Introduce that head to the outside air: a disgraceful performance by the Boston Bruins and the third pair level defenseman that is Charlie McAvoy

Tuesday 4/28/26

The Bruins had a classic Bruins no-show on Sunday afternoon. I've seen lots of bad Bruins games and efforts in the playoffs, especially on home ice, but that was definitely one of the worst. They kept turning the puck over in front of their net like this was part of the game plan or as though they were doing this with intention.

Anyone want to tell me how good Charlie McAvoy is? Because he's awesome, right? That's the official stance, is it not? (Remember on Cheers when Gary of Gary's Old Towne Tavern addresses Cliff as the pop-up king after his bar humiliates the Cheers gang in softball? I hear that voice in my head when I watch McAvoy, but it calls him the turnover king.) And God knows people shouldn't think for themselves. Don't use that brain if you don't have to. And fuck those eyes. Pull an Oedipus, brother, and pluck those suckers out. Why have them if you're not going to use them?

As I've said for years, he's a third pairing type of defenseman. A liability often enough, a guaranteed playoff liability, out of shape, has no hockey sense, doesn't care about the team he plays for but only international tournaments instead, and is, simply, a loser. This is a losing hockey player. You want to lose, get McAvoy on your roster and play him a lot.

And if you can't see that, then you don't know hockey. Or you have some other weird thing going on. A parasocial type of deal, like you're a child and he's your father figure who can do no wrong. In which case, you need to grow up, and, as a hockey coach would say, get your head out of your ass. Regarding this and, I'd surmise, many other things in life. Introduce that head to the outside air. See what's to be seen.

My analysis of his game has been dead on--and I've been the only person dead on about him--from the very get-go. You don't want this player on your team. You're better off without him.

The Bruins gave up three goals in the first ten minutes, and then another five minutes later. After the game, I had to listen to Morgan Geekie say it's hard to get up for a game that starts at 2 PM.

I've heard this for years from Bruins players. And I've watched them embarrass themselves in many a matinee. Didn't seem to be a problem for the Sabres, though.

That attitude, that level of excuse making...I just don't get that. The Bruins, plain and simply, weren't ready to play that game. They weren't mentally ready and I don't think they were physically ready to go. How can that happen?

The Bruins, unfortunately, have always been a regular season team. Even when they won the two Cups with Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito and company, they still underachieved enough that you think of them as a regular season team all these decades later. Well, if you know anything about hockey history, which means me and twelve other people think of them that way.

Can't blame Jeremy Swayman. As much as I don't like him or his game, he's been what you need in the playoffs for the most part. Coach Marco Sturm wasn't engaged either. It's like he wasn't really there and sent a robot to impersonate him. Swayman needed to call a timeout when a timeout needed to be called, and basically took himself out of the game when Sturm already should have done it.

This team will be better moving on from David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy. They need to. Desperately. As I've said repeatedly, do you understand how bad these guys have to be as leaders for the Bruins to have not named either captain with all the years they've been on this team and having no captain? You'd have to be egregiously unqualified for that role for that to be the case. It's a horrible look in that it's so telling. Things are really off with those guys and their organization knows it.

I put on NBC Sports Boston last night for all of ten seconds, which included the clueless Trenni Casey saying, "I know Pastrnak scores a ton of goals..."

No one has a job like this, or in publishing, because they are good at that thing or anyone honestly believes they are. Has nothing to do with it. It's other things. It's always other things.

Scores a ton of goals, does he? He had 29 this year. That's a ton of goals to you? We got Mike Bossy here? Filling up the back of that net? Woah, looks at all the biscuits in the baskets.

Dumb people saying dumb things, and everyone else being too dumb to realize how dumb those things are.

Sounds like media to me. "Follow" culture. The world.

I know I picked the Sabres in six, but after seeing what I saw on Sunday, I'd be very surprised if tonight isn't the last game of the 2025-26 Bruins' season. The way you lose matters. If you give it your best and you get beat, that's one thing. And Buffalo is the better team. They're not better in net, but they're faster, more skilled, have a prime time player of a defenseman. They're good.

But when you don't show up, and you make stupid unforced mistake after stupid unforced mistake, and then you make excuses, that's something else. There's honor in the first scenario. The second involves disgrace. On Sunday, the Boston Bruins disgraced themselves.

I'll put this an old school kind of way, which I don't view in that regard, but rather as how it ought to be when people actually have standards for themselves, but I know how other people think in a world where we get ever softer, which means we get ever weaker, and when everyone keeps getting weaker, the standards need to keep going down to accommodate the masses, and you have a general shit show of constant devolution and less and less accountability when the truth, as the Sex Pistols sang, is that the problem is really you and all the people you've become indistinguishable from.

But the Bruins played that game in a manner that if they were a kid in youth hockey, then that kid's father wouldn't even want to look at them for a while afterwards, and it would be one silent ride home from the rink.