FELGER’S OPENING STATEMENT

 

First of all, let me make one thing clear to you, Joey: This is an exercise where I detail how the Bruins COULD lose in the first round, not how they WILL. Big difference, obviously. So you and your hairy forearms can just settle down. I am not predicting their opening series demise….yet. If the postseason started today, the B’s would draw the Hurricanes, and (again, presuming Game 1 was tonight) I would make the B’s a slight favorite in that one. I say “slight” only because the Bruins are playing poorly right now. My expectation is that matters will improve over the next three weeks and they’ll be playing closer to the level they were in November and December by the playoffs. And in that eventuality, then I would strongly favor the B’s against the `Canes or any other Eastern Conference opponent not named the Devils or Capitals.

 

But if things remain status quo, the Bruins not only COULD lose to anybody, they most certainly WILL. And then you'll be back to covering JV volleyball or whatever it is you do for the Woburn Bugle.

 

So, to begin, the thing that concerns me the most about this team is the large number of players who have seen their games fall off a cliff over the last two months.

 

The most important guy to me has been center David Krejci. He was the team’s best forward through January, in my opinion, and one of the big reasons I started to take the B’s seriously again in the first place. He gave them two legit scoring lines and great two-way versatility as a penalty-killer and a defensive centerman. He reminded me of Adam Oates. Did everything well. A budding star. The kind of guy that plays for teams that go deep in the playoffs.

But something happened to him along the way. After being a point-a-game guy in November (4-9-13 totals), a force in December (6-15-21) and a steady producer in January (5-8-13), he dipped in February (2-5-7 in 13 games) and has been nearly invisible in March (1-1-2 in six games). The playmaking Czech has just two assists in his last 11 games. Yikes. You can’t win a Stanley Cup with one line. Unless Krejci picks it up (or Patrice Bergeron re-emerges into a second-line guy), the B’s are toast.

 

But Krejci is far from alone, Joey. After a hot start (25 goals through his first 39 games), Phil Kessel has found his way back on the milk carton. It seems to me he’s got one move (a charge down the right wing followed by a drag and curl in the high slot), and it doesn’t work anymore. I rarely see him in front of the net. He still has incredible speed, but what good does it do him? Heading into Thursday's gimmie against Ottawa (when he potted two goals), Kessel had scored just four goals since New Year’s Day. And don’t give me the Mono thing. Kessel has a history of disappearing, even when healthy, and so he has again. Time to put out another APB for the former Badger (yes, I can take down one of my own).

Meanwhile, Blake Wheeler hasn’t scored a goal in ten games. Milan Lucic, while starting to throw his body around again, is scoreless in his last 12 games. And even though defenseman Dennis Wideman is currently tied for the league-league in plus/minus with Krejci and New Jersey’s Travis Zajac (+33), his play has dropped off badly of late. Over his last 17 games Wideman is just +1.

 

As I’ve said before, there’s two ways to look at this. If you’re being positive, you look at the ages of Krejci (22), Kessel (21), Wheeler (22), Lucic (20), and Wideman (25) and say it’s simply a matter of young guys experiencing some very natural highs and lows. They’ll be back. But if you’re being fatalistic, the conclusion is more ominous: These guys just aren’t as good as we thought they were. Obviously, if it’s the latter this team isn’t going anywhere.

 

I have two more concerns that will send the ball-washers in the Bruins media (that means you, Joey) reaching for the tissues: the goalie and the coach. That’s right. Tim Thomas and Claude Julien. I’m not sold on either. They’ve got to prove it first, don’t they?

 

Yes, they’ve both been very good over the last two seasons. There’s no arguing that. Thomas has been even steadier this season than last, and putting aside my Tuuka obsession for a moment, he absolutely deserves the chance to lead this team night-in, night-out through April and (hopefully) May.

