If You Missed It The Winter Classic Alumni Shootout Was Just Tremendous

I didn’t get to watch too much of this game, as I was at a New Year’s gathering and “Let’s put on the beer league hockey rather than the college football playoff” is a tough sell. But I did catch introductions and then we were all lucky enough to have the shootout itself fall perfectly during halftime of the Clemson game. A Canadiens/Bruins shootout featuring Sergei Samsonov, Alexei Kovalev, Recchi, Knuckles Nilan, with the game winning goal scored by Raymond Bourque? Oh and the whole thing is at Gillette Stadium? Hands down the best halftime show I’ve ever seen in my life.

Few other things:

– Cherry, Milbury and Sandersen is a wrecking crew coaching staff.

– I did question Cherry starting off the game with Lemelin while the Canadiens went with Theodore and his winter hat, but proved to be a brilliant coaching decision when we got a shootout with Razor Raycroft in net vs Old Head Sevigny.

– Awesome turnout by everyone at that, both on the ice, where the two teams has insane firepower, and in the stands. I think the final tally was something like 41k in attendance? That’s quite the crowd for some old dudes playing shinny.

– Both Neely and Sweeney were out there. Safe to say the Bruins are the only front office that can do that?

– Finally, my favorite part was the introductions when you’d get someone’s penalty minutes announced like it was an All Star Game appearances stat, like “Sure he wasn’t the best skater but boy oh boy did he used to assault people on the ice.” Awesome reminder of how different the game used to be.