Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Zedeno Chara est détesté à Montréal
The Bruins may lose their star player for awhile - the uproar in Quebec is intense
I don't think it was a deliberate hit but....
Chara admitted that he knew he was close to the Bruins' bench, but he did not go into the check with the intention of hurting the Habs' left winger.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The darkest night in the history of the Boston Bruins
We all remember what happened when they last met a month ago at the Garden.
2 months ago the Bruins blew a 2-0 lead late in the third period in Montreal....and in OT
The Boston Bruins have not won a Stanley Cup since 1972 but in 1979 they came oh so close.
When the Forum de Montreal closed in 1996, Red Fisher the longtime hockey writer wrote about the greatest game in the history of the building.
Was there ever a more exciting game than the one in 1979 when the Canadiens rallied for a tying goal in Game 7 of the Cup semifinal against the Bruins when Boston was caught with too many men on the ice?
The Canadiens, winners of three consecutive Stanley Cups, had won the first two games of the series, outscoring the Bruins 9-4. That was expected. Piece of cake. What nobody expected was that the Bruins would win the next two in Boston and split the next two. The teams faced off at the Forum in Game 7 for the right to face the New York Rangers in the Cup final.
Three hours and 26 minutes later, Mario Tremblay raced down right wing. On the left, Yvon Lambert sprinted for the net, arriving there in time to take Tremblay's pass ... and goal! The time: 9:33 into the first overtime.
What more could any group of athletes provide than what was delivered that night? How much deeper could this Boston team dig than the 3-1 lead they took into the third period, two from Wayne Cashman and another from Rick Middleton? How much work was needed from the Canadiens for the goals they got from Mark Napier and Guy Lapointe to tie the game?
Now, it's Middleton shooting from almost behind the net. The puck strikes Ken Dryden's arm and falls behind him with fewer than four minutes remaining. Game and series over, right? Incredibly, seconds later, with only 2:34 remaining in regulation, the Bruins are caught with too many men on the ice! Last chance and, as you'd expect, the Canadiens had their best on the ice. Lafleur and Robinson were there. So were Serge Savard, Steve Shutt and Jacques Lemaire.
The goal which sent the game into overtime happened this way:
Lafleur carried the puck up the ice and passed it to Lemaire, deep in the Boston zone. Lemaire promptly passed it back to Lafleur at the top of the circle. What he needed to send the game into overtime was a perfect shot, and that's what he produced with only 74 seconds remaining to beat a spectacular Gilles Gilbert.
I can not begin to describe the despair in Boston after this debacle as coming just months after Bucky F. Dent it was just too much for most Bostonians.
All Bruins fans have heard the infamous phrase 'too many men on the ice' - but unless you are over the age of 40 you most likely have never seen the game.
Here is the complete telecast from CBC's Hockey Night In Canada with the late Danny Gallivan calling the action.
If you don't have the time to watch the entire telecast here is when the penalty happened and the disaster that followed.
The Bruins fired coach Don Cherry after the game - and it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him as a couple of years later Hockey Night In Canada tried him out as a commentator.
To the horror of many in Canada ESPECIALLY in Quebec - he is still there.
Cherry's memories of that night.
Cherry still loves Boston ( and the Bruins ) - as this clip from 2004 will show when Bostonians reacted to the booing of the United States anthem in Montreal - (which still continues, especially when the Bruins visit)
GO BRUINS!!!!
The Boston Bruins: Celebrating 75 Years
Thursday, March 3, 2011
We know the Commuter Rail has problems - but when will the T buy new Orange and Red Line cars?
This morning with the temperature around 10 degrees with a wind chill below zero, the Orange Line didn't want to play. This is routine whenever it gets cold and for good reason - These trains were built between 1979-81.
To put that in perspective, these trains ran on the Washington Street Elevated.
1985 - courtesy petespix75 on Flickr
The current Orange Line trains were built by the same manufacturer who built the retired Blue Line trains that were built a year earlier. It is time to retire them and send a few cars to the trolley museum in Maine where they can mingle with other retired T cars.
The T released a video showing the problems the older trains face
I really don't understand why new Orange Line cars were not ordered when the Blue Line new cars were but what's done is done...or in this case NOT done.
Things are a little better on the Red Line but there are problems there as well.