But what has he done as a playoff goalie in his career? That would be nothing. He turns 35 in April and his next playoff series win will be his first. Heck, last year’s seven-game, first-round defeat to Montreal stands as his only postseason experience. And I think he was far from great in that one. So until I see him put a team on his back and steal some games in the playoffs, I’m not just going to assume that will happen next month.

I have the same issue with Julien: track record. This is his third team and sixth season behind an NHL bench, and he has only one playoff victory to his credit (his Canadiens beat the Bruins in seven games in 2004). He’s twice been fired from playoff teams and his current squad is hardly charging towards the finish line.

 

Bottom line: Thomas may very well be good enough, and Julien could very well be the man to lead this club deep. I just don’t know how you could be confident in that based on their resumes.

 

I think there are a lot of reasons why the Bruins will overcome all my reservations (Chara being chief among them) and win in the playoffs, but that’s not my role today. My role today is to embarrass you, Joey. So what do you and your Goth, Amish goatee have to say for yourselves?

JOE'S OPENING STATEMENT

I understand that this first Great Bruins Debate is about whether the B’s could cough up another fur ball and drop a first round series against the Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers or whomever it turns out is their first-round opponent. Well, it’s good to know in the world of sports media -- where people are expected to take concrete stands and firm positions on issues – that the courageous Mike Felger, perhaps best known for skipping show-prep before interviewing a New York Times best-selling author, lusting after superstar NFL wide receivers with a male bodonkadonk butt (you get where this is going) or talking about Madonna as if she still has her good fastball, is using words like could, possibly, maybe and might.

Way to step out and take a shot there, Felger.

Since you clearly are taking the Glen Ordway route of using every qualifying word in the book of waffling and sitting on the fence until it physically breaks underneath you, I guess I’ll have to take the concrete stand that the Bruins will make it out of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs this season.

Is it a lead pipe lock that you should bet the Beacon Hill brownstone, your brand new SUV, the Wood’s ridiculously huge rock, your huge secret stash of hydroponic ganja and Emma’s college tuition fund on?

Sure it is, and here’s why:

The swoons that have clearly affected 22-year-old David Krejci, 23-year-old Blake Wheeler and 21-year-old Phil Kessel – and to some degree 20-year-old Milan Lucic as well – in the last 5-6 weeks have had a considerable trickle down effect on Boston’s offense in the second half of the season.

Before the NHL All-Star break the Bruins scored 164 goals in 47 games (an average of 3.51 goals per game) and Marc Savard, Krejci and Kessel were all averaging roughly a point per game. Since the All-Star break, the B’s have scored 67 goals in 22 games (an average of 3.05 goals per game) and – while Savard is still ticking up above the point-per-game gold standard of the NHL – both Krejci and Kessel have dropped back a bit. That tells me that both players simply aren’t the finished NHL product that Savard is, and that this is an example of the ebb and flow of young players establishing themselves in the rough and tumble NHL. Both are undeniably elite talents when you watch them out on the ice, and this is a learning experience for them.

Were you the ultimate media prostitute that you've grown to be after only a few appearances on George Michael’s Sports Machine or This Week in Sports with Upton Bell – or whatever other obscure show you started out with? Of course not. It took years of hard work to capture that “I’m going to stare into the camera and make this crap seem plausible” expression as you lock into a no-blink contest with the video camera.

Did anybody truly believe that the Bruins were going to continue dismantling every team they faced as they did over the first three months of the season? They pounded on the lowly Atlanta Thrashers four times and spread the pain around multiple times to the weak sister Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers (before they really got their groove going in the second half) in those first few months, and even the veteran Bruins players knew that the goals wouldn’t be coming nearly as easily as they did in the first half.

It’s hard to feel all that panicked about a hockey team that still has a six-point cushion with only 14 games to go in the regular season.

What they did was build themselves a cushion that afforded them some time to make a few mistakes, sustain some unavoidable injuries and go through some growing pains they are surely doing right now.

