WickedBruinsFan's Blog

During the unsuccessful upgrade that turned into a downgrade, I was starting to get excited about training camp. It felt like summer would take forever, and then WHAM, it was Labor Day weekend. The NFL was back. Baseball is in full swing with positioning for pennant races and wild cards.

And hockey is almost back!

And I printed the Bruins training camp rosters from my own site and I think that's entirely too cool! I needed something with names on it for the first day of veterans' camp because well, I know I am going to be bad with names. Can you tell I should be sleeping right now?

The Bruins took it upon themselves to move the veterans' optional skate up two hours on Thursday (today) with a start time of 10. I think they knew that I was planning on sleeping in and venturing into the city sometime around 11. But no. There are two optional sessions and I plan to be at both of them.

I think all that extra sleep I got during the summer is to prepare myself for training camp. The thought of practices starting at 9:30 is... well yucky to this night owl. I am not a morning person at all.

And the next four days are going to probably wear me down and I will have my annual September cold again. But it is all worth it. Training camp brings hope for the season.

I talked to a friend on Wednesday night and he brought up the Bruins and how they'll be back soon. I told him that they'll be back sooner than he thought with training camp starting. Then he asked me if they will be good this season.

I never exactly know how to answer that question. I am not about to say they will win the Stanley Cup. But I also can't say they will finish last in the NHL.

My response was, "Hopefully." Because that's all fans can do right now is hope that the season will go well.

My friend said, "Hopefully? You don't know?" So I took it a step further and said they will, at the very least, make the playoffs.

It is so hard to try to predict what will happen during the season when there are so many unknowns lurking around the corner. The first unknown starts at training camp. Training camp is what will shape the team. It will give this team all (or most) of the faces they will need for the 2007-2008 season.

But I'll still play the "who will make the team out of training camp" game because it's kind of fun, even if I haven't seen half of the players skate yet. I will also go by position because it's almost 2 a.m. and I am not about to make up lines and defense pairings.

Centers
No Doubt: Marc Savard, Patrice Bergeron, Phil Kessel
Possible: David Krejci, Nate Thompson, Jeremy Reich
Surprises: Wacey Rabbit, Zach Hamill

Right Wings
No Doubt: Glen Murray, Chuck Kobasew, Brandon Bochenski
Probable: Mark Mowers, Jeff Hoggan
Surprises: Petteri Nokelainen

Left Wings
No Doubt: P.J. Axelsson, Marco Sturm, Peter Schaefer, Shawn Thornton
Possible: Pascal Pelletier
Surprises: Milan Lucic

Defensemen
No Doubt: Zdeno Chara, Andrew Ference, Aaron Ward, Andrew Alberts
Probable: Dennis Wideman, Mark Stuart, Bobby Allen, Matt Lashoff
Surprises: Adam McQuaid

Goalies
No Doubt: Tim Thomas, Manny Fernandez
Surprises: Tuukka Rask

I wonder how many players will prove me wrong... or right. I went with my gut instinct on some of those picks.

The rookies did have their first official skate on Wednesday in Wilmington with great coverage here. I actually didn't consider Wednesday to be the first official day of camp. I think the first official day comes when both the veterans and rookies are on the same sheet of ice, and not 17 miles away from one another.

I shall go get at least five hours of sleep. Scratch that. It was 4:48 a.m. when I started to rebuild the blog posts, before encountering another error. So long as I don't make any real sudden movements, I believe I can actually sleep for about three hours.

The categories are going to be a little off until I structure them again, which I will do whenever I get back from camp. The archives are just plain gone for right now.

Happy Camp!