It seemed like yesterday that the Bruins’ season was just shooting out of the starting gate, and Boston was still ignoring the Black and Gold — despite the excitement stirred up by last season’s seven-game playoff series against the Montreal Canadiens.
People needed to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and shoved into boards like a Milan Lucic body check to again care about hockey, and that’s exactly what’s transpired over the last seven months.
Well, now the Stanley Cup playoffs are just around the corner and this will be the final Hagg Bag of the regular season before the most compelling postseason in all of pro sports — yes, I mean the march to the Cup — gets started in earnest on April 15.
As things stand right now, the B’s will be hosting either the Canadiens, Rangers or Panthers on Thursday, April 16 for Game One with a likely Game Two scheduled for that Saturday. (With the Celtics playing their final home game of the season on the parquet April 15, it had to be Thursday.)
The Habs look like they’ve finally found whatever it was that eluded them for most of the season and don’t look like they’ll be dropping back from their comfortable seventh slot. And I refuse to believe that a talented, playoff-hardened Rangers unit won’t be able to fend off a last-ditch rush by the inexperienced Florida Kitty Kats for that eighth and final seed.
So, I’m running under the assumption a seven-game series against the Original Six Rangers awaits in the first round, and that means three things: low-scoring games, a heaping bowl of gutless antics from Sean Avery (like the puck punk episode that we witnessed the other night perpetrated on Tim Thomas), and the danger that an All-Star goaltender like Henrik Lundqvist might snatch a game or two.
I personally thought playing the Habs in the first round might be the best thing for the Bruins, because it wouldn’t allow them to potentially overlook a seeming postseason pushover like the Panthers. But the ill will drummed up by Avery along with the potential threats posed by guys like Chris Drury and Scott Gomez might be just enough to get the Top Dog B’s locked in and engaged for that crucial first series. I say bring on the Blueshirts…and another chapter in the never-ending Boston/New York rivalry.
With that, let’s move on to the newest installment of the Hagg Bag and — as always — feel free to direct any questions or Sean Avery hate mail to me at jhaggerty@weei.com.
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Did your brother just win the fan version of the 7th player award ?
Graig Woodburn
JH: I got a couple of e-mails like this one, so apparently some extremely handsome dude with the last name Haggerty won the Dodge Ram truck fan prize that went along with David Krejci winning the 7th Player Award last week prior to the Tampa Bay Lightning game at the Garden. It would seem like the perfect bag job where I could set up a brother or a cousin with a sweet new red truck courtesy of the Bruins. But — after going to the tape — I’ve never met the guy before in my life and I’m certainly not related to him.
I also got a few e-mails campaigning for Dennis Wideman as a sort of cult pick for the 7th Player Award this season, but if I had a vote it would have gone toward the Czech puck magician, Krejci. The 22-year-old essentially came out of nowhere to be an 80-point scorer — he will be close to that figure when the Bruins finish out the four final games left on the regular season docket — and serves a crucial role on offense, the penalty kill and the power play unit for this Bruins team targeted for the postseason. If the B’s hope to win at least a couple of rounds — the bare minimum to appease a fan base hungry for some playoff success after a decade full of postseason frustration — Krejci must be a point man making things happen.
I wrote about this last week and stumbled across this unbelievable nugget while researching the young center: The Bruins are 19-0-1 when Krejci scores a goal this season and an amazing 37-2-5 when the Czech Republic native notches a point this year. When Krejci and his linemates give opponents a
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