Pick up your cheese head and look around the NHL, Felger, and you’ll see that the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings – the class of the Western Conference – are also treading water right now, and the Bruins are still neck-and-neck with them for the President’s Trophy despite the way they’ve sputtered over the last five weeks. While the Wings got absolutely waxed last week in back-to-back blowout losses that raised all kinds of questions about their goaltending, the Bruins have been in just about every game they’ve played this season. Not one blowout. Not one.

That tells me something about how good this team is. No team has come in and simply blown the Bruins off the ice. There was the three-goal loss to the Sharks that – I’ll admit – did some psychological damage to this team, but that’s it. Every other loss the Bruins have had has been by two goals or less, and that tells you that they haven’t been overmatched in a single hockey game this season.

That tells you they can play with absolutely anyone and everyone, and that when the dial gets turned up about three notches once the playoffs start, the pretending teams at the bottom of the Eastern Conference (Rangers, Hurricanes, Sabres, Panthers, Canadiens) aren’t going to stand a chance against the Bruins whether they’re playing wide-open, shoot ‘em up hockey or the defensively responsible system that Julien prefers and preaches. The only team that scares me in a first-round matchup is the Penguins with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but A) they’re going to be a tough draw for anybody and B) they have some goaltending and defensive issues that can be exploited.

I’ll give you that locking up home ice and the top spot in the East is imperative to keep the Capitals and Devils away until the Eastern Conference finals – and that those will be tough matchups for the Bruins – but please don’t try to convince me that your little Felger girly legs are shaking at the thought of the Florida Panthers, who have a boatload of untested players who won’t even know which way is up if they do qualify for the playoffs.

Do me a favor and step back from the ledge and instead look at what this team has done when it absolutely, positively had to win hockey games during this second-half  “swoon.” Look back at the hellish nine-game stretch against playoff-caliber opponents that they had just after the All-Star break – a run of games that the coaching staff and front office admitted would be a proving ground of sorts. They went 5-2-2 during that stretch and – while starting to show signs of fatigue and maybe a little ennui – continued grinding out wins. On the heels of three straight losses to the Sharks, Devils and Predators in mid-February, they absolutely blew the doors off of Carolina in a 5-1 win. After dropping the final two games to Florida and Tampa Bay during the final Sun Belt road swing, the B’s returned to Boston and dropped the hammer on the Panthers (6-1) and an Anaheim Ducks (6-0) team fighting to make the playoffs. After three straight defeats to the Caps (in OT), Flyers and Coyotes, the Bruins got it together and took down a young and ridiculously talented Blackhawks team.

The same pattern developed when they dropped a pair of winnable games to the Rangers and Blue Jackets on the road, and then scored five goals against the Senators with both Kessel and Krejci showing some serious signs of life. My point is this: the team knows exactly where it is in the standings, and has risen to the occasion whenever a win was needed to stem a slide or send a message to one of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference.

When they really, really, really want to beat the Florida Panthers, they will not only beat them – they’ll undress t hem on the ice much like I undress you verbally when we talk about baseball. We’ve already seen this play out multiple times this year.

The biggest issue I see during this five week slide is two-fold: the young guys have scuffled a bit while getting used to the raised intensity during the second-half of the season, and the Black and Gold simply aren’t giving the same do-or-die effort every night that teams around the eighth seed are while clinging for dear life and valuable points. They don’t have to.

Once the playoff gauntlet has been thrown down, I expect to see Manny Fernandez banished to the bench and not seen again unless Timmy the Tank Engine suffers something worse than a broken helmet. There won’t be any worry of wearing down or tiring Tim Thomas once the playoff schedule hits with built-in off-days and travel days. So there won’t be any debacles like Fernandez pirouette move in Madison Square Garden last weekend.

I can count on one hand the amount of bad games that Zdeno Chara has had this season, and his ability to completely intimidate and shut down the other team’s most dangerous player will be the ultimate weapon in a playoff series. Marc Savard has continued to produce and play hard every night, even when he was saddled with P.J. Axelsson on his top line and on the power play for pockets of ice time in these last few weeks. I still would love to know what kind of photographic evidence Axelsson has on Julien to keep getting his number called. Milan Lucic will be hitting everything that moves -- as he did earlier in the season -- once the “real season” begins, and he’s showed in bursts the kind of unique punishment he’s going to give in the playoffs.

