So there I am in May of 1998, thinking that either I’m about to pass out or have a heart attack (either would have been a relief at that point), and this calm voice to my right says, “Hey, you’re doin’ fine. We’re almost at the top.”

I was in one of those once-(more may well have killed me)-in-a-lifetime moments. I was riding a road bike alongside Lance Armstrong (don’t get the idea that we were racing -- he could have lost me in two turns of his chain ring). I love to ride my road bike. And not just because, like hitting oneself in the head with a hammer, it feels so good when you stop. I love it because I always learn: how much I’m willing to pay the price; how hard I can push; how I love the “redline” experience; how much I appreciate the true athletic greatness that I don’t have and that so few do. This time, I was learning about Lance, and cancer, and life.

He was back on the bike after having had a testicle removed, having received radiation and chemotherapy, and having had lesions removed from his brain. In the course of shooting the story, Armstrong felt enough trust in us that he gave permission to shoot his X-rays, before and after his cancer. The “before” pictures had golf-ball-sized splotches of white all over his lungs -- ten or twelve of them. The “after” X-rays were clean but for the scar tissue left from his aggressive therapy.

“Miraculous,” said one doctor. 
 
Most of us know Armstrong’s story: the testicular cancer symptoms he denied for so long, the horrific numbers that came back from his first diagnostic tests, his personal doctor who thought to himself that Lance had “no hope,” the incredible care and recovery, and the record seven consecutive Tour de France victories that followed.

What I learned that day from Lance was that focus -- and pursuing something he loved -- mattered in his recovery. It’s what his foundation is about. And it’s what the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is about: support of all kinds for all patients, meaningful outreach to their families, resource referral to all the stakeholders in treatment, elimination of distractions in order to focus everything on the patient and his or her energy to win. 

The goal: to kill this thing that is trying to kill the people we love by taking on the disease medically, emotionally, holistically, completely. As a doctor from DFCI and Harvard said at a fundraiser last fall, “We didn’t come here to do fancy studies about cancer. We came here to kick its [butt].” 

When Armstrong was in the depths of chemo, he told us he would have monologues while going to the toilet, saying to the dead cancer cells he was voiding, “Sorry. You picked the wrong guy. Get the [heck] out of my body.” Flush. 

He talked about how focus worked in a positive way as well, how he likened it to monstrous climbs in the mountainous stages of the Tour. 

He said, “Cycling is a grind. Riding 16 miles uphill without any flats is a grind. And cancer is a grind. When they’re bombing your body with all this toxic stuff, you can hardly talk. Or think. And, like those climbs, I said to myself, ‘This is really going to suck. But I can do it.’ ”

A couple of years ago, I was video scouting the Canadiens on an RDS (the French-language version of TSN, Canada’s ESPN) telecast. I don’t speak a word of French, but I quickly figured out that they had a couple of teenage cancer patients in the announce booth to call play-by-play for a few minutes. I later spoke with Pierre Houde and Yvon Pedneault, the announce team at the time, and they said the kids really had a blast.

Of course! Focus!

“What the heck,” I thought, “we can do this because we have the world’s greatest cancer treatment center right in Boston.” 

We brainstormed the concept at last summer's telethon with Jimmy Fund executive director Mike Andrews, and he was totally supportive. NESN’s executive vice president of programming and executive producer Joel Feld greenlit it from the get-go and pushed everyone to get it done. Senior producer Brian Zechello, director Rose Mirakian-Wheeler and my broadcast partner Andy Brickley all volunteered their full endorsements as soon as we brought up the idea. To the very last man and woman in our production team, there has been a Bruins-under-Julien type of buy-in.

We went to Jimmy Fund patient activity coordinator Lisa Scherber with a plan: We would need her to identify patients/candidates, then we would introduce them to our techniques, prep them with a visit or two to our Garden booth during Bruins games, and let ‘em rip alongside Brick on game night. She picked it up and skated the plan forward like Phil Kessel rushing up the wing, then banged bodies like Milan Lucic to achieve the goal. 

And so I present to you for your Thursday evening Bruins viewing enjoyment: Miss Caroline Fries of Centerville, Mass., and Mr. Eric Miller of Shrewsbury, Mass. 

