An Early Afternoon Tilt For The Bruins And Thrashers

Buy your beer early - order some Chinese food lunch specials if you can find a place that delivers on Saturday. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a no-pressure matinee between one team that wants home-ice advantage, and another team who just wants to win. The Thrashers've played well against the Bruins this year, going 2-1-0 so far this season. In all actuality, the Thrashers tend to play up to their opponents level, so we might just get a decent game.

We're saying hello to an old friend today. Rich Peverley hasn't been fairing as well in Boston as he did in Atlanta. So far with the Bruins he has two goals and two assists in 18 games. The Thrashers, however, have been getting some seriously good work from Blake Wheeler and Mark Stuart. Wheeler's been part of the most successful line in the second half, and Stuart's dropped the gloves many a time to stick up for his teammates. Between that and the fact that he willingly signed a three-year extension with the team, we might just have ourselves a new fan-favorite D-man to replace Garnet Exelby. Speaking of XLB, I'm heard more than one person comment that Stuart reminds them of X pre-concussion, but better. I'll take that.

Keep your fingers crossed for a power play goal. Or more than one goal that may or may not be scored with a distinct kicking motion. Here's the NHL.com statistical match-up:

	STATS
77	GP	77
33	W	43
32	L	23
12	OT	11
78	P	97
0.506	P%	0.630
2.69	G/G	2.99
3.14	GA/G	2.29
18.1	PP%	16.6
77.4	PK%	82.6
31.6	S/G	33.2
32.6	SA/G	32.9
49.0	FO%	51.4

Oh, and if the Thrashers lose or either the Sabres or Rangers win or lose in OT, the team's temporarily gone the way of the dodo; if Boston wins, they clinch the Northeast Division. Like I said, no pressure.