Krejci, Kessel and Wheeler have struggled to again find their games, but their struggles now are ultimately going to help them come playoff-time. When they play desperate teams in the month of March like the Panther or Rangers, they’re acclimatizing their body and games to what the playoffs are all about. Neither player has given up or sulked while they struggled, but instead they’ve kept plugging away and watched as goals and points have started again coming their way20– along with the all-important confidence that goes along with it. I love the pairing of Looch with Krejci and Michael Ryder, as the big-bodied Looch and tough-on-his-skates Ryder were clearing out plenty of time and space for Krejci to operate – the two most important things to get the Czech Republic center back on track.

I’ll leave you with one X-factor player that will have a huge effect on just how good the Bruins are during this playoff run, and a guy who I think guarantees that the B’s get out of the first round: Patrice Bergeron. The 23-year-old has had 3 goals, 7 assists in his last 12 games, and has started to show the offensive touch around the net that eluded him the first half of the year – to go along with the other things (faceoff ability, PK and PP skills, good defensive coverage) he brings to the table. He’s begun to show more and more flashes of the old, pre-concussion Bergeron in the last month, and his presence as a legitimate third threat at the center position gives them the kind of line depth that bottom rung playoff teams – aside from maybe the Penguins – simply don’t have.

So, there you have it Felger, a few things that I’ve seen closely watching this team that tell me they’re not going to be first-round fodder. I know you, as a card-carrying fear-monger and conspiracy theorist, have already begun to float this Bruins first-round disaster scenario on all of the many media outlets that you grace. It’s like you feed off the fear and loathing on Causeway Street.

Repeat after me: I believe in the Bruins, and think they’re good enough and skilled enough to beat a first round patsy.

FELGER GOES BACK AT JOE AND HIS SILLY GOATEE

This is too easy. Where do I begin? Okay, how about here:

“Pick up your cheese head and look around the NHL, Felger, and you’ll see that the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings – the class of the Western Conference -- are also treading water right now.”

Brilliant, Joe! I would definitely compare the Bruins – a team that hasn't won a playoff series in 10 years and has one postseason victory to their credit in the last 15 years – with the defending Stanley Cup champions and arguably the best organization in the NHL the past two decades. That makes total sense.

Let me explain it to you so you understand: The Red Wings are a great team. A proven team. They can do pretty much whatever they want in the regular season. Nothing to prove there. Just stay healthy. Maybe this has been part of the B's problem. Maybe they felt that once they reached the top of the Eastern Conference they had arrived. And you bought into it! Let's just raise another banner right now, Joe. Will you help with the ropes?

“They haven’t been overmatched in a single hockey game this season.”

I beg to differ. I will refer you to the third period of the Sharks showdown, Feb. 10. It was a statement moment, with the B's holding a 2-1 lead over Joe Thornton and the vaunted Western Conference leaders coming out of the second intermission. Do I need to remind you what happened next? Four unanswered goals. Men against boys. I would also contend that the B's have been less than competitive in games against New Jersey and Washington this year, but I guess you were too busy ordering the Stanley Cup rings to notice.

“Krejci, Kessel and Wheeler have struggled to find their games again, but their struggles now are ultimately going to help them come playoff-time.”

Ball-washer. Just what, exactly, do you base this on? Is that what comes to you in bed alone at night as you stare up at the Claude Julien posters on your wall? I'd like to agree with you, Joe, but I guess that I go by this crazy, old-fashioned notion that someone actually has to prove themselves before I trust them to do it when it counts. That's just being practical. You're engaging in wishful thinking.

JOE SLAPS FELGER AROUND WITH HIS OWN BOTTLE OF HAND CREAM

You are giving away so many hints that you haven’t been paying close attention to hockey or the Bruins until the last few weeks. Let me count the ways that you’ve embarrassed yourself once again in a public forum.