Caroline is from a hockey-mad family ... always smiling with eyes sparkling through her wild bangs, and a dedicated Bruins fan who used to play hockey with boys before she got sick (“…better to play in those leagues, ‘cause you can bodycheck,” she says). She and her dad, Wesley, have been to a couple of games, and she is bursting with enthusiasm. And yeah, her little brother Connor is riding in on her coattails on game night -- it’s good to have a sister who’s a broadcaster!

Eric played 11 years of youth hockey in Shrewsbury ‘til he got sick, but even being in a wheelchair (and with a cast on his right leg) hasn’t hampered his style. For his “get acquainted” game, he wheeled in so close to the railing we were thinking he’d roll himself right off our ninth-floor perch. At the ready with intriguing commentary and a big (literally as well as figuratively -- he’s a large young man) Zdeno Chara fan, Eric’s a tech-savvy guy … he feels right at home under the headsets.

When I’m wearing the headsets, I honestly can tell you that I am unaware of anything else in the world other than what’s on the ice below. That compressed stream of consciousness, with all its unpredictability, is part of the thrill. When the game is on and your microphone is open, it’s exhilarating as your mind redlines -- as you push your limits -- as you focus on just one thing. And it’s amazing how fun it is.

At the top of that climb with Lance Armstrong, we were able to glide for about a mile and a half. It got easy, and it felt really good. 

Day-to-day life for Caroline, Eric and their families hasn’t been easy for a long time.  But if we can help by embracing them as members of our team and assist in a small way to pull them over the top of a monster climb, it’ll be way more important than anything we’ll ever do over the air. 

We aren’t doctors, but we’re of the belief that sometimes it can be pretty good medicine to work hard and enjoy yourself thoroughly.

That’s what Thursday is going to be about for our NESN production team. Focus and fun. And kicking cancer’s butt.

The genius novelist Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead) pointed out to us that there are no contradictions. If a scenario doesn’t seem to make sense, examine the premises.

OK, so here we are with verbal-wonder-boy/banana-head/rocks-for-brains/Dallas forward Sean Avery teeing off on actress Elisha Cuthbert (his ex-girlfriend) and on Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf, saying something about Phaneuf dating his ex. Strangely enough, before I had heard about this bit of goofiness, I had made a similar -- albeit less vulgar -- reference to Phaneuf dating Avery's leftovers while we taped the first episode of The Instigators (shameless plug: 6 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. every Thursday starting this week). Big deal. So the NHL, harrumph, immediately suspends Avery for an indefinite period.

Precedent and consistency in sentencing are what give laws meaning. You murder someone? You die for it or spend every last moment of your life regretting it while staring at a concrete wall. You kill someone in a fight the other guy started? You get less time than the guy in the next cell who was guilty of murder. I use this as an example, not to equate hockey to real life -- so please don’t misconstrue the literary device.

In the manner of precedent and consistency, all NHL suspensions should be measured against the two games that Randy Jones got for nearly killing Patrice Bergeron -- and that Scott Hartnell got for trying to pop Andrew Alberts' brains like a teenage zit in a mirror.

I was at TD Banknorth Garden on Oct. 27, 2007. I could smell the fear in the air. Most of us thought that Bergeron would never walk again. The replay clearly shows Jones coiling to energize the impact of his hit while looking straight at Bergeron’s numbers, then unloading with full force while Bergeron is bent at the waist, blindly retrieving the puck against the end boards.

I really like Mike Milbury, but he is dead wrong in saying that Bergeron put himself in a vulnerable position. In fact, Bergeron skated straight to the puck to win the race and was victimized by a player immersed in a "back with a vengeance" (the official team motto for Philly last season) mentality. Jones had Bergeron at his mercy, and hit to hurt. Not to win the puck, but to hurt. Third-degree concussion, broken nose, brutalized neck, 72 games and seven more in the playoffs missed

A little over a month later, Alberts went to one knee in the neutral zone to control a bouncing puck along the boards. Hartnell skated straight at him and blasted his hip into the side of Alberts’ head. Alberts was never the same in a Bruins uniform. Two games.

