CHICAGO — The lines for both the Bruins and Blackhawks were unchanged from Tuesday as the teams held their morning skates in anticipation of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Bruins’ lineup was the same it has been since Game 4 against the Penguins:

Lucic – Krejci – Horton
Marchand – Bergeron – Jagr
Daugavins – Peverley – Seguin
Paille – Kelly – Thornton

Chara – Seidenberg
Ference – Boychuk
Krug – McQuaid

For the Blackhawks, it appears Brandon Bollig will be in on the fourth line with Michael Frolik and Marcus Kruger, meaning that Viktor Stalberg is out. Playing Bollig in place of Stalberg substitutes size and grit for speed.

Sharp – Toews – Hossa
Bickell – Handzus – Kane
Saad – Boland – Shaw
Bollig – Kruger – Frolik

Keith – Seabrook
Oduya – Hjalmarsson
Leddy – Rozsival

Crawford

Mike Emrick

NBC Sports play-by-play caller Mike “Doc” Emrick joined Mut & Merloni on Wednesday morning to break down the Stanley Cup finals between the Bruins and Blackhawks.

Emrick said he expects the series to be almost dead even, and he did not offer a prediction for who would raise the Stanley Cup in the end. However, he drew a comparison between this series and the 1995 finals between the Devils and Red Wings.

“The edge is very difficult to call,” Emrick said. “I know there have been various surveys done and I think one very extensive one in Canada came out 50 percent to 49.2 percent, and at that point I didn’t even ask who had the 50 percent because it becomes — it is pretty much the way that everyone here is thinking. It is just too tough to call.

“I remember a similar thing that happened when we had a 48-game season in 1995 and we went into the final with a favorite team and a non-favorite one because the New Jersey Devils were not a good scoring team. They had a good goaltender and they played good defense. And the Red Wings were lights out. I mean, they were the biggest offensive juggernaut going and they banged their way through Chicago to get to the final and then New Jersey shut them down in four straight games with a defensive scheme.”

Emrick continued that comparison between the current series and the 1995 finals while discussing Zdeno Chara’s impact on Tuukka Rask’s play. Emrick compared Chara’s dominance to that of hall-of-fame defenseman Scott Stevens.

“I think if you were to ask that question to Marty Brodeur, he would say that Scott Stevens’ years were some of his best, because when you have somebody out there that is a presence that takes care of business as well as Scott did and as well as Zdeno Chara does and covers even more distance than Scott would ever hope to just because of his raw size.” Emrick said. “I think you’re making a very good comparison there and I think you’re also giving appropriate credit to the defense in front of [Rask].”

While he praised Chara for his defense, Emrick was sure to give credit to Rask, saying that he gave the Bruins an advantage between the pipes over Corey Crawford.

“If you want to put a check mark in one particular category that I think solidly goes to Boston, it is goaltending,” Emrick said. “And again, we have the leading goals-against average is one guy and the other is second. And the leading save percentage is the other guy and the one guy is second. So you can waffle back and forth. It seems to me the way that Rask has been playing, that is a check mark to the Bruins.

“As [NBC Sports color commentator] Eddie Olczyk always says, ‘Without goaltending you have got no shot.’ And they’ve sure got goaltending.”

Read the rest of this entry »

CHICAGO — Media day is a big mess.

A typical day of work for a reporter (take a game day, for example) is reporting followed by writing, followed by more reporting and then more writing. On media day, it’s just a marathon of reporting followed by a marathon of writing, so it’s easy to let stuff slip through the cracks. Here’s a bunch of that stuff:

– Jaromir Jagr is dyeing his playoff beard. When asked to confirm that, he responded, “Got to look tough.”

– Speaking of Jagr, Jonathan Toews said he modeled his game after Jagr’s when he was younger.

“You’ve got to tell him to slow down a little bit,” Jagr said when hearing of the praise. “He’s too quick for me.”

Jagr has a very good sense of humor about his age and speed. He knows that he’s old and slow, but he’s effective. He opened the press conference by asking reporters if they were surprised he was still alive.

– A reporter asked Tyler Seguin if he’s hit puberty after busting his chops for over his playoff beard. It was super, super, super, super weird.

– Peter Chiarelli was asked about the job the general managers before him did for the Bruins, and he had high praise for Mike O’Connell and Jeff Gorton, the latter of whom made the Andrew Raycroft-for-Tuukka Rask trade.

“Mike O’Connell I think did a terrific job with Jeff, that we’ve got at least half of our roster, I don’t know if it’s half, but including [Brad] Marchand, [Milan] Lucic, [David] Krejci, [Tim] Thomas at the time. I thought they did a real good job.

“I’ve told Mike that. Mike was gone, I was the GM, but Jeff was the interim GM. He executed those trades.”

– Cam Neely gave a comically strange answer when asked about how he felt when the Bruins were down by three goals in the third period of Game 7 against the Maple Leafs.

“I went from today’s texting world to the feeling of ‘OMG,’ ” he said. “Then when we won in overtime, the same feeling. You’re peeking at the clock. It feels like it’s going down faster than you’d like. But, again, go back to my point earlier about the character of the guys, they didn’t quit, they didn’t give up.”

Patrick Kane and Tyler Seguin, teammates in Biel during the lockout, are on opposite sides in the Stanley Cup final. (AP)

CHICAGO — When Tyler Seguin was in Switzerland for EHC Biel during the lockout, he tweeted a screenshot of his phone, showing a text message from a girl named “Don’t Text Her Bro” in his phone. Now, it’s only of his lockout teammates he isn’t texting.