First off, your continual – no pun intended – Doubting Thomas act with Timmy the Tank is one of your typical “I’m holding onto this with everything I’ve got and not letting it go” arguments that you pull out at every possible stop. Thomas isn’t a proven goaltender in the postseason? Well, duh, Mike…nobody is proven until they actually go out and do it. This is the same inflammatory argument that people made about Peyton Manning, Kevin Garnett and countless others until they actually won the big game or proved it in the playoffs. Tim had a .914 save percentage and a 2.65 goals against average during that seven game series last season against an – at that time – much better and more battle-hardened Montreal outfit, and wasn’t the reason they eventually lost that series. I saw all I needed to see between the last two years of regular season games and last year’s seven-game performance against the Habs.

It’s an easy, and pretty lame, argument that Thomas can’t or won’t do it in the postseason because he never has before. You could say that about anyone before they actually go out and perform in the playoffs. Give me one shred of actual, detailed evidence that he coughed it up in the playoffs or even showed a wee bit of the yips – and I’ll give it to you. It’s easy to paint with a broad brush and say that Thomas isn’t the type of goalie that could carry his team through the Stanley Cup minefield, but instead you keep advocating bringing up a 22-year-old kid to do it instead.

Admit it, you want Tuukka Time. And if you had Tuukka Time then you’d have a disaster on your hands just like the Habs have had last season and this season after trading away their proven goalie and handing the reins to Jesus Price, who has been one of the reasons Guy Carbonneau got fired and Bob Gainey is stuck behind Montreal’s bench. Your potential solution is both ridiculous and not plausible.

You truly show your shallow knowledge of recent hockey history when you challenge Claude Julien’s abilities to coach his team through a big playoff series or two during the B’s Stanley Cup run.

Pop quiz, hot shot. Who was the coach behind Montreal’s bench when they shocked the top-seeded Bruins and No Show Joe Thornton in the first round of the Cup playoffs in 2003-04? That’s right…it was our friend Claude as you alluded to. He was able to guide the Habs through a shocking upset of the Bruins that year before their undermanned team finally succumbed later on in the playoffs.

And I’m not going to hold the Devils firing against him either because I think crazy Lou Lamoriello made a big mistake that he’s still trying to atone for. He wanted Claude to run Martin Brodeur into the ground that season, and it ended up costing them in the playoffs. Did New Jersey do great things that year without Julien? My recollection is that they didn’t, and that in hindsight perhaps Lou the genius – who has a propensity for such hair-trigger, irrational moves – made a booboo when he let Julien go.

Admit it Felger, he’s the best coach that Boston has had since your boy Pat Burns was behind the bench, and he and Peter Chiarelli are the big reasons why stability and success – and a whole lot of hockey love – have returned to Causeway Street. He sure looked like a proven playoff coach when he left the Garden ice victorious after Game 7 back in 2003-04, and that’s enough to inspire some confidence in me.

Look at how he’s grown as a coach this season. He went from someone that was basically a trap-friendly coach to somebody that pushed for the defenseman to pinch and get involved more to open up the offense. He’s adapted his game to the talent he has around him, and he’s got his best players – people like Marc Savard and Zdeno Chara – playing the best hockey of their careers under him. Julien has this team in the exact position they want to be heading into the playoffs as a top seed with a largely healthy bunch along with new – and needed – spare parts in Mark Recchi and Steve Montador.

As for Krejci (a goal and 4 assists in the seven game series vs. the Habs) and Kessel (3 goals and an assist in the four games he played during the postseason), it’s not baseless optimism or ball-washing as you like to say. It’s remembering how they played when it mattered most during last year’s playoff series against the Canadiens, and then how they played when they were out making a statement in the first half of the season. Do you think either one of them were flukes, because I sure as hell don’t.

