Sports Redux: Rust Belt Blues

Did you spend all day yesterday watching the rain pour down and hoping that at least things would end well with a Celtic/Bruin doubleheader? If you did, you probably wished you’d gone out and stood in the rain all day instead; you’d feel about the same. We’ll start with the Bruins, whose loss was a little less painful. Sure, Tim Thomas’ shutout streak was broken, battered and mutilated. But every time the Penguins scored, the B’s came right back and tied it. Again and again and again. Then, down 4-3 with crunch time approaching, the B’s found themselves on the good end of a 5-on-3, and David Krejci scored to tie it. Again. The Penguins killed the second penalty, but almost immediately Marco Sturm beat Brent Johnson for the B’s first lead of the night. Pittsburgh emptied the net, the B’s played aggressively to keep Thomas safe…until Patrice Bergeron’s stick snapped as he was about to dump it in the Pittsburgh end one last time, three Penguins raced down the ice and Bill Guerin somehow got a shot past Thomas with less than a second left. When Pascal Dupuis wrapped one around Thomas in OT, it just summed up a night that should have been so much better than it was. "We did things we don’t normally do and we did them all in one game. We’re lucky to get a point," said defenseman Derek Morris, fitting right in with the million similar quotes the Bruins have had to issue so far this year. They play the Islanders next. Meanwhile, in Indiana, the Celtics were burying any talk of 70 wins by coming out flat for the second night in a row and getting outworked

by Indiana. Want to sum it up, Doc Rivers? "I thought we were awful defensively," said the coach, and for allowing Indiana’s bunch of ragtags and ragamuffins to shoot over 50%, and allowing Danny Granger to rain threes down on them, we’d have to agree with Doc. It was pretty clear Paul Pierce wasn’t back to 100% after hurting his knee Friday. But that only explains so much - it doesn’t explain why the C’s got blocked seven times, or why they got out-assisted 31 to 18, or why they just looked like an old and tired team. That’s two young and aggressive teams in a row that have flummoxed and flustered them. Not a good sign, right, Kendrick Perkins? "They had more energy, their transition defense was incredible at times." Perk also joined Doc and Rasheed Wallace in getting technical fouls from Joey Crawford, who we sometimes forget when we’re compiling our lists of the worst refs in the NBA, but we shouldn’t. Perk’s T came when he committed a foul and then raised his arms. Don’t make us miss Tim Donaghy. But the main event of the weekend is still yet to come, tonight in Indianapolis, down the street from the smoldering remains of the Celtics’ weekend. To keep you from twitching all day, there’s a Herald preview , a Globe preview , the view from Indy (with bonus Larry Bird quotes), and the robot the Globe bought to replace Dan Shaughnessy spits out some well-chewed material about historic rivalries. Only bother with Dan if it’s still raining at like 5 tonight. Photo by Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press.

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Sports Redux: Rust Belt Blues