I told myself to just watch the game. I left my notepad in the car, and didn’t even carry a pen with me. I told myself I wouldn’t tweet either, since the service at the Garden when filled is seriously lacking.

Despite my attempts to just enjoy the game, I still had two quick notes I had to write up post-game. You can take the tools away from the writer, but you can never make them stop thinking like one. Here they are:

- Speed-  There was a time a few years back when I would attend an NHL game and be instantly impressed at the speed difference between the pro game and the college game. The difference was marked – the pro game moved quicker, players not only skated faster but had better skating skills, and a player’s reflexes were that much more automatic.

The last two times I’ve attended a Bruins game, that difference has drastically decreased. It could be possible that it is because I’m simply not getting to games to make the comparison as often. But it just seems that since 2008, hockey observers have seen a marked improvement in the quality of play of college hockey players. The quality of passes and puck work in the NHL has decreased at the same level the college game has increased. Skating skills and speed in both the pro and college game have woefully decreased (qualities I didn’t learn how to evaluate until I started watching hockey with hockey players, but once I did, you can’t help but notice stride, edge security and speed.)

There is no longer that marked difference, that “wow – this is a different level” feeling, when you watch a NHL game as opposed to a college game. That’s equal parts wonderful for college hockey and a shame on the pro game.

-Seguin’s Shifts Off - Talented Tyler Seguin is still a teenager. Though you cannot deny his playmaking abilities and his contributions thus far to the Bruins, you can’t see his play purely through rose-colored glasses.

Seguin, like other immensely talented young hockey players both before and after him, has two switches. One controls his effort, and the other controls his natural talent. Every shift, a player like him has to decide to turn either one on or both on.

The natural talent switch is stuck on. It’s the switch to that lackluster light in the corner of the living room that provides you with no truely useful lighting source – it’s usually the light your grandmother leaves on a timer to try to convince would-be robbers someone is home.

The effort switch is not a given. It’s the light switch on the wall on the other side of the room. You really don’t feel like shuffling over to that side of the room. It’s out of the way of your final destination: the couch. Unless you are going to read or type and really need that light, there are times where you just don’t want to take the extra amount of energy to flip it on. You’ll rely on the lackluster light and the glow of the television.

Everyone in this world is naturally talented at something, and when it comes to whatever that is, they have those two switches. For Seguin, it’s hockey. Before every shift, he has to make that decision – is he going to expand that extra amount of energy and turn the effort swtich on?

Last Tuesday against the Jets, there were too many shifts where he wasn’t turning on the effort. He’d jump out for a shift and coast. Good plays and meaningful contributions will still happen because he’s talented, but not with the same regularity as they would if he would skate out on a shift with both talent and effort turned on. And that’s why his stats appear streaky at times – he will be on scoring fits and then be seemingly and suddenly extinguished. For example, he went on a six game scoring streak from October 29th until November 12th, amassing eight goals and three assists, and then only scored one assist in the next four games.

Seguin is far from alone. This is the same problem that was always evident to me when Colin Wilson played with BU – he took shifts off, thinking that he could coast on talent, put his stick down on the ice and volia! He’d score or assist magically, without having to try. Charlie Coyle suffered from this more severely. The shifts he turned on the effort shifts were increasingly rare as his BU tenure continued. He relies too much on his wingspan and talent, and doesn’t always put forth the effort that would push his playmaking ability over the edge. Every team has one – the young kid who thinks he’s invincible and superhuman, and can coast on the same talent that made him the star of mites, travel team, high school, and juniors.

Seguin won’t be felled by this for long – he has a tough coach and experienced teammates that won’t allow it. But it nagged me during a few games I watched on television, and when I finally saw a game live and could see the entire ice, it definitely stuck out for me. The “Seguinistas” may sling snowballs at me for pointing it out, but it’s not a death sentence for the talented forward, just a blemish.

“I don’t want to get into details what we think it is or isn’t and I don’t want any alarm bells going off. Like I said, you can go through our roster and there are probably 12 or 13 guys with something similar or the same thing.”

Welcome to making a mountain out of a molehill.

