NHL Boston

When the Phoenix Coyotes took Blake Wheeler with the 5th selection in the 2004 draft, most people wondered what the hell Gretzky and Pals were smoking. Wheeler was not expected to go until at least the second round, and was pretty much a raw 'project' prospect that would require more work than Prescilla Presley's face.

Well, after the big slug had a good-but-not-great college career, the Coyotes didn't feel Wheeler was worth 5th overall money (and he's not), so they let him go on the free agent market.

After hitting up the likes of Toronto and New York, Wheeler chose Boston as the team to sign with.

"More than 20 NHL teams were interested in Blake, and this was a very tough decision," agent Matt Keator told the Boston Globe. "And ultimately it came down to a few things for Blake, but mostly that he was comfortable with where the Bruins were headed as an organization - how this year they brought along kids like David Krejci, Milan Lucic, and Mark Stuart."

Folks, any time a prospect is labeled a 'project', stay the hell away! Remember Kristian Kudroc, Michael Rupp, Nikita Alexeev, and Chris Wells? Some foolish GM's drooled over what could possibly become of a tall, clumsy player, and the results weren't pretty.

Just because a player is 6'4" 220lbs and has a little bit of skill does not mean he'll turn out to be the next Todd Bertuzzi. A player generally either has "it", or he doesn't. Even the late bloomers have a good level of skill that is obvious to the scouting eye.

As for the Bruins, they can afford to stick Wheeler in the minors for as long as needed, and may just end up with a serviceable NHL player for nothing more than a small dip on Jeremy Jacobs' profits. If not, at least they didn't waste the 5th overall pick to do so.

When I was reading the Bill Simmons column earlier this week about his casual bandwagon hockey habit, I couldn't help but pick up on the fact that he waved poetic over the fact that you could hop onto YouTube anytime to watch the classic battles between Clark Gillies of the New York Islanders and Terry O'Reilly of the Boston Bruins that took place during a Stanley Cup Playoffs Quarterfinal series between their two teams in 1980.

And indeed, you can find those fights -- all four of them in fact. But after I did some more poking around, I found a battle that had some historical significance -- a piece of video that would seem to have recorded the first NHL fight between O'Reilly and the man who for a time would become known as the most brutal in hockey, Dave Schultz of the Philadelphia Flyers. Click here (embedding disabled by user) to watch it.

After watching the clip, I'd have to conclude this is a Boston-area telecast, probably from WSBK-TV, the station that carried the Bruins back in those days before sports cable giants like NESN, YES and MASN strode the earth. Given that the play-by-play team say that this was the first time the two fought in the NHL, though they had tangled previously in the AHL, I'm guessing the clip is vintage 1972-73.

The previous season, where the two supposedly fought earlier, O'Reilly compiled a modest 134 penalty minutes playing for the Boston Braves. Meanwhile, Schultz piled up 392 PIMs for the Richmond Robins. I think it's safe to say he knew by then what he needed to do to get to the NHL.

Oddly enough, even though I was raised on Long Island, O'Reilly was the one player who I admired the most. Watching and playing the game as a young kid, there just didn't seem to be anybody else on the ice who played with more hustle, desire and bravery than O'Reilly did. That's probably why his name hangs from the rafters beside a number of men who either won Stanley Cups or have a bust in the Hockey Hall of Fame -- honors O'Reilly never earned himself.

Instead, he just stepped onto NHL ice 891 times in his career and honored the game every time. Thanks, Terry.

Ahead of yesterday's Game Seven between Boston and Montreal, Boston ex-pat Bill Simmons decided to hand his column over to a topic he rarely, if ever, discusses: The NHL. In this case, he devoted plenty of pixels to his recent re-infatuation with the Boston Bruins.

I know I bash the WWL with the best of them these days, but seeing Simmons write about the league is nothing but good news. Like it or not, the NHL can use all the friends it can get over at ESPN, even if Simmons mostly writes about the NHL like it was an old girlfriend who was enduring some hard times.

