Onwards to Boston!

So the second round starts tomorrow and the Canes are going up against the #1 seed, the Boston Bruins. Looking at this matchup, let's just say that I was hoping for a New York Rangers win so we would play Pittsburgh in this round. But the Rangers crapped out in the last three games so here we are.

Yeah, Boston totally kicked our butt during the regular season. They swept all four games and none of them were exactly close games (Two games were 4-2 losses, the others by a margin of 5-1).

Of course, we haven't played the Bruins since February, and the Canes are certainly a changed team since then. For one, the Canes hadn't gone on their crazy-long winning streak at that point (obviously). And, after watching the series against Jersey, you can't tell me that the Canes don't have the "intestinal fortitude"^† to beat a team like Boston.

Boston, like Jersey, has an insanely good goalie (although perhaps without the starpower of Brodeur) in Tim Thomas. Dude was in the top of the league in the goaltender stats for pretty much the entire season. I predict that Cam Ward will have to outplay him just as he outplayed Brodeur in the last series.

This, I think, is going to be a majorly tough series. Boston is extremely good and they definitely didn't show and weaknesses in the series against Montreal. But as long as the Canes play as well as they did in the Jersey series (excluding poor showings in Games 1, 3, and everything except the two minutes of 7) they should have a chance of winning games. Winning four? Well, that'll be difficult considering the opponent. But it's definitely possible.

For the Bruins spin on things (I'll add more blogs to the sidebar eventually), I've found these blogs:
WickedBruinsFan's Blog
Here Come the Bruins
Hockey Blogging Adventure
Boston Rink Rats
CLS mini-blog: Bruins v. Canes
(Psst! I'm a contributor for the last one! And I don't always just copy and paste from this blog either!)

And, I would like to say that I hope, no matter what happens, that the games in this series are better than the games in the Penguins-C[r]apitals series, just to prove to the mainstream media that good hockey can be played without Alex Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby. (Personally, I think it would be hilarious if they both got injured and couldn't play, if only to see the whole star-studded promo fall apart and the commentators actually have to talk about the game for once.)

Game 1 is TOMORROW!

^† Repeated phrases like this is why I love Tripp Tracy. In case you didn't watch Game 7, I think he said this about 10 times in the third period.