Boston Bruins: Quest For The Cup – Day 4
May 14, 2014; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask (40) stretches prior to game seven against the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs at TD Banknorth Garden. Mandatory Credit: Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports
Tonight was the Bruins organization’s Black and Gold scrimmage where the NHL and AHL Bruins, selected rookies and a few invited to try out got to show off their skills at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Tonight was a game that was measured more in pride than points. Team Black (captained by Zdeno Chara and David Krejci)routed Team White (captained by alternates Chris Kelly and Patrice Bergeron) 6-1.
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There was a lot of rough and frankly sloppy play throughout the game. Black and Gold looked more like Black and Rust those first two periods. Bruins general manager was pretty direct with the media in his first few sentences. “I think it showed that we only had two days of practice,” offered Chiarelli. “It’s about working out the kinks. You saw what I saw. There weren’t a lot of plays being made. It was more about mistakes, and it’s best to get that out the way, but it was a good exercise for us, and a good exercise for Providence.”
It certainly was a good exercise for the Providence Bruins. All seven goals were scored on the sticks of AHL players. David Krejci was the only Bruin to get a point in the game, an assist on Chris Casto’s opening goal. Tyler Randell was the star of the evening for Team Black. He had a three point (two goal) game, and was clearly the best player on the ice tonight. Randell was able to get a long range shot past Tuukka Rask to make the score 3-0 six minutes in to the second period. He’s a gritty player to have more in common with Shawn Thornton than Loui Eriksson, but he danced around the ice tonight and put his name in the mix to earn a NHL job in October.
Chiarelli thought that that Tyler Randell is a tough character and “always shows something here or there”. He also said that Alexander Khokhlachev played well, Ryan Spooner had flashes of NHL quality, and that Chris Casto has really improved(he outran Daniel Paille twice) from last season.
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Matt Lindblad was another P-Bruins player with experience in Boston who played well tonight. He was the only other person on the ice to put a multi-point game. He earned assists on the goals made by Jared Knight and Khokhlachev. Casto, Zach Trotman, and Alexander Fallstrom all scored goals in tonight’s event.
It was a rough night for the Boston Bruins in general. Tuukka Rask looked sluggish and allowed two goals that the Rask of a few months ago would have intercepted with ease. Tuukka finished with fifteen saves on eighteen shots (.833 save %). Patrice Bergeron spent more time in the sin bin than Brad Marchand tonight (No, seriously.). While the Marchand /Bergeron combination was promising, they weren’t able to connect on any big plays during the game.
One of the players that did managed to impress was Jordan Caron. (Again, I’m completely serious.) While his skating was at times choppy, he was able to break up two scoring opportunities and at times looked more like a defenseman than a forward. As the thirteenth forward last season, he’s trying to hard to get a slot this season, and he may be able to earn one.
Niklas Svedberg was the only goalie that was perfect tonight. He stopped all sixteen shots on goal in his thirty-one plus minutes of ice time. Malcolm Subban only allowed the Fallstrom goal with 2:05 left in the game, and many of his saves required more work than Svedberg. Jeremy Smith allowed his first goal on the first shot fired on him by Jared Knight and did his best to contain the surging Black team.
Svedberg may have placed himself in the drivers’ seat for the back up job in Boston with his performance. Subban was almost as good and did make some rather excellent saves tonight. Jeremy Smith had a rough night (not as rough as Rask), but should be able to perform well as the number two goaltender in Providence.
The Boston Bruins had a few players out of the line up for tonight’s game. Milan Lucic was out due to his left, Gregory Campbell hasn’t been cleared to play, and Dougie Hamilton was a healthy scratch due to the amount of defensemen that were on the squads tonight. The Bruins will shake off the rust and get themselves prepared for the pre-season game against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday night.