(I’m away this week on a long awaited hockey road trip. So this is my preview with no knowledge of any Leafs’ happenings after Friday, January 25 @ 2:15pm. Head on over to A Cup A Bruin for a day of, Boston Bruins based take on the game.)
Saturday night the Black & Gold will be in town to take on the Leafs. The last time the two teams met, the Bruins steamrolled the Leafs. It was sick. An 8-0 shutout win for Tim Thomas – potentially his last regular season, regulation time shutout win – at TD Garden. Most folks stopped watching by the end of the first.
At least it wasn’t as bad as the December 26, 1991 game when the Leafs went into the Igloo and had the Pittsburgh Penguins wallop them 12-1. (That game was hilarious and I still have it on VHS… because of the Mark Recchi factor.) Ahem.
The 8-0 game saw 7 different Bruins goal scorers, and 14 different Bruins on the board with at least one point before the game was over. The Leafs were down 4-0 by the end of the first, 7-0 by the end of the second. James Reimer allowed 4 goals on the first 9 shots. The Leafs had 13 shots on goal and the Bruins stopped at 24 because they just didn’t give a sh*t.
“I have never really seen anything like that (domination),” Maple Leafs goalie James Reimer said. “I’m not sure why one team has an advantage.” (leafs.nhl.com)
It was the final game in the season-long, six game series. The Bruins swept up from start to finish disappointing fans who wanted to see them take down an Original Six rival.
When the Leafs opened the last season’s series at the Air Canada Centre, they lost 7-0 in front of the home crowd. Add a 6-3 and 5-4 loss to that on home ice.
The best thing about the Leafs’ 5-4 loss when the teams met in March? The battle between Jay Rosehill and Shawn Thornton at 2:45 into the game.
Post-game, head coach Randy Carlyle probably had all the players sit and think about why street shoes are not allowed in certain parts of the arena.
“One mistake after another,” Carlyle said. “It seemed like we were playing in our boots and they were playing in their skates.”(mapleleafs.nhl.com)
Agreed.
To add to the stupidity of all this, the video highlights that are available include two saves by James Reimer. Given he let in 4 of 9 shots, yeah. That means there are highlight videos for 6 of the 9 shots Reimer faced. Um, okay. I’m not going to show you any of them.
Instead, here’s the game in six because it was all pretty dumb.