There are two reasons why any worry about this amongst the Bruins is somewhat unfounded. One, the motion of skating wears on your hips. Be it hockey or figure skating, if you do it long enough, you are more apt to have a hip issue. On the Bruins alone, both goalie Tim Thomas and winger David Krecji have had hip surgery. On the other side of skating, at least two of the last twenty years of Olympic gold medalists in ladies figure skating have had serious hip injuries.

Skating is not necessarily a movement the human body was designed to do, and because of that, there are parts of the body that will suffer from intense use that they were not designed to do. An analogy: Do you use a screwdriver as a hammer? No. If you did, you’d eventually damaged the tip of the screwdriver, because it is not designed to perform a repeated hammering motion. The human body is much the same way. Make it do something repeatedly and intensely that it wasn’t engineered to do, and it will eventually wear.

Therefore, Seguin will not be unique to his sport if he ever has hip issues; he is more apt to have them because his sport involves skating, and skating causes hip issues.

Secondly, many athletes have “congenital” physical issues that they play through. You can’t make news out of every single one. Odds are, there is at least one person on the Bruins who has hypermobility. That is a genetic type of flexibility that can make you more susceptible to injury because your joints can easily move in ways they should not. I have it. It made me a good dancer and gymnast, but it made me a horrible runner, because my knees can slide in ways they shouldn’t, and be pounded on in positions that they shouldn’t be pounded on. The instance of this in the general population is such that there are tons of people with it, and it usually doesn’t materialize into anything. In fact, it helps you be successful in several sports.

So is ESPNBoston and the rest of the hockey media going to next sniff out the Bruins player with hypermobility and make that a story? No, because it doesn’t really matter. Athletes get hurt. It’s a way of life. We can hypothesize all we want, but Seguin could easily be sidelined tomorrow by an injury completely unrelated to his hip. He could be boarded. He could be slashed with a skate blade. He could trip over a teammate. The odds are good that Seguin will some day get hurt – but the odds are good that any hockey player, any athlete in fact, will some day get hurt.

That’s the cross they bear for making a living in a physical sport.

“Bruins Beach Wear.”

I’m not going to complain about the fact that there is a Bruins bikini. I don’t really have a problem with that – if it sells (and after this Stanley Cup season, I bet you it does), then go ahead and sell it.

But…it’s September 23rd. If I’m visiting the Boston Bruins website, odds are it’s not beach weather. In fact, if it’s NHL preseason time in Boston, the odds are that you will not be wearing any beach gear for a good six months (unless you’re going on a warm weather vacation, but in this economy, how many people are? I know I’m not.) The NHL Shop is advertising beach wear at the same time Starbucks has broken out the Pumpkin Spice Latte and I’ve already bought a bag of candy corn.

And yes, I do realize that that ad is most likely placed by analytics and is part of a rotation, and they probably haven’t switched out their summer rotation for their fall rotation of square sidebar ads. I forgive them, I really do. But the irony had to be pointed out.

The TD Garden lit up with Bruins spirit. (Photo by me and my iPhone.)

The Boston Bruins are going to lose tonight because I am wearing pants.

Preposterous, you say. What does making a choice between a black skirt and black pants have to do with if the Bruins will tie up their Stanley Cup Finals series against the Vancouver Canucks this evening?

It doesn’t, of course. But the thought crossed my mind as I was running out the door to work this morning. Was I wearing skirts or dresses during games three and four? I know I was wearing pants on Friday, when they lost game five.

But what does the work apparel of a random university employee such as myself have to do with whether or not the Boston Bruins win a game? It doesn’t, but it doesn’t keep some of us from letting that thought enter our minds occasionally.

On Twitter, I’ve been watching the inner turmoil of one Bruins fan that didn’t want to touch up her Bruins colored nails because they had been painted as such since game three. There is another who has to wear the same Milan Lucic t-shirt every game.

The superstition goes beyond Bruins fans. I’ve written about my crazy Boston University hockey and general football superstitions before. Even recently, I was convinced that I couldn’t wear my hair up on a BU game day, because they would lose if I did. Even players have their own superstitions: they put their right skate on before their left, they always have to have yellow Gatorade before a game, they have to place their water bottle in a certain area.

