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Some random thoughts from the last few days...

Marc Savard has been belatedly named to the all-star game. My thoughts on this: huh? But of course he deserves to be there (as does Timmy). According to Fluto Shinzawa he's replacing the injured Dany Heatley.

Speaking of all-stars, has anyone else noticed how Chara's play has stepped up since he was named to the team? He seems to be skating and stick handling more. I swear he looks like a smaller man with the puck. I keep thinking, "Who is that defenseman... Oh, it's 33... wow. Didn't know he could do that."

And another thing: the NHL all-star game is a joke. Picking the starting teams via fan-polling on the web is just plain stupid. It's nothing more than an excuse for the NHL to harvest information on fans to be used by their marketing department. The all-star game should have more dignity than that. I say, let the players choose who goes.

And speaking of marketing, I bought a couple of hats online the other day from the Bruins store. I immediately started receiving email spam from the NHL even though I had declined all their "newsletters." That's just slimy. Customers (um, I mean fans) should be treated with more respect than that. Maybe next time I'll buy some knock-offs on ebay instead.

Jordan Sigalet is back to playing with the baby B's. Man, it's great to see him succeed despite that damned disease. I hope we one day see him play in the NHL.

It's difficult not to notice how the overall amount of blogging by my fellow Bruins bloggers is down this year. Maybe its because things have been going fairly well. But it's not like there hasn't been anything to blog about. I would have expected to read more about Bergeron's hit, for instance. I suspect it's because most of us fans are still waiting to see if the Bruins are truly for real. I'm sure we'll find out before June.

And hey, you! Boston sports media! You know who you are. Let me give you a tip. I know that math isn't something that athletes or journalists are known to excel at, but geeze... there is this symbol called a plus sign, see. It has an analogue called a minus sign. They look like this: +, -. Maybe you've seen them? Believe it or not even us hockey types are familiar with what they mean. So instead of typing, "Axelsson has a plus-minus rating of plus-10 and Kessel has a plus-minus of minus-9", give us a break! It's just as clear to say, "Axelsson has a plus-minus rating of +10 and Kessel has a -9. Actually, come to think of it, that's more clear. Because "plus-9" is confusing, what with both the plus and the minus. In fact, I argue that if you wrote, "Axelsson is +10 and Kessel is -9," everyone would know what you were talking about (except perhaps your editor). Or do they pay you by the word? Not that any of you guys are going to read this, but I did have fun getting it off my chest nonetheless.

Is it Thursday yet?