a three-person panel to rule on discipline. For the sake of justice, for the sake of player safety, for the sake of integrity, this needs to happen.

Photo: Colin Campbell from nhl.com

Seventy-five years ago, a wide-eyed 18-year-old boy pulled on a black-and-gold sweater for the first time and skated his first few strides into hockey history. His name was Milton Conrad “Milt” Schmidt.

Last week, before their game with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins honored 92-year-old Milt Schmidt, player, captain, coach, general manager and living symbol of one of the most storied franchises in professional sports.

Milt, along with his boyhood friends Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart, was part of the fabled “Kraut Line” of the 1930s and 1940s that led the Bruins to two Stanley Cups (in ’39 and ’41). All three are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. God knows how many Cups they would have won if they, like so many other athletes of their generation, had not had their careers derailed by World War II (they served in Europe in the Royal Canadian Air Force). They all survived and returned to play, but never hit the heights again.

After winning the Hart Trophy in 1951 and retiring as a player in 1955, Milt went on to coach the Bruins for 11 years in the 1950s and 1960s, but it was in the front office where he repeated his success on the ice as he was the architect of the “Big Bad Bruins” Stanley Cup-winning teams of 1970 and 1972.

After a brief stint with the Washington Capitals as coach and GM in the mid-1970s, Milt returned to Boston and has been here ever since. He is still active with the Bruins’ alumni team, and can frequently be seen taking in games at the TD Garden.

I have never met him, but I have heard more praise for Milt Schmidt the man than Milt Schmidt the hockey player, which for someone with his resume is difficult to believe. But as I watched the ceremony honoring him on the evening of October 28, I could understand.

Still sharp as a tack, he walked to the podium unassisted and thanked the Bruins and the fans for their love and support. “The spoked B is practically my family crest,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He was presented with two miniature copies of the Stanley Cup, specially commissioned by the Bruins in conjunction with the Hall of Fame, and hauled his retired Number 15 to the rafters, which he had not had the privilege of doing before (it wasn’t standard practice when his number was retired). Assisting him were not only members of his family (son and daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren), but former Bruins Bobby Orr, Johnny Bucyk, Terry O’Reilly, Ray Bourque and Cam Neely.

We cheered and whistled and shook the rafters, and more than a few tears were shed. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking of Milt’s former teammates, of Bobby Bauer, who died in 1964, and Woody Dumart, who died in 2001. One of the most difficult parts of living such a long life must be leaving behind so many friends and members of your family.

But then I thought of his words about the Bruins, and as I watched the ceremony end, and the past and present Bruins crowd around him for handshakes and hugs, I thought: He still has them. Bobby Orr and Johnny Bucyk are his sons. Cam Neely and Ray Bourque are his grandsons. And Patrice Bergeron and Jordan Caron and Tyler Seguin are his great-grandsons. They — and we, as Bruins fans, and as hockey fans — are his family.

Oh, and the Bruins won the game, of course, 2-0. For Milt.

Photos: Milt Schmidt from bostonbruins.com