200th goal for Loui Eriksson, 500th win for Claude Juilien

With Bergeron taking a night off the Bruins played sound defense to muster up a win in Minnesota. Typical Bruins win, beat the shit teams, lose to good ones. Minnesota was losers of seven in a row coming into the game this afternoon. At now 8 in a row, Minnesotins' have to be wondering what the fuck is happening to their team. The Wild made it the Western Conference Semi's two years in straight years, making the playoffs in the three straight. In the hockey world making the playoffs is not a grand achievement as it is in other sports like football, or baseball. Much like the NBA, over half of the teams make the playoffs and the lower seeds do not necessarily even need a positive win loss record. Minnesota is a team with a a few very good pieces like Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu, Ryan Sutter, Jonas Brodin as well as complementary pieces like the Goalie Devin Dubnyk, Charlie Coyle, Thomas Vanek, and Mikael Granlund. Talent wise, this team should be a top 8 in the NHL. The problems with them start that they are in the Western Conference where they have to play the NHL's top teams, they also do not have enough quality defensemen, and honestly who knows about Devin Dudnyk, had a hell of a season last year but that was the best statistical year of his career. What they could use is a big defensemen who can lay the wood and the set the tone physically. Minnesota is one of those teams that tries to solely rely on skating ability, Charlie Coyle is really the only player who can be effective playing with physicality.

As I write this the Bruins are 30 seconds away from the victory. 500 career wins in any sport is awe inspiring. At the start of last season until the beginning of the current season, I was bitching out the head coach consistently. The system he ran in Boston was infuriating, the fore check in the offensive zone was nonexistent and the powerplay year after year was garbage, just moldy bologna. The system he implemented had worked when we had YOUNGER Dennis Siedenberg and Chara. Along with a somewhat healthy Mcquaid, and two bottom end rotation defenders who were dominant Johnny Boychuck and Andrew Ference. When you have five legit defenders the system he created worked. After the 2011 Stanley Cup victory that group of defenders naturally had to be broken up because of salary cap issues and the Bruins success wilted along with the effectiveness of Juiliens system. Which ultimately led to the Bruins missing the playoffs last season. They did squeeze in a Stanley Cup finals appearance against the consistently best team in the NHL the Chicago Blackhawks. They battled hard in that series but eventually fell to the Hawks'.

Fast forward to 2015 and Juilien makes a few tweaks to his system, while the front office added a crew of clowns for Juilien to deal with. Even with the roster looking the way it does, the B's are 4th in the east in points and second in their Division trailing Florida by a few wins. With a little more than a 1/4 of the season left things certainly look bright for the team. I would give a lot of that credit to Juilien, and Marchand, Krejci, Bergeron. All of those guys have really carried the B's on their backs this season. Congrats to Claude, he deserves it. Lets just hope the front office can actually do something this offseason and give Claude a real contender worthy team to work with next season.
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