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The Boston Bruins (6-7-1) will face off against their long time rival the Montreal Canadiens (7-8-0) at the TDBank Garden on Thursday, 11/5/09. The last time these two teams met, the Canadiens were picking pieces of broom out of their behinds due to a sweep by the Bruins in the first round of the 08-09 playoffs.
This season, both teams are playing very poorly with Boston coming off a 2-0 loss to Detroit and Montreal coming off of a 5-4 loss to Atlanta. The Bruins will be without Marc Savard and Milan Lucic while Montreal will have to play without the services of Hal Gill (sore vagina), Andrei Markov and Ryan O'Byrne.
Bruins Keys To Winning
1. Effective Power Play The Bruins power play is ugly. Hell it's worse than ugly, it's fugly. It's worse than fugly...it's pug fugly. The Bruins power play is now 1-19 since October 22 and at times has looked nothing short of the word "special". I have no advice for the Bruins power play accept to stop being so friggin terrible. After the goose egg they put up against Detroit, the Bruins are now LAST in the NHL on the power play with an 11.5% success rate.
2. Put the puck in the net In the same vein as the power play, this offense is pug fugly. The Bruins have not scored a goal in 7 consecutive periods and that streak could continue Thursday night against Montreal. Although the Bruins did have good chances against the Red Wings, their luck was nothing short of shitty. Guys like Sturm, Ryder and Bergeron need to find ways to score.
3. The Crowd I never really believed that a crowd could influence the way a team plays, but the fans at the Garden have been really quiet. I went to the Edmonton game on Saturday and there were times during the game you could've heard a pin drop. I hope that the fans will be fired up tomorrow night since this is a huge rivalry game.
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In Case You Forgot
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Prediction
Montreal Canadiens 2 Boston Bruins 0

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