Well, it was fun while it lasted, but the Boston Bruins’ season looks grim at this point in the season. With Tuukka Rask and Anton Khudobin out Boston was worried, but hopeful for Malcolm Subban and Zane Mcintyre to perform adequately in goal in their starters’ absences. I think I can effectively say after last night’s 5-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild, Boston’s hopes have been dashed away.
Subban had a wonderful start to the game, although in the 2nd period he ruined that within 12 seconds, giving up goals to Charlie Coyle at 5:07 and Chris Stewart at 5:19. After Subban gave up a power play goal to Ryan Suter, Boston Bruins’ head coach Claude Julien made the intuitive decision to bench the rookie goalie and to replace with a different rookie goalie in Zane Mcintyre. Mcintyre held steady for about 6 minutes until at 16:39 when Jason Zucker fired one by him. With the 4-0 deficit, the B’s and their fans sensed that this one was over, there was still a 3rd period to play. Despite the Jason Pominville goal, Mcintyre and the Bruins stepped up their game in the 3rd, however their defense did allow 11 shots on goal in that single period. Notwithstanding to the goaltender issue, Boston faces an even more crushing problem: they can’t get the puck! Their faceoff win percentage is under 50%, they score very few goals, and they commit a ton of penalties. They have this stellar lineup of forwards: Patrice Bergeron, he was on the cover of NHL15, David Krejci, a 2 time all star, David Pastrnak, one of the league’s top prospects, David Backes, a 3 time all star, and Brad Marchand, who scored the winning goal for Team Canada in the World Cup Of Hockey. Sounds pretty great, right? While Marchand leads the team in points and assists and Pastrnak leads the team in goals, Backes, Krejci, and Bergeron combined have only 7 points, which are made up of just 3 goals and 4 assists. Not only can’t they get the puck and score, their defense is in shambles! Zdeno Chara is aging, Adam McQuaid and Kevan Miller are injury prone, and from Brandon Carlo to Colin Miller they’ve got so many nobodies that are continuing to play so that they seem like they want to stay as nobodies. Boston’s defense isn’t aggressive anymore; they’re playing like a passive aggressive team. Beantown’s got problems in the net, with the attack, and the defense that just can’t be fixed overnight. It’ll take a lot of work throughout the year, training minor leaguers and practicing more, harder, and more efficiently, but as we’ve seen in the past, the team tends to move past their terrible phases. While they do happen to do that often, Boston also has dips in performance throughout the year and they usually end up out of the playoff picture. Unfortunately, without the proper preparation, which they don’t have, the Bruins don’t look like they’ll even get close to a shot at the Stanley Cup, this year. As they say in Boston, they’re wicked bad. Jesse A. Cook “Feeling The Burn On Ice” October 26, 2016
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Tensions were high in Foxboro between the New England Patriots and Cincinnati Bengals; Rob Gronkowski and Vontaze Burfict started it all off when words flew between the two, sparking them to ram their facemasks against one another’s in New England’s 35-17 win.
This all started when on a short pass from Tom Brady to Danny Amendola with about 11 minutes left in the game, Martellus Bennett looked open for a pass. Burfict, seeing the open man went to cover him, however he had an idea separate from pass blocking in mind. Burfict, realizing his opportunity, took a low-hit on Bennett. Okay, that’s his style, nothing much happened directly after the play; Burfict just received a bit of a talking-to by the referee. With about 8 and a half minutes left in the 4th quarter, Gronkowski would receive a pass up the middle for a 1st down and a good chunk of yards. Upon strolling back to the huddle, he’d say a few words to Burfict and then they rammed their helmets in one another’s. The 10 other men on each team on the field and a couple referees had to be closer to see what was transpiring. One referee gently escorted Gronk away, while another referee and several other Bengals and Patriots held Vontaze back. All in Foxboro and the rest of New England agreed, in this game, Burfict had just swung and missed as for that was strike two. About 30 seconds later and inside the Cincinnati 10 yard line, Vontaze Burfict and the rest of the Bengals’ defense would watch strike 3 go right by their eyes. Gronk is tackled then words are exchanged with Dre Kirkpatrick and the fight was once again alive. A flag was thrown on Gronkowski which cost the Patriots 4 points as they had to kick a field goal instead of score a touchdown, but it mattered little. Despite the flag being against the Patriots, there was still a fray largely caused by Vontaze Burfict and Adam “Pac-Man” Jones; the same pair that cost Cincinnati their season last year. Kirkpatrick quickly stepped aside after exchanging insults with New England’s Tight End, however Jones and Burfict had to be held back from their opposition, once again. Patriots would, for the 5th time in just over 10 years, take the win over the Jungle, but this past game, Week 6, will not reflect well on either team’s sportsmanship. Rob Gronkowski taunted, Vontaze Burfict screamed and yelled, and the referees sure had an adventure trying to keep things in order, but overall, I will say that the playing itself was above average. Tom Brady and Andy Dalton did pass for big yards as well as Dalton rushing for a touchdown, the New England defense was able to shut down Cincinnati later on, and the Bengals did rush well. Though the attitudes of players were not top tier and they didn’t, as role models to the next generation of NFL stars, do their job, the playing on both sides of the battlefield was impressive in the New England Patriots 35-17 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. Jesse A. Cook “Hard Hitting Helmets In Foxboro” October 18, 2016 Today, October 16, 2016, is the 104th anniversary of Game 8 of the 1912 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Giants. There are many words to describe the 1912 World Series; crazy, insane, unpredictable, etc., but the phrase, the “First Fall Classic," is best way to explain the start of the Boston and New York baseball rivalry. Granted, the World Series was already eight years in the making at this point, but this was first great, watched nationwide, World Series. All of the changes of tide throughout the series are really due to one man, the New York Giants' manager, John McGraw.
