Good wishes for Patrice Bergeron continue to flow in. Aedan, aged 3, drew this abstract piece.

John Bishop is the beat writer for BostonBruins.com. He covers the Black & Gold hoping to offer a positive look at the team, not only from the stands and the press box, but also from inside the locker room. A graduate of Boston U. and Northeastern, 'Bish' grew up in Connecticut and moved to the Hub of Hockey in 1993. Since then he has made all four rinks at the Beanpot schools, as well as both Gardens, his icebound homes away from home. Prior to joining the TD Banknorth Garden staff in 2005, Bishop had written for several publications, with his primary focus being college hockey. He coauthored the book Bygone Boston in 2003 and hopes someday to pen a bio of Hobey Baker.

It was good to speak to Zdeno Chara today as the Bruins continued their preparations for Buffalo on Thursday.

"It's hard to see your teammate go down," said Chara while he prepared to hit the weight room. "But at the same time, things like that happen.

"Unfortunately, it's part of hockey -- the injuries. We cannot control them, and we have a job to do.

"Obviously we have a very tough schedule coming up (though) so we have to focus on these upcoming games," he said.

But, for whatever reason, that focus was not completely there in Wilmington today, and Coach Julien could be heard telling his squad, in no uncertain terms, that their effort was lacking.

He was downright angry.

"Coach has a really good feel for this team," said Z. "And today…we got a little sloppy at the end of the practice.

"He's right, we have to focus on our job. It's our job to come to the rink and work really hard."

Coach Julien refused to use the Bergeron injury as an reason for the team being lax.

"I am not going to use that as an excuse," said Julien. "That would have been the case yesterday. We had a real good practice, yesterday. Today, I didn't think our focus was really there.

"We let it slip."

And that simply can't happen with Buffalo, Ottawa and Montreal on the docket.

"I think the biggest thing is realizing it," said Coach of how important the B's upcoming stretch of divisional games will be to Boston. "There's no doubt that we'll be looking back at that stretch at the end of the year, one way or another, and (seeing) how it propelled us or was a situation where it…cost us.

Julien himself admitted that he was "mad" at the club's effort in the second half of today's on-ice session.

"We need to get out of those 'swings' that we have and yesterday was a good practice day," said Claude, who added, "today, obviously, we're disappointed in the way we competed.

"It's a 'mindset' and that's what we are trying to do, get these guys in the mindset that we have to practice a lot better than we did, today."

Lines…
Same as yesterday:

White: Axelsson-Savard-Murray
Gold: Sturm-Kessel-Kobasew
Gray: Schaefer-Metropolit-Bochenski
Brick: Lucic, Krejci, Thornton, Reich
D-men: Alberts, Allen, Chara, Ference, Stuart, Ward, Wideman
Goal: Fernandez, Thomas

Lucic, Boston's new #17

Lucky number "17" for Lucic
Milan Lucic has switched from linebacker to power forward, having traded in his #62 for a little more traditional #17.

"It's got a seven -- I like to have a seven in my number," said a wide-grinned Lucic. "I was born on June 7th."

Lucic, wore '27' with the Vancouver Giants and joins the following Bruins who wore '17':

Barr, Bates, Bauer, Connelly, Cowley, Creighton, DeMarco, Jennings, Jonathan, Markwart, McEachern, McKenney, Norris, Parise, Payne, Prentice, Reid, Rittinger, Sanderson, Schmautz, Stanfield, Tenkrat, & Zamuner.

Today in Bruins History: October 30
A Special Day for Chief!

Bucyk

Record: Home:  4-4-1-2
Road:  3-6-7
Overall:  7-10-8-2

1975 - John Bucyk (left) scores his 500th NHL goal in a 3-2 Bruins win over the St. Louis Blues. Happy Anniversary Chief!