So let’s examine the premises: Two dues-paying members of the NHL Players’ Association have their careers, even their day-to-day lives, put into peril and the perpetrators of those acts get two games each. A known knucklehead loudmouth spouts off about a pretty girl who dumped him and her Norris-trophy-nominated defenseman and gets suspended "indefinitely."

If Avery’s suspension lasts more than two games, then the premises say this: The NHL is far more concerned with nasty morning-skate trash talk than life-threatening conduct on the ice. It feels that Avery’s loutish behavior is a greater threat to the integrity of the game than Randy Jones ramming Bergeron or Hartnell trying to turn Alberts’ cerebellum into a paintball bullet. Its actions say that talk is more dangerous than cheap-shot action.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words? That’s something that’s really scary! Let’s eliminate that!

There’s your justice department, ignoring its own precedent and being just plain goofy in its loopy methods of discipline.

Avery is an embarrassment to himself, his team and the game. But what’s more embarrassing is a league’s overreaction to abused free speech while, in the same stretch of time, failing to produce a behavioral change by meting out meaningful punishment of truly dangerous acts.

It’s such a fine line. Small, that is. A non-displaced fracture often shows up as a thin band of gray in the mass of white bone on the X-ray.

In a season in which Andrew Ference has shown us all that he can do -- and how well he can do it -- his final seconds on the ice (to date) were his finest moment. Montreal's Andrej Markov unleashed a bomb of a one-timer that nailed Ference on the tibia, the weight-bearing bone in his lower right leg.

The impact knocked Ference off balance. The pain brought him to his hands and knees, behind the goal line and near the diagonal stripe of the back-of-the-net trapezoid. As Ference tried to sort out the pain from the situation (Montreal was on a power play), he picked his head up just in time to see Markov cocking and firing another bullet that was going wide -- and right past his face, thundering into the end boards. The Canadiens worked their de facto 5-on-3 and got another scoring chance, but in the meantime, Ference got himself back onto his skates.

I don't know how many of you have had fractures, but I've had a couple, and I can tell you that even the "non-displaced" kind feels as if the structure has turned to wet cardboard and that someone has targeted your broken bone with a jackhammer -- except there's no pause between the blows of pain.

With no apologies, Ference's most recent shift recalls a section from Kipling's epic "If" ...

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will that says to them, 'Hold on!'

Well, here's the whole thing. I recommend that you pour yourself a full cup of coffee and soak it up. It's worth memorizing actually.

Getting back to Ference, who -- on will -- was a two-skates-and-a-stick tripod (he was hop-gliding around in desperation, trying to make himself useful as Montreal swirled on the power play) and, of course, the puck squirted into his corner.

So, against the full-functioning Habs, Ference got to the puck first and, one-footed, almost in an arabesque with his wounded leg held aloft as a counterbalance, he fired that sucker down the river. He got the job done. It was a remarkable act of athleticism and courage, and I shall remember it forever.

Back in the now-a-day, it's up to the six remaining defensemen to get the job done. Zdeno Chara, Dennis Wideman, and Aaron Ward will absorb some of the minutes, but that isn't a long-term solution. In their first two games WF (without Ference), the Bruins faced third-period onslaughts.

They surrendered a two-goal lead to a very good Rangers team in Manhattan and lost in a shootout. Two nights later, they saw Tim Thomas hold the fort as a plucky Toronto bunch stormed his net and ran its post-ringing total to five for the game (unofficially) only to see Boston prevail 3-2. Once is coincidence, twice is a trend?

Maybe. It's hard to tell in the midst of this 10-games-in-18-days stretch, but it appears that not having Ference to make calm plays out of the defensive zone has compromised the Bruins' ability to take the attack to their opponents in the third period. Going into the Rangers' game, the B's were plus-8 in third-period goal differential, third-best in the NHL. In the two games WF, they are minus-3 in the third.

Yes, it is a small sampling, but in a league in which the difference between very good teams and those who struggle to make the playoffs is so small, it provides a model to hack away at the Bruins: Go at them with full energy for 60 minutes, hoping that you'll wear them down and that they'll be stuck in their own end when the game is being decided.

