Bruins/Sharks Roster, 2/10/09

The Bruins seem to do badly when I blog about them on a game day, so I thought I’d get this one in before Boston-Detroit Part II tomorrow…

Two seasons ago, the B’s and Sharks had the best two records in the NHL. I went to the game with my friend Patrick, who always refers to the Bruins/Sharks games as the “Stanley Cup Preview”. This game came with huge hype, but was a big letdown when the Bruins fell to San Jose 5-2. And, neither team even made it to the Finals that year.

In addition to the anticipation of these NHL Powerhouses meeting, I was also interested in a certain player who had made his way onto the San Jose roster. It was #32, Claude Lemieux:

I was never a big fan of Claude. He used his stick a lot and would back down from fights if someone challenged him. Specifically, he did this to Cam Neely:
He most likely backed down because he knew Cam could do things like this:

So, for just about the entire 10 minutes and 1 second Claude was on the ice for this game, I was yelling at him. I’m not very proud of the things I yelled, but they referred to his age (43), how I thought he wasn’t “very tough”, and that he should give up playing hockey. I don’t know if most of the crowd knew why I was doing it, but I didn’t care. They were things I wanted Claude to hear.

After the game, my friend Patrick and were having dessert with my dad. Patrick (from the San Jose area) was gloating a bit, and my father was complaining about how the Bruins didn’t always play the full 60 minutes. I was in my usual post-Bruins-loss-chocolate-brownie-Sundae stupor, but was still hopeful that the B’s would go far in the playoffs.

My dad, Patrick, and I left Legends and were walking down a hallway to see if we could talk to some of the players. My father turned his head laughing and says, “Hey Dave, it’s your buddy!” To get to the waiting area, I had to say “excuse me” to Claude, the guy I had just yelled at for every second he was playing. My friend Patrick got a huge kick out of it, and joked that I should have asked him if he heard me. I didn’t say a thing, and I’m still not a fan…

Even though the B’s got destroyed last night, I still think this team is going to surprise a lot of people this year. GO B’s!!!