クマは日本製アニメ行く (The Bruins Go Anime). Toronto Hands The Bruins The Division...For The Next 2 Years.

Lets start with the Winter Classic Jersey. I guess they called in Satoshi Tajiri for design ideas. Yeah you Google that name right now. Don't get me wrong, I definitely appreciate the history, but it just looks terrible. I think they should have done the classic look with a modern twist. I like everything but the B. The B is symbolic, without the B it's just not a Bruins jersey. It's the one thing they HAD to get right and they didn't. At least it's better then the Flyers jersey which looks like...well...the Flyers jersey. Check em both out here.

The Kessel "Saga" is "over". I put over in quotes because we all know this isn't really over, especially since we don't play Toronto until Kessel is ready to play again. Now I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't refreshing TSN every 10 minutes for updates once I read the announcement that the trade was nearly finalized, but I like to think I was interested for different reason. I wasn't hoping for it to be over so we can be done with it, I was excited to see what we were going to get in exchange. The end result...

Toronto gets Kessel at 5 Years, 27 million.

Bruins get Toronto's natural 1st and 2nd round picks in 2010 and Toronto's 1st round pick in the 2011 draft.

Now a lot of people are probably saying, "But where are we going to get the 30+ goals Kessel got for us?!". Well, the obvious answer is Sturm. If he can stay healthy, there are your 30 goals right there. Next, we got Reechi. People seem to forget that Reechi was only with us for less than half the year and scored 10 goals in 18 games. Give him a whole season, at that pace, you're looking at his 8th 30 goal season. Next, you got Wheeler. If the 15 pounds Wheeler has put on doesn't slow him down or effect his play, he's good for at least 20 goals. I could go on and on, but I think it is safe to say if we can stay healthy (specifically Sturm) we'll have no problem making up for Kessel's goal contribution.

What you need to keep in mind is there is a huge benefit to not trading for a player and just getting draft picks. We are going into the season with 1.7 million of cap space. Come trade deadline we have PLENTY of room to move a player and/or pick someone up.

As for Kessel + Toronto - It should be interesting to see how Kessel does with no one to feed him the no look pass like Savard. Also, Kessel's two-way game will be tested with Toronto's weaker defense. I'm sure Burke will be expecting a lot from from Kessel with his 5 million+ a year and it will be interesting to see what lengths he'll go to if Kessel doesn't produce. Lastly, Toronto is a heavy media town and Kessel HATES the media. I wonder if that will effect his play?

Bruins playing the Rangers tomorrow at 4pm. Don't think it's televised, but I'll be posting my thoughts post game as best I can.

Go Bruins!

More Pictures And Random Information.

No game tonight for the Bruins. No information on how practice is going to from Boston.com as per the usual (As of the time of this post). Due to my boredom at work, I've decided to provide some insite as to how I have been passing the time in regards to Bruins/Hockey information.

Boston.com has some photos up from last nights game.

A "Leaked" photo of the potential Bruins Winter Classic Jersey was posted on Boston.com the other day. I have mixed feelings. The jersey will be officially unveiled today at 6:30 PM at the season ticket holders "State Of The Bruins" meeting.

I've been following the 30 Teams in 30 Days Season Preview on TSN. They have a break down of each teams "Power Ranking" with a pretty cool detailed off-season analysis of each team.

Current breakdown of our division:

??: Bruins
18: Montreal
19: Buffalo
24: Ottowa
25: Toronto

So no Bruins yet, I can't expect they'd put us any lower then 5th.

Also on TSN, I couldn't find highlights of last nights game (not a direct link anyway), but the whole game is available on demand through their site. So if you missed it and want to take the time to watch it (pretty good game with all the fights and whatnot) check it out.

Lastly, I was introduced to a pretty cool site last night. It has all the "mug shots" for the members of the Bruins this year and some of the AHL guys.

Now back to work.

Go Bs!