So I ask all of you: what are your superstitions, either as a fan or an athlete? (That is, if you’re willing to tell!) Share them below, along with what team you do them for, or offer them on Twitter using the hashtag #sportssuper (Using the entire word superstition would cause us all to go over that precious 140 character limit.) I’ll post them later.

I’ll write up more about the NHL’s presentation and overall conference later (I am in charge of technical support for a new student orientation this week, so time is tight), but there was one ironic and timely point in it that I must share. DiLorenzo mentioned that one of the things they have struggled with is responding via their NHL Twitter account in the wake of disciplinary news: “No matter what the discipline department decides, we’re going to get tons of tweets that say ‘You’re wrong.”

He mentioned that at 2:40. By 8:40, the NHL had another massive disciplinary situation on their hands: Vancouver Canucks Aaron Rome’s hit on puck-less Boston Bruin Nathan Horton that resulted in a severe concussion.

Rome was suspended four games by the league for the incident, effectively removing him for the remainder of the Stanley Cup Finals. On Twitter the reaction to the NHL’s decision varied immediately, ranging on the Goldilocks scale: some fans thought it was too much, some thought it was too little, and some thought it was just right.

Assume you are one of the two folks who man the @NHL Twitter account (yes, there are only two, mentioned DiLorenzo Monday.) How would you effectively use your Twitter account to respond to each type of fan? Do you not respond to one group? Do you respond to all? Because of the mass of Tweets, do you just not even try to respond to them at all? Do you focus on the negative ones first, where it sounds like you’re losing a fan?

And if you are a fan who Tweeted at @NHL about today’s disciplinary decision, what response were you hoping to get?

Tyler Seguin scores during Tuesday night's 6-5 Bruins win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. (Photo: NHL.com)

Tuesday evening, Boston Bruins rookie Tyler Seguin put on a clinic against the Tampa Bay Lightning, scoring two goals, two assists, and showing flashy skill and playmaking abilities that made even the least enthusiastic of hockey fans stand up and cheer. Seguin had been benched for the playoff run up to Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, where he was inserted in the place of an injured Patrice Bergeron. Bruins coach Claude Julien had been noncommittal towards playing his 2010 #1 draft pick in the playoffs, and had used him sparingly as the regular season drew to a close.

When Seguin finally saw playoff ice, he broke out, showing the abilities that made him so highly coveted last year. However, what motivated that after a so-so rookie season where his experienced coach who didn’t feel he was ready to play postseason hockey?

There are always people who rise to the opportunity – who need just a bit more motivation or a bit more sense of occasion to show what they can do. To us non-athletes, they were those kids in school who wouldn’t do their everyday homework, didn’t pick up a review book, but still got a perfect score on the SATs.

Needing a reason to be dynamic can sometimes be viewed as a sign of immaturity. You don’t yet see the reason why you should put your nose down to the grindstone everyday, but when you view it as important, when you know a lot of people will be watching, you turn it on. Maybe it’s not so much immaturity always, but inexperience – when you aren’t used to showing your best every single day, it can be difficult to get into that groove when it’s called upon.

Where have I seen this most? When hockey players make the jump from high school/prep school/juniors to college hockey. It’s easier to be a big fish in a small pond, which admittedly most college hockey players are at the team they play on immediately before college. (I mean, it’s why they got a D1 scholarship and their linemate riding pine didn’t.) Once they join their college team, they either make the realization that they are going to have to give a stronger effort right away, or it may take them a while.

The two biggest examples of this I’ve watched are Colin Wilson and Charlie Coyle when they joined Boston University. Both were greatly talented coming into college, and then had wildly inconsistent freshman years. You saw them play up when they needed to, but in an average game against a basement dweller opponent, they didn’t make the plays they could have right away. Coyle played up for the World Juniors, then slid in production when he came back to BU after that tournament. When you’re young, opportunities need to be more obvious to you. It’s hard for any 18 year old to sense the need to play up for UMass Lowell, when a month ago you were playing the Canadian national team. In Wilson’s case, he seemed distracted during several games his freshman year, and then started giving a more consistent effort as the season went on and the team needed to dig themselves out of a hole standings wise. Wilson sensed the occasion, and that’s when he started to produce.

