Series comebacks, the Bruins' captaincy situation, the best player in the NHL, and why are New Englanders talking like the Patriots have already won the Super Bowl in October?

Wednesday 10/8/25

I believe that people--and this includes players and coaches on teams--are too quick to think that a team has no chance--that "they're done"--when they trail 2-0 in a best-of-five series or even 3-0 in a best-of-seven. When you think about it, it shouldn't be that big a deal. It's a problem, yes. But I think that teams make it harder on themselves with their attitude in these situations. In baseball, for instance, teams win three or four games in a row many times over the course of the season. They win three and four in a row against good teams and against the same good team. You can't do it again? It's that unlikely?

When I saw the Yankees score all of those runs the other day in "garbage time," I thought, "This is kind of big." No one else thought it was big, because the game was over by then. But they were putting good swings on the ball and they had a reason to feel better about themselves. They also knew they could score a clump of runs against the Jays that would be enough to win most games. I also thought that if they win the series, you could go back to that garbage time as a key factor. Sure, the odds are against them winning. But they won last night. I just find that so...doable. You lose two, then you win one, and come the next game you're in position to even the series. Then you have to like your chances all the more with the momentum in the deciding game.

Much as I love that the 2004 Red Sox came back from 3-0 in the ALCS against the Yankees, I'm also surprised that more teams haven't done this. That it happens more often in hockey is also surprising. Baseball should be the easiest sport in which to pull off the 3-0 series comeback. In basketball, if a team is down 3-0, it's almost always because they're nowhere near as good as their opponent.

That's the nature of basketball. It's far less a game of bounces than hockey. An exception would be the Celtics versus the Heat a few years back, when Boston trailed Miami 3-0 because the Celtics didn't take their opponent seriously enough and did that typical Celtics thing where they don't have their act together. Miami wasn't a superior team, they didn't have the Celtics' level of talent, but that's a major flaw of the Tatum-Brown Celtics.

A hockey game can be decided by so many things--a bounce, a deflection, a call. In that sense, you have less control. You can be the better team--and the much better team--and lose that night because the opposition's goalie all of a sudden, for two hours, became the greatest goalie who ever lived and stoned you on 50 of 51 shots.

In baseball, the worst team in the league usually won't be swept in the season series by the best team in the league. Someone has a nice day, that much worse team wins. Baseball is the "quarter" sport. What I mean by that is that if you flipped a quarter four times, it could come up heads four straight times. That wouldn't be shocking. Baseball is the closest sport to that kind of idea, regardless of who is playing. Really good teams lost seven in a row. Remember when we talked about the 1977 Red Sox?

I just don't think it's that impossible and it shouldn't be as daunting as everyone makes these comebacks sound. The attitude becomes this self-fulfilling prophesy. The Yankees trailed the Jays 6-1 last night in an elimination game, on the verge of being swept, and came back and won 9-6. That right there--with that deficit in that situation--may have been harder to do than it is to come back from two gamed down in a best-of-five. So, again...if you can do that...

In the case of the Yankees, they still have this prospective phenom who baffled the Red Sox in that series-deciding game, and then, what, they'd bring back one of the best pitchers in the league if it got to a Game 5 in Toronto? These aren't horrible odds. And what do odds matter anyway? They can change dramatically in an inning, or with the result of one game.

A pitcher throwing 104 mph feels like it shouldn't be a thing. That's such an outrageous number. The distance is the distance--the constant. There was a time when 95 mph was incredibly intimidating. Human eyeballs haven't changed since then. So if that was the case, and the distance is the same, imagine what 104 is like? Almost 10 mph more? Imagine how terrifying it'd be to stand in the box as a non-baseball player and have a pitcher on the mound throwing 104? You would hardly be able to see it if you saw it at all.

The Bruins open up tonight. What do I expect this year? Very little. I don't see them making the playoffs, I think they have one good player, and they may be one of the worst Bruins teams of the last several decades. But I don't know. New coach, maybe they'll have new life. I look at that roster, though, and I can't see what difference a coach will ultimately make in 2025-26, and I also have no reason to think the coach is some galvanizing force. Are they just going to try and clog the middle of the ice, hang back, and play defense, and try and be opportunistic offensively for their goals that Pastrnak doesn't score?

I deplore the game of Charlie McAvoy. I know that he will never be anything close to the player so many unthinking people have long stated that he is. It's not just that he isn't a very good player--he's not a good pro. He was paid, and started cutting corners. His game atrophied. And it wasn't this elite-level game to begin with. I don't believe he is super dedicated. I question his standards for himself. And I can't stand the way he plays. He's a third pairing guy on a strong team, not "the guy" who plays twenty-seven minutes a night and is a plus player in all three zones.