68 of the Red Line cars were built in 1969-70 when the Red Line was expanded to Quincy (and later Braintree) - 46 more were built between 1987-9 and 84 cars were built in 1993-4. The Red Line which is by far the busiest of the heavy rail lines also has the most mileage.
The Green Line has 80 Kinki-Sharyo cars that were built in 1987-8 (with 14 more bought a decade later) and 90 of the infamous Breda cars that first showed up in 1999 and the last one arriving in 2007.
Boston is not alone with problems with Breda as San Francisco, Cleveland and Los Angeles have had issues as well ( but not as severe as ours )
To be fair Breda says the design that the MBTA wanted was questionable to begin with.
Now why the MBTA decided to award the contract to Breda in the first place when Kinki-Sharyo gave the system a reliable vehicle is classic Massachusetts insanity.
Kinki just built the cars for the new rail line to the Seattle airport and everybody loves them
Here is my problem with going to the 'low-bidder' - you get what you pay for and usually there are more costs involved in the end. Nobody complains about the Kinki Green Line cars - all they do is work.
I have read Chicago is now testing new rail cars for the 'L manufactured by Bombardier Inc to replace cars that are the oldest in the US going back to 1968. Our Red line cars will soon have that dubious distinction.
The Blue Line is set for the next 20 years so at least we have that going for us.
The rest of the system is what it is - a system that was designed 100 years ago with each line having its own standards. Sadly it says a lot about us that one of the most reliable tunnels in the system was built 100 years ago between Harvard and Kendall and it still doesn't have the issues that the almost 30 year old tunnel from Harvard to Alewife has.
I don't know where the money is going to come from to purchase these cars and I have a feeling MassDOT doesn't either but it has to be done. The Green Line is going to need new cars for the extension to Medford as well. I certainly don't blame the current management of the T for these issues as the problems we are having today were caused by bad decisions decades ago.
However I am tired of riding a system that has trains that don't run as well as the retired ones at the museum in Maine.
To put that in perspective, these trains ran on the Washington Street Elevated.
The current Orange Line trains were built by the same manufacturer who built the retired Blue Line trains that were built a year earlier. It is time to retire them and send a few cars to the trolley museum in Maine where they can mingle with other retired T cars.
The T released a video showing the problems the older trains face
I really don't understand why new Orange Line cars were not ordered when the Blue Line new cars were but what's done is done...or in this case NOT done.
Things are a little better on the Red Line but there are problems there as well.
68 of the Red Line cars were built in 1969-70 when the Red Line was expanded to Quincy (and later Braintree) - 46 more were built between 1987-9 and 84 cars were built in 1993-4. The Red Line which is by far the busiest of the heavy rail lines also has the most mileage.
The Green Line has 80 Kinki-Sharyo cars that were built in 1987-8 (with 14 more bought a decade later) and 90 of the infamous Breda cars that first showed up in 1999 and the last one arriving in 2007.
Boston is not alone with problems with Breda as San Francisco, Cleveland and Los Angeles have had issues as well ( but not as severe as ours )
To be fair Breda says the design that the MBTA wanted was questionable to begin with.
Now why the MBTA decided to award the contract to Breda in the first place when Kinki-Sharyo gave the system a reliable vehicle is classic Massachusetts insanity.
Kinki just built the cars for the new rail line to the Seattle airport and everybody loves them
Here is my problem with going to the 'low-bidder' - you get what you pay for and usually there are more costs involved in the end. Nobody complains about the Kinki Green Line cars - all they do is work.
I have read Chicago is now testing new rail cars for the 'L manufactured by Bombardier Inc to replace cars that are the oldest in the US going back to 1968. Our Red line cars will soon have that dubious distinction.
The Blue Line is set for the next 20 years so at least we have that going for us.
The rest of the system is what it is - a system that was designed 100 years ago with each line having its own standards. Sadly it says a lot about us that one of the most reliable tunnels in the system was built 100 years ago between Harvard and Kendall and it still doesn't have the issues that the almost 30 year old tunnel from Harvard to Alewife has.
I don't know where the money is going to come from to purchase these cars and I have a feeling MassDOT doesn't either but it has to be done. The Green Line is going to need new cars for the extension to Medford as well. I certainly don't blame the current management of the T for these issues as the problems we are having today were caused by bad decisions decades ago.
However I am tired of riding a system that has trains that don't run as well as the retired ones at the museum in Maine.
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