In any case, Simmons made more than a few points that any NHL diehard could agree with, including how expansion has watered down the sort of rivalries that were once the lifeblood of the league and how he's developed a genuine man crush on Milan Lucic. But what really caught my attention was this line:

The NHL has evolved into a sport with all die-hard fans and no casual ones. They need to get the casual ones back. They need to bring back people like me.

While plenty of fans of the league might disagree with Simmons -- including ESPN's own John Buccigross, who often writes that the NHL ought to be happy with its niche status -- at least you can see his point. But what struck me about it was this: After reading a little further, it was hard to conclude that Simmons was a casual fan at all.

After the Rangers and Penguins advanced to the second round of the playoffs, all talk about future matchups centered on the Flyers/Caps series. "If the Flyers win ...." or "If the Caps win ..." Of course, all talk came with one caveat: "Unless the Bruins win." You can toss that caveat out the window now, because the Habs did their job and blew the Bruins out of the water tonight with a 5-0 win, dominating the Bruins the way most people expected them to the entire series.

The key to this one was most certainly Carey Price, he of the 8 third period goals allowed in Games 5 and 6. It goes without saying that that kind of play is unacceptable in the playoffs and he shored things up tonight, turning away all 25 shots the Bruins threw at him. He was huge in the first period when Montreal ran out to a 1-0 lead, but Boston outplayed and outshot the Habs.

From that point on it was all Canadiens, with Mark Streit adding one goal and the Kostitsyns adding three more (Andrei with two, Sergei with one). After disappearing behind Price's shaky goal tending for two games, the high-flying Habs that took the top seed in the East were back on the ice tonight. They'll sit back tomorrow night with the Rangers and Penguins, watching the Flyers and Capitals settle both their series and the second round playoff matchups.

No game seven of any series, even the first round, should need any extra hype surrounding it, but the Bruins/Canadiens game tonight has some hugely historic possibilities, and so I'm here to fan the flames a bit. Besides the obvious implications (8 vs. 1 upset, first 3-1 comeback in Bruins history, etc.) this game is just incredibly improbable for a ton of reasons.

Starting at the top, there's the oft-cited dominance of B's by the Habs during the past two seasons. They went 0-8 against Montreal in 07/08 and they were only 3-5 against them in 06/07. That means that just getting to Game 7 means the Bruins have beaten the Canadiens as much in the past two weeks as they did in the two prior seasons. That doesn't even consider that to win Games 5 and 6, they scored four goals in both third periods and used their four goals in Game 6 to answer two goals by the Habs in one of the craziest periods of playoff hockey in recent memory.

So who ya got in this one? I didn't give the B's much of a chance before this series, but anyone who did is either a Bruins' fan or lying. They're too young, the Canadiens are more skilled, the game is in Montreal, etc. There are a hundred reasons to pick the Habs in this one. Still, it's hard to just ignore that awesome third period by the Bruins in game six. They answered everything the Canadiens threw at them and pulled out a win, even in the face of a hugely deflating goal by Montreal inside the five minute mark. There's not much empirical reason to pick Boston, but it's hard to just dismiss them tonight.

One night after upsetting top-seed New Hampshire in the West Regional, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish made history.

A 3-1 win over Michigan State sent Notre Dame to the NCAA Frozen Four April 10 in Denver. The Irish are the first fourth-seed to win a regional and make the Frozen Four since the NCAA expanded the field to 16 teams. Notre Dame is joined in the Frozen Four by top national seed Michigan. The Wolverines slugged out a 2-0 win over Clarkson in Albany, N.Y., to win the East Regional. Goaltender Billy Sauer, a Colorado draft pick, pitched the shutout and allowed just one goal in two games at Albany. The two CCHA rivals will meet in one national semifinal April 10.