Do you know what an indictment that is of him that they didn't make him the captain? They shouldn't have. But here's the kind of point within a point: The Bruins' brass, which often has no clue and caters to the players at the cost of the team and of winning, even realizes that he's not captain material. And if even they realize that, then you know just how damning this assessment is, because the Bruins are soft as hell on their players and make every allowance and excuse for them. Unfortunately, that's Bruins culture. And they obviously feel the same way about Pastrnak, who is one of the Bruins' all-time scoring leaders. An all-time scoring leader for this franchise that has had real legends, sports-wise. And they still don't want you to be the captain? Talk about telling.

I also don't like that they've brought Zdeno Chara back in some mentoring role. Move on. The Bruins are like some perpetual family reunion where it is all about "feels" and "vibes." Everyone is so comfy and cozy. You underachieve. Chara's Bruins were massive chokers. Bergeron's Bruins. Has any Boston sports team underachieved more than the 2010s Bruins? (In the running: the early 1970s Bruins and the 1946-1950 Red Sox)

Gag-when-it-most-matters culture, save one time when a goalie with balls the size of grapefruits did what he needed to do for that squad to close the deal. It took those balls of Tim Thomas. Because that guy had them. This soft, "Let's all love one another" loser culture has so much to do with Zdeno Chara. Can we just move on?

Cale Makar had two assists last night to start his season. I think he's the best player in the NHL. Yes, I think he's better than Connor McDavid. Or should I say, he's more valuable than McDavid. He does more to help your team win than McDavid. If you were starting a team and could pick whomever you wanted to start that team with, you could not do better than Cale Makar. He could retire right now and he'd be a Hall of Famer. He's dynamic, he impacts the game more than anyone else. This player is awesome. He has a more complete game than McDavid, though he still has to improve defensively. He may be the next defenseman to win the Hart, allowing that it ever goes to a defenseman again.

And since it's hockey season again, it's an apt time for a reminder. The way it works is

The Rangers were shut out last night.

The Penguins opened their season with a shutout against the Rangers.

Hockey-exclusive sites and sports sites do not know how this works.

My goodness do Patriots fans love to get ahead of themselves. Their team is 3-2, and you'd think they had a 58-7 lead in the fourth quarter of the coming Super Bowl. (Yesterday I saw where one of these Patriots fans said that Drew Bledsoe was an "elite" quarterback in the early 2000s and Tom Brady was "nothing special" at the time, and Bledsoe "easily" could have won those championships in 2001, 2003, and 2004, which is almost impressively delusional in so many ways.) What are we doing here? It's 3-2. Here's a truth: No one in the NFL is good. Buffalo isn't good, Philly isn't good, Detroit isn't good. It's a mediocrity league right now. There is no iron. Buffalo--as I wrote here--was due to be beat and could very well be beaten by the Pats, which they were. What does this mean? It's good for New England. Same team that lost to the dismal Raiders and was an inch away from losing to the dismal Dolphins and lost to a very underwhelming Steelers team.

The Patriots are not some efficient, disciplined operation. Teams that aren't beat themselves. The NFL is now a "don't beat yourself" league. Meaning, teams when by not beating themselves, not because they're so amazing or better than their opponent. One team "out loses" the other if you will. Josh Allen hasn't been that good. Most of what he's done this year came in that first game with the improbably comeback against a Ravens team that as we can now see isn't...that's right...that good.

The Patriots make a lot of errors. Unforced errors. Why? What is that about? These are things that can be learned behaviors. So why haven't they been learned?

I think the Buffalo game was key for Drake Maye. It's the first time we've seen him be the main reason his team won. He carried the Patriots. And Diggs, too, but Diggs wouldn't have done what he did minus Maye. Diggs has been up and down. He's either been very good or pretty pedestrian, which shakes out to 72 receiving yards per game in the cumulative wash.

It's a wide open NFL. The Patriots could make the playoffs in this league. They could number among the higher seeds. But many teams could. I feel somewhat bad for Stevenson because I'm sure all he thinks about now is fumbling and how fumbling is about to cost him his NFL career, and yet he can't stop fumbling. Why he's out there at all right now I don't know. He's almost guaranteed to fumble if you play him. Why? Does he have little hands? Does he forget about protecting the ball in the moment? It's a curious thing. Right now a lot of it is probably a mental thing. That can be even harder to overcome.