Born in Truxton, New York, April 7, 1873, John McGraw was the son of Irish immigrants, abused by his father, and a child almost orphaned by disease. He would soon run away and be cared for by a loving neighbor. That experience helped nurture his love for baseball, a indulgence oppressed by his widower father. My first impression of John McGraw, the manager of the New York Giants in 1912, was that he was a high-maintenance lunatic that expected nothing less of perfection from his players. Soon, I would be proved quite wrong. Though his tough childhood would suggest that McGraw would be hard on his players, he only expected perfection in the mental aspect of the game. He did care about physical errors, but not as much as a mental mistake. As player, Fred Snodgrass, would soon enough find out, on October 16, 1912, when he drops an easy fly ball that would cost the Giants the World Series. When he came back to the dugout, McGraw patted him on the back and told him to keep up the good work. Snodgrass had muffed an easy and lazy fly ball, but McGraw knew everybody made physical errors, and unlike the rest of the world, he forgave the outfielder. It was a mental mistake that would make McGraw blow his lid off. McGraw became really steamed when umpires would miss obvious calls, or at least what he considered obvious. October 12, 1912, game five of the grueling series would highlight a key example of McGraw’s impatience for an umpire’s mistake. In Fenway Park, at that time, when the stadium was brand new, there was a little tiny hole in the wall, just barely big enough that a baseball could slip in. Harry Hooper, an outfielder for Boston’s Speedboys’, smacked a ball right through the Giants outfield, and of all the places for a ball to go, with McGraw’s lack of luck, the ball, ended up in the hole. The fielder couldn’t get the ball back to the infield before Hooper was standing proudly on third base with a triple. There’s just one problem. The Giants had all realized that Hooper should have been moved back to second base, for that ball was a ground-rule double. John McGraw, the pugnacious and easily angered man, he was, stormed right out into the face of that game’s chief umpire, Silk O’Loughlin. “That’s common sense, Silk! Come on!” The man, so enraged, took this issue up with the league, and by the next game, October 14, there was a rule declaring that a ball hit there would be a ground-rule double. This would prove to be McGraw’s downfall when a New York Giant would run around the bags with an inside the park home run, only to have the home run taken away, as a result of the batted ball landing in the hole in the wall! An occurrence earlier in the series would be one of the worst misses McGraw had seen. Another Red Sock, Tris Speaker had crushed a ball past the New Yorkers, and barrelled around the bases for an inside the park home run(which would tie the game, but due to darkness that would mark the end of the game, a tie, causing the series to last eight games), only that he had missed first base by two steps due to a hobble. McGraw became livid, running out of the dugout screaming of the obviousness of Speaker’s blunder, but only came to be infinitely more enraged when Cy Rigler, home plate umpire of game two, repeated the verdict, “safe.” My first impression certainly walks hand in hand with these instances inparticular. As much as he cared about the calls, and mental fundamentals, John cared for his players, above all. The very same play that would drive the Yellow Monkey(a nickname given to him during his years playing ball Cuba) crazy would spark a fire in the man when words flew between Tris Speaker and Giants third baseman, Buck Herzog. The manager taught his boys dirty playing and that would throw the series into a frenzy and start the everlasting rivalry between Boston and New York baseball. As Speaker barrelled around third, it was clear that he would score, so to grant his outfielder, Beals Becker, a few more seconds to throw the ball to the plate, or to stop the man at third, Buck Herzog simply took a couple steps to his right. To the third baseman’s right was the basepath from third to home, and Speaker was headed, to quote Cincinnati Reds radio broadcaster, Jeff Brantley, “right down Broadway.” The jolting collision, added to an injured ankle from the previous game, would stop most, but not the hardened Tris Speaker. Even though the ball reached the plate before the runner, the ball was brought loose by another collision, and Speaker was safe. He jumped right back up to his feet and screamed at the bush league ball play committed by New York’s corner infielder. Herzog simply shouted back and all were able to see that there would be a brawl if no one intervened. The two managers, Boston’s Jake Stahl, and New York’s John McGraw hopped into action, holding back the players from one another, however the rest of the Giants’ staff would have another issue when Speaker jeered at Herzog and McGraw! The Yellow Monkey passionately defended his baseman and tried to run at and attack Speaker, himself. Four years prior, in 1908, when, at that time, Chicago Cubs, first baseman, Fred Merkle, cost the Giants their season by forgetting to step on second base at the end of a game, when he thought they had won, McGraw stood up for the man. Although he was disappointed by the mental error, he stood strong and defended Merkle’s honor against the press and everyone who regarded Merkle as the goat of the season, which was just about the entire country. McGraw would do the same for his left fielder, Fred Snodgrass, after 1912’s infamous game 8, and the even more notorious muffed fly ball. Contradictory to my original estimation of John McGraw’s character, he did not expect perfection, and he would try to make sure no one else did, either. 1912 would be the spark that would start the flame. Granted, the Red Sox took their hatred to the cross-town rivals of the Giants, the New York Yankees, all of the clutch, heartbreaking, home runs, missed ground balls, bloody socks, and balls knocked out of gloves, wouldn’t be so sweet, if there weren’t the greatest rivalry in sports history behind it. 1912, the true, First Fall Classic. Jesse A. Cook “The Championship That Defined The Sport” October 16, 2016 |
AuthorJesse Cook: High school junior. Does play-by-play for the Sharon Varsity Eagles softball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and football teams. Fanatic of the Boston and Cincinnati teams in the Big Four sports. Designs graphics of athletes, politicians, and musicians at Picsart.com. Archives
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