The other big story Saturday was Wisconsin. College hockey fans were largely stunned and upset when the sub-.500 Badgers made the NCAA field, and the fans who don't understand the rules (teams hosting a regional must play in that regional if they make the tournament) thought the NCAA placed Wisconsin in Madison to make more money.

The conspiracy theorists and detractors only fueled the underdog Badgers, who scored four third-period goals and rolled past WCHA playoff champion Denver 6-2 in the Midwest Regional. Wisconsin will battle another WCHA rival, North Dakota, in the regional final Sunday. The Fighting Sioux were outshot by fourth-seed Princeton, but won the game 5-1. 2007 Hobey Baker winner Ryan Duncan picked up a hat trick in the game.

In the Northeast Regional, top-seed Miami survived Air Force in overtime, 3-2. Justin Mercier scored an unassisted goal to give the RedHawks the victory. They face Boston College in the regional final. The Eagles never trailed in beating Minnesota 5-2.

Sunday's schedule (all times Eastern)
Northeast Regional (Worcester, MA)
Boston College vs Miami, 4:30pm

Midwest Regional (Madison, WI)
Wisconsin vs North Dakota, 7pm

The Boston Bruins won their third straight Saturday, beating Ottawa 4-0. The Bruins are still fighting to protect their spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs. They're currently in seventh place, one point ahead of eight-place Philadelphia.

As they continue to work toward a potential playoff spot, it should be noted that they've been doing it without a guy who hit the 70-point mark the past two seasons.

Patrice Bergeron has missed 67 games after taking a nasty hit from Philadelphia's Randy Jones back in October. He's been working to try to get healthy, but it's been announced that Bergeron will not play again in the regular season.

The Bruins say they'll evaluate him again in two weeks, which would be during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I'd say "if the Bruins make it", but they're playing well enough at this point for me to feel better about their chances. They're not out of the woods, but Boston should be able to make it.

In the meantime, let's all take another look at Jones' hit. As you do, please do your best to figure out how he only got a two-game suspension.

If I'm ever able to achieve my dream of having uncensored NHL games on HBO, Boston Bruins announcer (and former NHLer) Andy Brickley would be one of the first announcers I'd add to the booth. I interviewed him last year, and he's one of the most delightfully candid media guys in hockey -- when you're just shooting the breeze. A little bit of that Brickley charm went over the air last night during the Montreal/Boston game on NESN's HD channel. During what was a commercial break for the folks watching the non-HD NESN feed on cable, the HD viewers witnessed this glorious F-bomb (NSFW audio, obviously):



"Oh, we're on the air? I'm sorry." Classic. More from the HF Boards and Sons of Sam Horn, and h/t to Steve Lepore from Eye on the Media for the pointer. Hopefully this will just be chalked up to a technical glitch and the Brick doesn't face any punishment for his slip of the lip. But the bottom line for Boston is that they're getting more offense from their broadcast booth than they are from their Bruins.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Though the 50th anniversary of Willie O'Ree breaking the NHL's color barrier officially came on Friday, the big party came on Saturday afternoon in Boston when the Bruins honored him all day long during their home game against the New York Rangers. Sometimes I wonder if hockey fans actually understand just how lucky we are to have a pioneer like O'Ree in our midst to remind us what the world was like not terribly long ago.

Just how far have we come?

While O'Ree made his first appearance with the Bruins in January 1958, it was more than a full year later before baseball's Boston Red Sox finally integrated their own lineup across town when Pumpsie Green joined the team in time for the 1959 season. The Red Sox were the last team in Major League Baseball to add an African-American to their lineup.

Here's a quote from The Hockey News when it reported on O'Ree's achievement in February 1958: "The fact that there has never been a Negro in the NHL prior to O'Ree must be blamed on the Negro race itself."

It wasn't THN's best moment. Safe to say, O'Ree suffered through a lot worse over the course of his career. But despite the fact that he has plenty of reasons to be bitter, he presses on, working tirelessly with the league's diversity program to help spread the game to minority communities. Click here to watch a TSN profile on his life and career.