Once again, I’ll yell this out for the cheap seats. Do later matchups against New Jersey and Washington worry me? Yeah…a little. But the Bruins have more than enough to take down the rag tag fleet of hockey scroungers that are backing their way into the playoffs in the eighth spot.

Now go grab some of the hand crème out of your Bath and Body works basket and get back to whatever metrosexual pursuits you and the Gare Bear have planned for Comcast SportsNet tonight. Leave the hockey heavy lifting to the pros and those not prone to the whole fear-mongering thing.

FELGER TRIES TO ADDRESS JOE WITHOUT STARING AT THAT THING ON HIS FACE

Some great comparisons again, Joe. Tim Thomas = Peyton Manning. Tim Thomas = Kevin Garnett. Well done. Way to compare two all-time Superstars, guys who were elite starting at the age of 12, with a guy who didn’t even break into the NHL until he was in his 30s. Why didn’t you throw John Elway into the argument? It took him a while to win a ring, too. Yeah, you got it. When I think Peyton Manning and John Elway, I think Tim Thomas.

Oh, and there’s this:

“Give me one shred of actual, detailed evidence that he coughed it up in the playoffs or even showed a wee bit of the yips – and I’ll give it to you.”

No problem. Game 7 in Montreal last year.  Montreal’s first goal, a shot from the point tipped in the deep slot. Thomas was out of position (as he is prone to be) and the Habs were on their way. Five goals on 35 shots.  Not a brutal job by Thomas, just not elite.

If you want to throw out the fact he’s never done it before, that’s no problem. Let’s stick with the here and now. I just don’t know if his style is steady enough to go night-in, night-out in the playoffs. It could be. I hope it is. I’m just not confident in it.

Unless you’re the Red Wings (which, come to think of it, you feel the Bruins are), you need elite goaltending. The Wings won it all last year with Chris Osgood, which showed you just how much better they were than the rest of the league. The B’s don’t have that luxury. Their guy is going to have to steal some games if they’re going to go deep. Maybe Thomas can be mediocre and the B’s can still get out of the first round, but I wouldn’t bank on that.

On Julien, you give him credit for his one playoff series win in 2004 over….. the Bruins. The Bruins? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. I checked with the NHL stat office. They said they have decided to actually count playoff wins over the Bruins in the record books, but that was only after much debate. Congrats, Claude. You beat the Bruins.

And so he’s the best coach the B’s have had behind the bench since Pat Burns? Wow, Joe. That’s really saying something. I thought Dave Lewis was pretty good. No, no. I mean Mike O’Connell. Or was that Robbie Ftorek? Congrats, again, Claude. You’re better than Mike O’Connell and four other guys who were beyond awful.

And boy do you sound like a Bruins baggage handler when you talk about the “crazy” Lou Lamoriello. God forbid the Bruins get someone as “crazy” as the guy who has won three Stanley Cups and taken his team to the playoffs in 18 of his 20 years on the job. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

JOE FINALLY ACCUSES FELGER OF HITTING THE PRE-DEBATE BONG

Let me take a page out of the Felger “I’m going to take your words and twist them to my advantage” playbook, and take something you said in rambling incoherence about Tim Thomas. (I also notice you didn’t defend yourself on Tuukka Time…have you finally given up?) You blame the two-time All-Star ‘tender for giving up the first goal of a Game 7 that none of the guys in front of him even bothered showing up for.

“Montreal’s first goal, a shot from the point tipped in the deep slot. Thomas was out of position (as he is prone to be) and the Habs were on their way.”

Mike, are you smoking the good stuff and listening to Disco Dead again? Shake yourself out of the Shakedown Street stupor and come back to the thing I like to call reality.

You’re blaming Thomas for a shot that was tipped in the slot, and saying that he was the reason that the walls finally came crashing down on the upstart Bruins at the Bell Centre last spring. Give me a break. The Canadiens were swarming Thomas in that game and he’d made several “Grade A” saves before the Montreal Diving Team finally tipped a puck to get it past him. I’m not blaming the goalie for failing to stop tips or redirects when that’s exactly how you beat a goaltender playing like a stone wall. That’s like making noise about tossing an All-Star goalie to the Causeway curb after giving up one flukey 80-foot goal on a Frisbee shot in overtime.