The Bruins’ Seguin is probably stuck in a similar situation. In the OHL, he was top banana, but the NHL is a new league and situation for him. How do you balance going full tilt in practice everyday against guys with years more experience than you? How do you play at the same intensity level for both a game against the woeful Ottawa Senators and then the arch-rival Philadelphia Flyers? How do you manage the idea internally that you have to consistently push yourself, and can’t have an off-day and still be the best player on your team? That’s a whole new mindset for an 18/19 year old, and no one is immune from struggling with new expectations.

That struggle is going to come across as laziness, lack of ability, and the sense that a player isn’t ready for prime-time. A NHL head coach, for better or worse, doesn’t have a degree in sports or adolescent psych. They aren’t going to take a rookie’s internal recalibration well, or at least they aren’t paid to.

What am I trying to say with this long ramble? While Seguin very well may have been playing to get back at his coach for sitting him all this time, it was most likely much more that in the ups and downs of being a teenage hockey player playing their first year on the next level, Seguin saw the occasion and played up. The reason to play full tilt was obvious, and in a year filled with learning new nuances (which your rookie year is), the obvious opportunities are few and far between. For one of the first times this year, there was a reason, there was a chance, and Seguin took it. And with a major reward at the end (last night’s win) that will be a building block to more consistent high level of performance down the road.

Teams and concert promoters provide Tickets For Charity tickets to high-profile events which the organization turns around and sells at the market value. That premium price you would usually be paying then goes to a charity group as opposed to a profit margin. Tickets For Charity also develops VIP packages that provide fans access to events that they couldn’t get unless they were in the know.

Currently, Tickets For Charity has Boston Red Sox regular season tickets and both Boston Bruins and Celtics playoff tickets. With each purchase, you can designate what group receives the charitable portion of your purchase price, including the official charities of the Bruins, Celtics and Red Sox.

I hung out with the Tickets for Charity crew at Jerry Remy’s (a very neat take-in in itself), and was impressed at how dedicated they are to the cause and how knowledgeable they are about sports. This is code for, “We had a long conversation about the woes of the Buffalo Bills” and “We talked college hockey.” These aren’t folks oblivious to the passion of sports fans – they’re sports fans themselves.

If you’re going to be paying out the nose to get to a must-see sporting event – especially a playoff game – why not help out others in the process?

During the Red Sox season, Tickets for Charity will be giving you the opportunity to win some unique ticket packages, including Green Monster seats for a Yankees-Red Sox game, Fenway Park tours plus lunch, and tickets to the Red Sox Foundation’s Picnic in the Park. Stay tuned – I’ll have more info as we get closer to these giveaways!

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Aerosmith & Boston Bruins Partner for BLOWOUT Giveaway

Rock legends Aerosmith have joined forces with The Boston Bruins Foundation to give away Aerosmith & Bruins memorabilia! You’ll wanna get your hands on these exclusive prizes. ENTER NOW!

(1) Lucky contestant will win:

(1) AEROSMITH #1 Custom Bruins Jersey
(1) AUTOGRAPHED Bruins Hockey Stick
(1) AUTOGRAPHED Bruins Jersey
(1) Bruins Winter Classic Fenway Framed Piece
(1) AUTOGRAPHED Steven Tyler Photo
(1) AUTOGRAPHED Joey Kramer Drum Head
(1) $50.00 Gift Certificate to the Aerosmith Online Store
(1) Aerosmith Hockey Hoodie
(1) Aerosmith T-shirt
This giveaway ends on March 31st, but you can visit aeroforceone.com daily & re-enter to increase your chances. In addition, make sure to visit the NHL Alumni Association to check out a “One-of-a-Kind” Boston Bruins & Steven Tyler Themed Motorcycle Raffle! Proceeds generated by the raffle will go toward The Boston Bruins Foundation’s athletic, academic, health and community outreach programs that help enrich the lives of children throughout New England.

It floored me the first time I heard about it. Only in Boston would churches decide not to have Sunday service in deference to…well, a religious celebration that has turned very un-religious.

