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In case you didn’t know, last year’s second-round series between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens was awful. Maybe the play wasn’t awful, per se, but from Game 1 to Game 7, the bickering and social media battles between the two Original Six rivals -- from fans, media, players and anybody else maybe involved for that matter -- was the absolute worst.
It sucked the fun out of what should’ve been an entertaining series, and really put the focus on the nonsense most of us really don’t care about. A quick recap-- You had racist tweets (though most of them weren’t even from Boston and why are you searching the n-word to begin with?), Montreal media accusing Boston media of cheering and vice versa, somebody getting squirted with a water bottle, and the goal celebration heard ‘round the world.
That last one, though, would be the one to make the biggest splash.
Throughout the playoffs, top-liner Milan Lucic would often pound his chest -- specifically the ‘B’ on his chest -- after scoring a goal. Torey Krug even imitated this. It was a ‘strength’ thing for Lucic. He tested it out during the regular season, did it in round one against the Detroit Red Wings, and would do it in the Bruins’ second-round series against Montreal. For some reason, the Canadiens took this personally.
They called it disrespectful, arrogant, yadda yadda yadda.
(Shockingly nobody donning a ‘CH’ felt that Danny Briere’s signature sliding fist-pump or P.K. Subban’s sliding celebrations were disrespectful, but that’s neither here nor there, I suppose...)
An emotional trainwreck after that Game 7 loss and with his season over, Lucic finally fired back at the Habs.
Lucic responded by calling Weise a baby and noted that it’d be handled on the ice.
Well, it’s October, and the ice is there. But whether or not Weise will be there on it remains to be seen. And even if he is, Weise -- a healthy scratch in one of the Canadiens’ first four games this year -- is backpedaling from his brave, post-series microphone drubbing of Lucic and the Bruins faster than you can say “here comes Lucic in on the forecheck…. He didn’t lose respect for the disrespectful guy that disrespected him.
“He’€™s an emotional guy,… Weise said of Lucic (per WEEI.com). “œIf he were to have shook my hand and been happy about losing, I would have lost respect for him.…
What a load of garbage, honestly. I get what Weise is doing -- he’s basically opting not to add fuel to the fire inside a 6-foot-4 winger without a point through five games this year -- but to sit there and say, “I would have lost respect for him if he did that… for a player you opted to drag through the mud at every stop last year is a pathetic lie. Last season’s presser is probably the biggest platform Weise will have at this level, and you understand why he wanted to talk as loudly as he could to anybody with a recorder in their hand within a 20-mile radius of the rink, but to sit there and suggest that you’re now OK with everything that was said is insane.
Sure, I’m biased. I was in that scrum when Weise went off about Lucic and the Bruins and how nobody respected them. I saw firsthand how much of a brave game this guy talked and talked and talked. For Weise, it was all about respect/disrespect.
But now, with the potential of facing Lucic face-to-face and having to back up everything he felt more than comfortably saying in front of cameras without any chance of repercussions for at least five months, it’s all over with and in the past.
And he wants our respect? Nice try.
You know, Lucic is a huge Metallica fan. Often times, when he gets into a fight, the TD Garden will play 'Seek and Destroy'. That's a single off the band's debut album-- Kill 'Em All. Let's see if that's the mindset No. 17 takes to the ice with tonight in an effort to get his mind and body engaged after a painfully frustrating start to the season.
Oh, and don’t believe anything you hear from either locker room: There’s an emotional carryover from last May. Both of these teams are almost entirely the same as they were last season, and they don’t like one another. That’s nothing new. This will be the 91st year of these teams not liking each other, for that matter. But this is also the Canadiens’ home opener, so with a Bell Centre crowd hyped out of their brains, it’ll in all likelihood feel like a May game more than an October game. And how the Bruins react to that after putting forth their best effort of the year last night in Detroit will tell us a lot about this team’s mental makeup -- an undeniable talking point and dare I say honest concern by fans and players alike -- through the first week of 2014-15.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com