Heroes of Fort Wilderness - B's mess up Canes, 7-2

Remember that part of the Patriot when Mel Gibson and his two pre-adolescent sons save Heath Ledger from 20 redcoats and a hangman's noose? At the end of that scene, Gibson (Benjamin Martin) takes a Cherokee Tomahawk to a redcoat who he'd already wounded, and finishes him off to the tune of 17 or 18 hacks and more blood than a Mike Myers movie. Later in the story we come to discover that this was a resurgence of brutality from his youth whereby he led a platoon of men to take revenge on French/Indian troops at Fort Wilderness after they'd abused a group of English Settlers and left them for dead at another camp. Brutal, but loyal and protective to no end.

Last night, the Bruins began a road towards redemption. Brickley summed it up best in the third, after the 6th Bruin of the night (Matt Hunwick) had dropped a tally in the goal column, when he said "Balance and Depth". That Bruins team reminded us why we fell down a stairwell in love with them last year and introduced some new faces (Hello, Steve Begin: I'll come back to you later) in the process of doing so with a 7-2 scalping of the sorry Carolina Hurricanes; They're basically Tropical Depressions at this point.

My favorite moments weren't the goals, though man were they pretty at times (Savard's feed to Sturm was much more difficult than the casual observer will realize, as was Sturm finishing it off). No, my favorite and i believe the most telling sign that this team is going to be as good as we hope this year came in the second period when old "friend" Andrew "the ankle bender" Alberts took a bit of a high attempted check at Marco Sturm of a faceoff. This was just moments after Lucic had won a game of uncle against Jay Harrison (Harrison was literally begging for mercy at the end, watch below). After Sturm got ran, Marc Savard jumped on Alberts like Quagmire on a panty-less Asian flight attendant. Savard's defensive manuever led to a full on 5 v 5 scrum with the hated Tom Kostopoulos trying to take on Chara's shinpads for a time.



This kind of shellacking is exactly what makes the Bruins good. They're physical, they're smart and they are hard to play against. Most importantly, they don't back down. Savard saw a teammate recently recovered from a season lost to both a head and knee injury get pseudo run (i only denote this because Alberts basically missed, but the intent was there) by a former teammate he knew to be a goon - He didn't hesitate for a moment. Savvy was in on Alberts like he'd talked about his sister. That kind of camaraderie and fight is what makes them big and bad. It's what makes them the Bruins. By the time we were done in this one, it felt as though the Bruins were committing a massacre the likes of which we'd not seen since the days of Benjamin Martin. These guys had stolen our dream last year. They'd punctured our proverbial balloon and then they'd come into our building and tried to run us. Not a chance. Beat 'em on the scoreboard, beat 'em in the fight and beat 'em in their hearts.

The fact that seven different people scored in this one? Well, let's just say it won't be a one man massacre this year. All 23 of these guys want to be that hero of Fort Wilderness, together. Just for good measure, let's all enjoy Shawn Thornton reminding Mr. Alberts why you don't fuck with a man with a Positron Pack on his back.