WILMINGTON, Mass. — I thought Boston Globe writer Barbara Matson was nuts when she pointed this out, but obviously she’s not alone in thinking that Bruins defenseman Matt Hunwick and winger Michael Ryder look alike.

In fact, one fan at Tuesday night’s DVD release party even tried to have Ryder sign a photo that was actually Hunwick. However, Hunwick said, he not only didn’t get mistaken for Ryder, he was hardly recognized (he suspects it was his now month-old tighter hair cut).

Without further ado, you be the judge — do Ryder and Hunwick look alike?

Ryder

Hunwick

MK: I still don’t see it.

Tanguay

I spend so much time taking jabs at the mess in Montreal, it’s only fair that I call attention to something positive that occured for the Canadiens last night.

Alex Tanguay, Alex Kovalev and Saku Koivu were joined as a line and they erupted for a bushel of points in a huge 6-3 win over Atlanta last night. Tanguay had a five-point night.

The win lifted Montreal into sole possession of eighth in the Eastern Conference. Pat Hickey of The Gazette has the complete story.

MK: This is actually good news. Who doesn’t want to see a Boston-Montreal first-round series? This weak  is a soft schedule for the Habs, so they should be able to grab a firm hold on that eighth spot.

Elsewhere around the division:

•Buffalo head coach Lindy Ruff has put star forwards Tim Connolly, Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek on notice.

•Curtis Joseph came on in relief and helped Toronto upset Washington.

•Ottawa’s Daniel Alfredsson doesn’t regret signing his extension with the Senators.

WILMINGTON, Mass. — A little more than 12 hours after the Boston Bruins’ DVD  release party came to a close, the team is practicing at Ristuccia Arena.

There are two more off days before Saturday night’s game in Toronto, but head coach Claude Julien is obviously trying to crack the whip. Everyone is on the ice except Chuck Kobasew. Byron Bitz is skating on the wing of Patrice Bergeron’s line with Steve Montador back on defense after he practiced in Kobasew’s spot yesterday.

UPDATE: Julien confirmed that Kobasew had another maintenance day and should be back on the ice tomorrow.

The news that Boston Bruins prospect Carl Soderberg, the bounty Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli collected from St. Louis in exchange for Hannu Toivonen, has opted (again) to not come to North America to finish this season conjures up a number of images.

So in that spirit, here’s a little bit of word association for you:

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When it comes to Boston Bruins winger Milan Lucic, the sophomore jinx is obviously as fictious as Jason Voorhees of “Friday the 13th” fame.

One year after skating in 77 NHL games and posting 8-19-27 totals as a 19-year-old, all Lucic has done in the 2008-09 season is get better in every way. He’s put up 14-22-36 totals and a plus-12 rating (as opposed to minus-2 last season) in 63 games.

That’s not to say that Lucic hasn’t gone through some rough patches. With his goal against New Jersey Sunday, he snapped a 15-game goal-less drought that might’ve been a sign of a struggle. But with Lucic, the goals are the last thing you look at to determine whether he’s been producing. You watch him on the forecheck, you watch him in the corners and in front of the net. Is he making the opponent pay for getting in his way? Is he clearing room for his teammates to make plays? The answer almost all season has been a resounding yes. (more…)

I generally try to stay away from criticizing the way the NHL is covered by television/radio — in print, anway.

I know everyone’s trying to do the best job they can, and come up with as many innovative ideas as possible, and get a handle on what the viewing/listening public wants. It’s all about ratings, and that’s fine. Heck, my life now is all about page views and hits and scheduling blog posts to appear as many times over the course of a day as possible.

But watching Monday night’s Detroit-Calgary game on the NHL Center Ice package, on the channel with the TSN feed, I really found myself enjoying the work of color commentator Ray Ferraro. He was positioned between the benches and really jelled with play-by-play man Gord Miller. And I realized, ‘wow, you can do that between-the-benches job and not scream? Who knew.’

Anyone who has watched a Sunday afternoon game on NBC this year knows what I’m talking about. Pierre McGuire spends the entirety of every game he covers screaming like he’s yelling at kids to get off his lawn, making sure that every fact he’s thought of over the last month comes out of his mouth and that he starts almost every comment by addressing the person in the booth he’s talking too (I have no idea why he has to differentiate between Doc Emrick and Eddie Olczyk) by their nickname. (more…)

WILMINGTON, Mass. — If two Boston Bruins players looked a little more tired during practice today at Ristuccia Arena and were more eager than the rest to  depart, they had good reason.

Both defensemen Andrew Ference and Aaron Ward became fathers again Sunday. Ference’s wife Krista gave birth to a second girl — Stella Haliday James Ference. And Ward’s wife Kelly gave birth to the couple’s second daughter and third child — Phoebe Grace Ward.

Congrats to both Bruins players and their families.

The Buffalo Sabres are 10-13-3 in their last 26 games and 1-5-1 in their last seven.

So you know what that means. That’s right, fire-the-coach demands and grumblings. Lindy Ruff, the longest-tenured coach in the game is getting it from all angles, Bucky Gleason of the Buffalo News explains.

“It comes with the territory,” Ruff said after practice Monday according to Gleason. “When you’re not going well, they’ll point to the coach. I think it’s fair. We’ve had some players who haven’t performed to where we want, and that’s my responsibility. I don’t think there’s any ducking that.”