If a trade is what's needed, don't forget -- while you're speculating -- to make sure to do the subtraction while you do the addition. Make sure you understand exactly what you're giving up to get a puck-moving defenseman, and that the team can continue to play at a peak without those players.

Picks? Trade them away in the cap era, and watch your future sail over the horizon. A continuous supply of young talent that fits the philosophical mold is the lifeblood of a contending team.

The best possible solution is to see Mark Stuart and Matt Hunwick turn into the David Krejci and Vladimir Sobotka of 2009 -- to have these two young players consume their added, needed, ice time with not only competence but also significant growth. It appears that the Bruins are giving the pair that chance for which some players wait a hockey lifetime, never to get it.
 
Ference now waits while the two screws surgically inserted Monday (to compress the break) do their work, and his self-healing capabilities do the rest. Then, when that fracture goes away, he will get back to doing what he does so well: contributing in every phase of the game to this promising Bruins team.

Between winning and losing? Between enduring those third-period rallies, and seeing points bleed away in shootouts? Between first in the Northeast and swimming in the sixth-through-tenth-place shark tank? Between having young defenseman step up, and the team having to give up significant resources to plug an eight-week hole?

It's a fine line. And it feels like a tightrope right now.

What is a cheap shot?

The most pristine definition I can muster is "an out-of-the-norm act that takes advantage of a vulnerable opponent."

For an example, take a look at what Steve Ott attempted to do to Stephane Yelle on Nov. 1. In the middle of in-front-of-the-bench traffic at the tail end of a shift, with the puck well out of the frame, Ott ducked his hips, head and shoulders all the way to Yelle's knee level and went for contact.

Checks, as Andrew Ference so eloquently put it, are meant to separate a man from the puck -- not to injure someone. Ott wasn't trying to separate Yelle from the puck. He wasn't trying to "finish his check." He was aiming at Yelle's knees, not only to take Yelle out of the game but also to get under the Bruins' skin.

Later on, Ott -- well after the whistle -- took the same approach toward Milan Lucic as Lucic was gliding along the boards in the neutral zone. Neither example was judged to be a penalty.

What was the purpose of these little bits of insight into the character of Steve Ott? Was he just doing his job, to agitate the Bruins and try to get Dallas on power plays by inciting acts of retaliation from Boston? Is this the kind of behavior the NHL wants on its playing surfaces? Is this the conduct the league wants to permit, or even -- by tacit approval -- promote?

When all heck broke loose in the third period -- when the Bruins had judged enough to be enough, and lit the fuse on the powder keg by igniting a brawl -- Ott conveniently got a ten-minute misconduct with eight-and-a-half minutes remaining in the game. The cheap-shot artist started the brouhaha, but never had to face punishment for it. This is what Steve Ott is made of.

Reports from reliable eyewitnesses in the tunnel, where Ott chose to observe the proceedings despite his banishment, had Ott seeking out and engaging Boston fans and initiating some of the most disgusting verbal offerings I've ever had related to me. A man, whose female companion had been accosted and insulted with phenomenally insulting lewd language, did what Ott had hoped the Bruins would do: He spat on Ott, and got thrown out of the building.

So someone who is passionate enough about hockey to pay a significant chunk of change to advocate the sport loses his temper in a brief moment of stupidity, while the person who fomented the near-riot on the ice gets a ten-minute penalty, showers, dresses, gets on the bus and flies the charter out of town.

No excuses for any fan who engages in such conduct … but when it comes to players respecting themselves, each other, and the game? An expensive shot to Steve Ott's wallet would be a good place to start showing a sincere effort.

I have no way to know this, but I would be surprised if Claude Julien’s sock drawer is a mess. A coach’s ability to organize and execute inevitably reveals itself in the way his team plays.

Julien inherited Team Entropy in the summer of ’07. The Bruins’ biggest investment -- one of the best defensemen in the NHL -- was coming off a minus-21 season. Goaltending looked uncertain, but who really knew with the way the Bruins' ‘keepers were getting bombarded?  The lines were a collection of promise, age and peripheral players.