That tale told, it should not be surprising that the Boston Bruins have a large collection of St. Patrick’s Day related wear.  Both the NHL Shop (with 28 items) and Faceoff Fanatics (with 13 items) have been advertising their St. Patrick’s Day Bruins wares in a hope that some of their gear will make it down to South Broadway for the parade – and it’s more than just shirts.

Faceoff Fanatics' Boston Bruins PJ pants for St. Patrick's Day

Faceoff Fanatics are now featuring pajama pants with Irish style and Bruins love. Perfect for that parade morning brunch on your overpriced Southie apartment’s porch – if the weather allows for it.

Old Time Hockey's Colleen St. Patrick's Day Bruins shirt (shop.nhl.com)

In one of my favorite St. Patrick’s Day offerings so far, NHL Shop offers the Old Time Hockey V-Neck women’s “Colleen” shirt. Trying to marry a traditional Irish design with a more identifiable shamrock and a nice, not corny, script font, this shirt seems more flattering than most women’s offerings of late. (It is also available for other teams.)

As one of the only Boston Bruins fans on the planet who doesn’t hate Phil Kessel, I’m beginning to understand my father’s sentiment.

You may hate Phil Kessel all you want – sports fandom thrives on hatred, as sad as it may sound. Intense fandom means hating particular teams and defector players. As a Buffalo Bills fan, I hate the Dallas Cowboys. I hate the Dallas Stars for making my Buffalo Sabres fan mother sob in 1999. I understand the dislike of those dreaded dirty Habs. I get it. Fans hate players. Fans boo players. Fans go on rants about players.

But after a year, isn’t it enough?

What did Phil Kessel do besides recognize that the current system of the Boston Bruins has no place for college-built players (aka, why Blake Wheeler is always a subject of trade rumors, and why Chuck Kobasew was trade bait, why the player who showed the most in training camp, Matt Bartkowski, was sent down, and why it’s an absolute long shot that David Warsofsky will ever see the Garden ice)?

Kessel didn’t hang with the guys? Well, he wasn’t 21 for most of his time in Boston, and many of his friends were college hockey players in the area. Who are you going to hang out with – a guy you know from the National Development Team that is your age, or a guy with a family, kids, who may be 10 years older than you? Kessel may have hung out with guys outside of the team a bit more than others, but when you have existing friends here (of which he did on many of the area college hockey teams), you’re going to spend time with them. That never made him any less of a Boston Bruin.

Kessel didn’t want to be a Boston Bruin? The NHL is a business, and hockey players are trying to make a living. If you’re offered a job with a pay increase, aren’t you going to consider it? And if you don’t have strong ties to an area, office, or business, money becomes that overwhelming factor in that decision. A young kid, with a relatively short career to spend making a living from playing hockey in comparison to the length of the career of us desk jockeys, decided to make more money while he could.

The Bruins brass enjoys a certain type of player, and that isn’t the nuanced non-fighter that college hockey and US junior hockey currently produces. And that’s the Bruins’ choice, and it’s working for them. Kessel wasn’t going to fit into that system, and is flourishing in the Toronto Maple Leafs system, a team run by Brian Burke, an executive that might understand the training and style of a player like Kessel better than anyone else in the NHL. A player like Milan Lucic thrives in the Bruins system – a junior hockey bred bruiser whose defensive mentality is as welcome as his offensive play-making. A player like Kessel, the exact opposite, was not going to last long term, despite his early success, because he plays a different style of hockey.

Both organizations seem to be reaping the benefits of the trade. Tyler Seguin, obtained with the first rounder received in the Kessel deal, is a steady player whose presence offensively has been very helpful to a Sturm and Savard-less Bruins. Kessel has brought direly needed goal scoring and excitement to a much-maligned Maple Leafs franchise. It’s worked out well on both ends – a quality many trades do not amount to in the long-run.

And personally, I find it a bit disingenuous that Bruins fans, an entire year post-trade, take delight in the hits to and booing of a young man who once had cancer, who never sad anything awful towards them, and who, while he was in Boston, contributed substantially to his team.

So fellow Bruins fans, find another joke. To use my dad’s saying, last night was the third time, and it’s not funny anymore.