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Winter Classic Alumni Game highlights and recap: Bruins top Canadiens in a fun, thrilling exhibition

The old guys showed that they've still got it, treating 40,000+ fans to a shootout win over the Canadiens' old-timers.

By Dan.Ryan
Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

The "old" guys still have plenty of gas in the tank.

Alumni from the Bruins and Canadiens put on a great show for more than 40,000 fans at Gillette Stadium today, with the Bruins coming out on top, 5-4 in a shootout, behind Ray Bourque's snapshot goal.

Highlights

These GIFs come from Marc Dumont of Montreal's SBN blog, Eyes on the Prize. Marc is good people.

The best

  • The Bruins' line of Marco Sturm, Sergei Samsonov and Mark Recchi looked like it could still be an effective NHL line today. Granted they were playing against retirees, but still: the entire offense went through that line, and they were fun to watch.
  • Recchi had two goals, Sturm had a goal and Samsonov had a goal and three assists. ON FIRE!
  • The atmosphere was pretty good for a game like this. It's just an exhibition; the main goal is for no one to get hurt. But the fans clearly appreciate seeing their old favorites out there again, and enjoyed getting a chance to boo the likes of Alex Kovalev one more time.
  • Chris Nilan, a Boston native who spent time on both teams, came out for warm-ups wearing a jersey that had a Montreal front and a Bruins back. He later change to a plain Habs one, but the split loyalties jersey was pretty cool.

The worst (joking)

  • Don Sweeney had a breakaway from the red line in early in the game, and got stoned by Jose Theodore. When asked about it after the game, Sweeney said that breakaways weren't his thing as a defenseman, that he was out of his element. The GM certainly had a good sense of humor about it.
  • This was only noticeable because it was at night, but the lighting of the stadium combined with the heaps of fake snow around the rink make the ice look strangely brown in color, like dirty dishwater. Not the look the NHL is going for.
Postgame, the refrain was the same for all of the players: it started out as fun, but the competitive spirit kicked in after the blood got flowing.

After all, is there really such a thing as a "boring" Boston-Montreal game?

At the end of the game, there could only be one MVP: the Doctor himself.

In This Stream

2016 Winter Classic Alumni Game Stream

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