So Julien started where he and Peter Chiarelli believe that games -– and ultimately much more -- are won:  right in front of the defending goal. It was defense first and only for about 25 games. How quickly the reputation spread, though. People got a first look at the Bruins playing ultra-structured, no-chance-taking hockey in their own zone and displaying the most suffocating trap in the league… and they got labeled as “boring.” 

Julien actually began to loosen the reins (albeit millimeter by millimeter) last winter in order to attempt to stimulate the offense. However, it was his ability to make his system clear to his players (and Scott Gordon’s similar attributes with his Julien-inspired system in Providence) that saved the season. Ultimately, it was the organization at the defensive end that enabled the Bruins to finish eighth. It was that system that provided the platform for the seven-game series against Montreal. Did anyone out there find that series dull? 

This season, Julien has a different set of circumstances. Zdeno Chara was the East’s Norris Trophy finalist in ‘08, so one can logically draw from that that he was the best defenseman in the conference. Julien’s other players came to camp knowing -- from day one -- what he requires. His young guns are another year more developed (how hot is Phil Kessel and is his shot release approaching Joe Sakic quickness?), and he has defensemen who clearly relish all three syllables of the name of their position.

They all have bought in, and Julien knows it. So he has given the D-men something new -- the freedom, based on their individual judgment in the flow of play, to jump up on the attack.  The threat of that alone has teams defending slightly differently against the Bruins … and the execution of the defense jumping up is yielding far more reward than it is exposing risk.

It is a logical progression, building from the defensive goal, out. The B’s are now among the best 5-on-5 teams in the NHL. If you use 5-on-5 goal differential as a meter (and it has been a pretty reliable one through the years), the early showing provides plenty of cause for optimism.

Check out this link. Scroll through a few seasons of the team summaries, resorting by clicking the “5-5 F/A,” which gives you rankings of teams in 5-on-5 goals for-and-against ratios. You’ll see the Bruins among this season’s elite, and you’ll recognize from seasons past that those among the elite have had great winters.

Yes, the penalty kill still needs a lot of work, and those shootouts have cost the Bruins a couple of big divisional points. But the most encouraging thing the Bruins have displayed through the first two weeks of the season is that they continue to get better -- a reflection of the direction Julien provides.

Organized, methodical, logical, progressive.

You think it’s boring? Stuff a sock in it. I know where to find ‘em, I think. What color do you want?

Can a team get to the top without commitment from the top of the organization? Cynics for years have taken shots at Jeremy Jacobs (fill in the insult here), but the nattering nabobs of negativity would be well-served to take a long look at the developments of the last week before inserting skate boot in mouth with a similar accusation this season.

In a period of unprecedented financial implosion, consider this: The Northeast Division's teams rank 1-2-3-5-26 in home attendance. Philly interrupts the dynasty at  No. 4, but other than the Flyers, the top five is Montreal-Buffalo (helped by the outdoor game but the Sabres sold out the season in a big building last winter)-Ottawa-Toronto … and the Bruins were fourth from the bottom of the league. 

It's still a gate-driven game, and that means the B's are at a considerable money-in/money-out disadvantage when judged head-to-head with their division rivals.

But the Bruins are exploiting the loophole in the salary cap in order to put a more competitive team on the ice. They bought out Glen Murray and waived Peter Schaefer … which means that, in addition to being hard against the cap, they're eating about $3.4 million in dead salary this season. 

Even if they were to dangle Schaefer and another NHL team picked him up, the B's would be stuck with half the cost of his salary ... so no matter what, Schaefer’s waiver is going to cost the Bruins at least $1.1 million. Why? Because Blake Wheeler is a better player.  Simple as that. Wheeler does more for this team than Schaefer, but unless the ownership decided that it was worth another million (at least) to improve the competitiveness of a team that is badly outdrawn by its most direct rivals, the scenario could be a lot different.

No excuses. No feeling sorry for themselves. That’s the attitude from the top. And these Bruins get the message. 

We’re off and running ... or flying, to be more specific. Beautiful day to travel to Denver, as we head out onto the tarmac at Hanscom on a crisp autumn day. We’re all looking forward to what could be a really exciting season. Welcome aboard.