by Dick Rosenthal on Tue May 13, 2014 9:02 am
I am not sure how Boyle gets equated to Lucic, other than he is someone who has no chance fighting against the heavyweights in the league. The difference is, in stark contrast to Lucic--whose last fair fight (from a size perspective) resulted in him getting knocked the fuck out on his skates and having his nose broken by Colton Orr, while he begged the linesman to intervene--Boyle, for the good of his team, has taken on absolutely hopeless battles against Chara, Neil, Gudas, Regehr and Prust without a complaint. As far as Carcillo goes, no one I have ever heard has claimed he is an honorable tough guy (as Bruins fans do with respect to the Serbian Girl Puncher). With that said, when you consider that the last two Rangers playoff runs were severely impacted by vicious cheap shots from opponents, I am happy to have that nuclear option in our back pocket and I would love to see Carcillo go knee on knee against Marchand, Lucic or Thornton the Racist Cheap Shot Artist.
With respect to last night's game, the aging Bruins look tired. Chara looks slow--like he did at the end of last year's playoff run--and amongst the younger guys, Dougie Hamilton looks like he forgot how to play. The Bruins should win Game 7 and all things being equal, I think they should get by against either the Rangers or the Penguins, but having watched the Hawks, Ducks and Kings pretty closely over the last couple of weeks, I am fairly certain that any of those three will have way too much speed for the Bruins. Even the Wild look faster.
Another solid performance by Gionta--he was the catalyst for the first goal and he broke up a few good Bruins chances and laid a real nice hit on Torey Krug that caused him to miss a shift (it was probably a treat for Gionta to crash into someone who is smaller than him).
I expect disappointment tonight in Pittsburgh because it's the New York Rangers and I think Toronto is going to do everything it can to get Cindy Crosby into the conference finals. It will be interesting to see if Orpik can go for Pittsburgh because Bortuzzo has been beyond awful and Maatta has only been slightly better. Martin has been averaging 27 minutes of ice time per night in the playoffs--including a 30 minute effort a couple of games ago--and his legs looked dead on Sunday. Letang's averaging 25 minutes a night, but with the way Kreider has been abusing him, it would be better if he only got twenty minutes. Scuderi apparently has some "lower body injury" that limited him to 15 minutes on Sunday. If they can only rely on him for that little time, they will need Fleury to stand on his head and the Lundqvist to choke because Martin-Letang, Niskanen-Maatta with Scudering subbing in with each pairing as needed is a recipe for disaster.