Seguin played with Blackhawks star wing and 2007 first overall pick Patrick Kane for EHC Biel in Switzerland, and in addition to both having success (both players had more than a point per game, with Seguin racking up 40 points in 29 contests), the two became friends. They lived in the same building, where Kane’s mom — who was staying with the occasional troublemaker — was rumored to do Seguin’s laundry. For the record, Kane denied that. He did have high praise for his former Biel teammate, though.

“Just watching him in Switzerland, at first I thought for sure this kid’s one day going to lead the NHL in goals or maybe in scoring because of the skill he has and his shot, his speed and his smarts for the game, too,” Kane said. “I think you’ll see some special things from him in the future.”

Yet right now, anything that’s said will be about one another, and not to one another. With the Stanley Cup on the line, the two youngsters — who were teammates in a different league months ago — are now opponents on the biggest stage.

After the Bruins and Blackhawks clinched their berths in the Stanley Cup finals, Seguin got text a couple mass texts from Biel teammates. He saw that they were sent to Kane, too.

“He didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything,” Seguin said. “We’re keeping the friendship to the side now.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Blackhawks are similar to the Penguins, but not the same. (AP)

CHICAGO — The Bruins didn’t see the Blackhawks in the regular season this year because of the lockout, but did facing the Penguins prepare the B’s for Chicago?

“It’s hard to really compare them to someone when you haven’t faced them, but if you look at them on paper, their lineup, a lot of people like to compare them to Pittsburgh,” Zdeno Chara said.

That’s right. A lot of people do compare them to Pittsburgh, and it’s probably why many assumed that the Penguins and Blackhawks would meet in the Cup finals. There is a difference between the teams though, most notably that Chicago is a much stronger team defensively. Their defensemen are good in their own end and move the puck exceptionally well, plus they have stronger goaltending.

Yet the team’s high offensive output has led to comparisons to Pittsburgh. Brad Marchand even made the comparison, but like Chara noted that the similarities are in the rosters, not the styles of play.

“The closest team to what they would do would be Pittsburgh just because of the talent and skill they have, but they don’t really play a similar game,” he said. “Pittsburgh was more keen on chipping pucks in and going after it. I don’t know if Chicago’s like that, but there’s not really any other team that plays like they do. They play a different game and I think that’s why their so tough to stop.”

Marchand was then asked if the Bruins would take the same approach to the Blackhawks as they did against the Penguins.

“That’s a sneaky question right there,” Marchand said with a grin. “It’s a completely different team. I just said that they’re not the same team. They’re similar in skill and talent, so very sneaky question by you. Trying to get me in trouble over here, but they play a different game and it won’t at all be like the Pittsburgh series.”

There is one Bruin who faced the Blackhawks this year: Jaromir Jagr, who played them twice as a member of the Stars and had no points, four shots on goal and a minus-1 rating in two meetings against Chicago.

“I know everything about them,” Jagr said with a laugh, as questions about the teams’ unfamiliarity with one another were aplenty given that teams only played conference opponents this season.

The Blackhawks won both games Jagr played against them, one of which was an 8-1 blowout, so it’s no surprise that Jagr respects their talent.

“When we played them in Dallas, I thought they were in the best team in that conference for sure,” Jagr said. “They played different hockey than any other team in that conference. They’re quick, so talented up front, but they’re quick on defense. I think that’s a huge difference compared to other teams. They’re so fast and everybody can move the puck on their defense, so we have to be careful of that.”

Jaromir Jagr wanted to make sure he was wanted. (AP)

CHICAGO — Jaromir Jagr could very well be playing for his last shot at the Stanley Cup, yet he says he wasn’t sure he’d be a Bruin when the Stars and B’s struck a deal at the trade deadline.

Jagr — who had no language in his contract that would allow him to block a deal — said the Stars gave him the choice of whether they’d trade him. He then spoke to Peter Chiarelli and asked the Bruins’ general manager three times whether he was sure he wanted him.

“They told me I’m going to get traded, and it’s up to me if I want to go or not,” Jagr said. “When I talked to the boss, I asked him like three times, ‘Are you sure you want me?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ So here I am.”

But why would Jagr ask such a thing? If the team was trading for a player, they obviously wanted him. Asked where the concern came from on Jagr’s end — whether it was the fact that he isn’t the player he once was, or the fact that this was communing days after the B’s had missed out on Jarome Iginla — Jagr said he didn’t know.

“I just wanted to make sure,” he said. “I don’t want to go somewhere where they don’t want you. I don’t want to be somewhere where I’m kind of useless. I’d rather to not play at all. I wanted to make sure three times before I said, ‘Yes, I’m coming.’”

Jagr has no goals this postseason, but he has been playing on the team’s second line and has used his big body and puck protection to the Bruins’ advantage.

For more on the Bruins, visit weei.com/bruins.

Jonathan Toews had two new wingers in practice Tuesday. (AP)

CHICAGO — Though the Bruins aren’t here yet, the Blackhawks kicked off Media Day by giving the media plenty to work with. Coach Joel Quenneville shuffled his lines in practice, most notably splitting up Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

The two were put together with Bryan Bickell in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, but the lines in Tuesday’s practice were as follows:

Sharp – Toews – Hossa
Bickell – Handzus – Kane
Saad – Boland – Shaw
Bollig – Kruger – Frolik

Keith – Seabrook
Oduya – Hjalmarsson
Leddy – Rozsival

Crawford

In Games 4 and 5 against Los Angeles, Chicago’s top-six looked like this:

Bickell – Toews – Kane
Sharp – Handzus – Hossa

The Bruins are expected to be at the United Center sometime around 2:30 CST.