"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
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Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
The Bruins have won six in a row, and are only five points out of first.
They seem to have recaptured some of their old scrappy spirit.
After the club's shootout win at Carolina on Feb. 19, [Glen] Murray introduced the Hard Hat - awarding a white construction lid to the hardest-working Bruin of the night.
Milan Lucic earned the headgear that night after a two-fight effort, and the Bruins have won every game since the cap went into circulation. The hard hat is a fitting symbol for this club, which has finally evoked memories of the Lunch Pail Gang of Bruins squads past with their work ethic and physical play.
"That's what the fans were talking about that we were missing last year - the old Big, Bad Bruins," said Bruins leading scorer Marc Savard. "We definitely have a slice of that this year."
Lucic might be the face of that transformation, as the young rookie already has a team-high 12 fights this season. That includes a marathon bout Thursday when he took on Pittsburgh's Jarkko Ruutu despite having already suffered a broken nose twice this year.
"I think he's the strongest 19-year-old in the world," said Savard of Lucic.
This fight, for me, captures the Bruins' season thus far: They've had injuries, they're underestimated, everyone's watching the Celtics instead and they're just generally pissed off about their lot in life -- like the Harvey Pekar of hockey. And yet they're four away from Ottawa for the division lead, and three back of Montreal (with a game in hand) for the fifth seed. I like this team. And I love this Lucic; I watch a fight like that, and he's not Son of Sea Bass -- he's a Puck Lion. [Whatever that means -- MCNS]
“They were announcing the fight and I was walking in (to the locker room) and all of a sudden I heard the buzzer go off and it was almost shaking in here because they were cheering so loud,” said Lucic. “As a player you love to see that, especially the fans of Boston. You know they like that. They cheer hard. They're blue collar-type of fans. They love the guys that work hard and we want to see a crowd like that every game.”
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