MK: The story starts with captain Craig Rivet defending his coach. And what else is he going to do at this point? The fact is, as sad as it is, the answer in Buffalo might be regime change because missing the playoffs five times in seven years shouldn’t be acceptable for any franchise.

Elsewhere in the division:

•Everyone’s up in arms over the rumors of a sale in Montreal.

•Toronto is having fun while playing out the string.

•As Daniel Alfredsson goes, so go the Ottawa Senators. That’s not a surprise.

WILMINGTON, Mass. — The Boston Bruins, on their second of five consecutive days without a game, practiced this morning at Ristuccia Arena.

The only absentees were winger Chuck Kobasew and forward David Krejci. Steve Montador skated as a forward in Kobasew’s spot on Patrice Bergeron’s line.

UPDATE: Kobasew and Krejci were granted “maintenance days” by head coach Claude Julien. The Bruins will practice again tomorrow in an effort to maintain their sharpness before getting back into game action Saturday in Toronto.

“It’s our last chance here to kind of fine-tune ourselves with quality practices,” said Julien, whose team finishes with nine games in the last 16 days of the season. “It doesn’t mean you can’t do it other ways, but with quality practices this is a  good week for that. After that, it’s almost every second day (the team plays a game).”

Sticking with the theme that this is a light week before the last nine games of the regular season and the playoffs arrive, here’s one I’ve been thinking about for a while:

Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron & tennis star Tommy Robredo.

A healthy scratch 13 times this season, Boston Bruins defenseman Matt Hunwick has learned how to stay ready even when he hasn’t been called on to skate in a game for sometimes weeks at a time.

However, the rookie might not have to worry about such special preparation tactics for a while.

“Every time we’ve put him in, he’s given us a good spark and done a pretty good job — whether it’s at forward or on defense,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien said before Hunwick registered an assist in the Bruins’ win over New Jersey Sunday. “So I think he deserves to be in the lineup right now, and as long as he deserves to be there, he’s going to stay there.”

Sometimes it can be tough to statistically gauge a player’s value to his team. And during this highly successful Bruins’ season, a lot of players can point to the club’s record with them in the lineup as a mark of pride. But the 23-year-old Hunwick really has made a splash in his limited opportunty. In games Hunwick registers a point, the Bruins are 12-1-2. And the 46-17-10 Bruins are just a mediocre 13-10-3 when they don’t have Hunwick in uniform. (more…)

Axelsson

The From the Rink blog run by James Mirtle has a formula used to keep up on the top defensive forwards in the NHL — the top contenders for the Selke Award.

Boston Bruins winger P.J. Axelsson ranks 12th on this list of the top 30, which is topped by Minnesota Wild forward Antti Miettinen. The only other Bruins players in the top 30 are centers Stephane Yelle (26th) and Patrice Bergeron (27th).

MK: If he had played a full season at full strength, Bergeron would be a candidate for the Selke. There’s always next year. Obviously players with a lot of shorthanded goals, like Philly’s Mike Richards, have an inside edge. Axelsson won’t get much national backing.

Colborne

A 5-0 loss to the University of Minnesota-Duluth in the WCHA title game Saturday didn’t stop Denver from earning the top seed in the West Region for the 2009 NCAA tournament.

That means Boston Bruins 2008 first-round draft pick Joe Colborne will cap his rookie season with a taste of the “Big Dance.” Denver will open the regional against Miami, and if the Pioneers win they’ll face Princeton or rematch with UMD.

Mike Chambers of the Denver Post looks at the Pioneers’ chances.

Colborne is the Pioneers’ fourth-leading scorer with 30 points (nine goals) and he’s a plus-8 on the season. He has appeared in all 39 DU games. He’s fifth among WCHA freshmen in points.

College Hockey News has the complete NCAA bracket for your viewing pleasure.

A year ago while the Boston Bruins will fighting tooth and nail to earn their first playoff berth in four years, a locker room ritual became a sensation — as after every win the player voted by his teammates to have done all the little things during the victory was awarded a white hard hat.

The player had to wear the hat throughout the postgame interviews. Who could forget the hat barely fitting on the bald dome of goaltender Alex Auld or how perfect it looked on the likes of tough guys Shawn Thornton and Milan Lucic? Until Sunday’s win over New Jersey, the Bruins’ game had been lacking in all the elements that used to earn a chance to wear the hard hat. So last week, I presented the question to a few Bruins: Is it time to bring back the hard hat?

“You’re going to have to ask the older guys,” Lucic said. “I always liked it. We had it junior, we had it a bit last year. So it’s a cool thing to have. I think the older guys have something that they might start or come up with.” (more…)

Shannon

Former Boston College captain Ryan Shannon returned home last night, sort of. Skating for the Ottawa Senators, Shannon scored the game-winning goal in a 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, which sits about one hour’s drive from his childhood home in Darien, Conn.

Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun has the complete story.

MK: Shannon has been a bright spot and a key cog in the resurgent Senators’ attack. I still say they’re a team on the wrong path and that their current winning ways are more a product of the pressure being off than anything. But at least Shannon, one of the league’s good guys, is having an enjoyable time.

Elsewhere around the division:

•A reports says that George Gillett might sell the Montreal Canadiens. Guess he’s been watching the Habs play lately.

•This just in! The Buffalo Sabres miss goaltender Ryan Miller.

•Somehow Alex Ponikarovsky has thrived in Toronto even after the trade of Nik Antropov.