Oh wait, you’ve done that too.

The Habs were a better team than the Bruins last year, and the B’s accomplished something by getting to Game 7. Why is that so difficult to understand? (Felger: You shameless homer. You sound like Dickerson and Tanguay: “There were a lot of positives in that loss.”)

Why don’t you blame Dustin Pedroia for not hitting three home runs in Game 7 against the Rays in last year’s ALCS, or blame Matt Cassel for not taking the Patriots all the way to the Super Bowl last season? Because those are the same type of Herculean tasks that you’re expecting out of Thomas to stop time “Matrix-style” and get a pad on tips from the slot and split-second redirects that are coming at him from different angles with bodies flying around him. You need to try a little harder to get some playoff dirt on Thomas because there isn’t any, and you reaching for one tipped shot just ain’t gettin’ it done.

As far as Claude goes, he’s among the favorites to win the Jack Adams Trophy so he must be doing something right. He’s turned a bunch of rejects from the Land of Misfit Hockey Players and not-ready-for-primetime-players that crashed and burned under Dave Lewis, and developed them into a skating unit as if THEY WERE the Wings of the East. We wouldn’t even be having this discussion if Claude hadn’t done such a magnificent job of pushing many of the right buttons over the last two years.

One thing about Lamoriello: if you’re going to dump a coach like Julien just before the playoffs and put yourself behind the bench, it might be a good idea to do some damage in the playoffs afterward. Instead they won only one series and he looks like he made an extreme Donald Trump “Apprentice” move for naught. It would be like talking all day about Pink Tacos and Shockers on a radio station during a ratings book period when nobody was listening. Wait a second…

FELGER’S CONCLUSION

If I’ve sounded a bit on-the-fence here, there’s a reason. I don’t want to pick against the Bruins. In fact, I’m rooting for them pretty hard. If there’s one team around here that’s in my blood and one sport that still grabs me by the loins, it’s the Bruins and it’s hockey. I’d love to see this team relevant again, and another loss in the first round will destroy the momentum they’ve been building since that epic Game 6 win over Montreal last April. An early exit would mean it’s all NBA, all the time – and I don’t know if I can take another year of that.

But unlike Joe, I can’t let my heart take precedence over my head. I’m not you, Joey. I don’t call the guys “Looch” and “Timmy” and I don’t rag on successful rival franchises and general managers just because they play against the Bruins. I used to…..then I turned 14.

If the B’s play well over these next two weeks and nail down the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference with some momentum, then I’ll be confident in their chances in Round 1. Until then, I’d say there are just as likely to gag on it as they are to move on.

And shave those sideburns, Joe. They’re almost as bad as Bradford’s mangina.

JOE’S CONCLUSION

I’m as curious as anybody else to see just how much of the dominant Bruins team from the season’s first half shows up come playoff time, but there isn’t a lot of concern in the first round with Savard, Krejci and Bergeron up the middle at the center spots and some real depth on the wings.

Other teams simply don’t have enough firepower or depth to be able to keep up with the Bruins for 60 minutes of concentrated, intense, focused effort come playoff time. You and I both know, Felger, that the level of play jumps tremendously when the NHL hops from regular season to Stanley Cup playoffs, and we aren’t going to see any stinkers like the 2-1 loss to the Desert Dogs from a few weeks back.

Krejci and Kessel are who we thought they were. Julien is the right coach for this team. The heartless first round exits of Bruins’ past are out the door along with No Show Joe Thornton. He’s San Jose’s problem now.

Just sit back, put the hand lotion in the basket and enjoy a nice long Bruins run through the Cup playoffs, Felger. Maybe even a day with the Cup if they rekindle that first half spark that woke up Bruins Nation. It’s entirely possible.