Rangers fall to Bruins in SO

It took 65 minutes and a shootout, but the Boston Bruins won this afternoon in Boston, 3-2. The game wasn't very offensive minded, saw few big hits and had plenty of weak penalties. All in all, let's hope tomorrow's rematch back in New York is a little more exciting.

Scott Gomez and Jaromir Jagr scored in regulation for the Rangers and Chuck Kobesew tallied twice for the B's. Phil Kessel and Zdeno Chara scored in the shootout, Chara's in the form of a slapshot from about 15 feet out in front of Henrik Lundqvist. Lundqvist stopped 25 shots in regulation time, while Tim Thomas stopped 36 shots.

This was the first half of a weekend back to back, home and home matchup between the two teams. Tomorrow's matinee is on NBC, as they look to bring back the NHL game of the week. This is good news for the league, as several people may be tuning into NBC early to catch some early NFL shows, and could catch the tail end of a hockey game. The national exposure will be good, but we will undoubtedly be forced to sit through seemingly endless numbers of Tag body spray commercials, and play by play will not be done by Sam Rosen and Joe Michelletti.

The effort was close to being all there today, but the potential to be better is still there. The defense looked slow and out matched on several different occasions today. Maybe a minor move to bring in a little more competition than Jason Strudwick should be looked into. Maybe take a chance on Duvie Westcott, if only for another body, or bring up someone like David Liffiton or Ivan Baranka. Either way, the defense was better with Marc Staal playing with Michal Roszival, but with Marek Malik in the lineup, there's no way I'd like to see him playing with either Paul Mara or one of Fedor Tyutin or Dan Girardi.

As was seen today, Brendan Shanahan didn't receive any kind of penalty from the league regarding his cross check at the end of the Buffalo game. I thought it could have, and should have been a penalty, but that's it. There was no intent to injure, and it wasn't done on purpose. It was reckless and a minor penalty was all that was warrented.

Tomorrow will be busy for me as I have the Rangers at 12:30 and then the Giants vs the Packers. I also have to pack up to head back to school on Monday, so chances are good that I may not make it onto the computer until Monday night for a recap. I'll check in and update with anything pressing or if I have a free few minutes. Enjoy the hockey games, go Giants and cross your fingers for a San Diego upset. Until Monday...