Milan Lucic: The New King Still Loves The Boston Bruins
Today, former Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic received his new jersey as a member of the Los Angeles Kings. ”I expected the unexpected. I definitely didn’t expect to get traded to a team like L.A., but I couldn’t be happier to end up in a spot like this with a team like this,” said Lucic of his trade at the Kings’ practice facility.
”On paper, without me, they are still, I would say, one of the top five best teams in the league,” – Milan Lucic on his opinion of the LA Kings
Lucic reflected on his eight seasons with the Boston Bruins during the press conference.
”Like the ad (which he put in the Boston Globe yesterday) said, it was a big part of my life,” offered Lucic. ”I got to win a Stanley Cup there on an Original Six franchise and bring it back where greats like Bobby Orr got to play. It was a real special time for myself and I just kind of wanted to close the chapter of my life there with something like that.”
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In Lucic’s eight years in the Black and Gold, he had put up three hundred and forty-two points. He scored 139 goals, and brought a bit of snarl back to Boston hockey. He was part of the squad that brought the Stanley Cup to Boston in 2011.
Lucic is slated to end up on the Kings top line. He will be paired with perennial Selke contender Anze Kopitar (who lost to Patrice Bergeron these last two years), and Marian Gaborik. Gaborik will likely move to the right wing, and this top line has the potential to be one of the most dangerous in the NHL.
”I don’t want to stand here and give any guarantees about how many goals I’m going to score, but when you’re playing with two great players like that, you always try to set new goals and higher goals for yourself,” said Lucic. ”I just want to get myself back to the player that I know I can be. I’m still young. I feel like I’m just getting into my prime years here, and from talking to the management here they have full confidence in myself and being the player I can be.”
Lucic is playing through the final year of his three-year, $18 million dollar contract. It was contracts like these that led to the end of the Peter Chiarelli era in Boston. The Bruins struggles with the salary cap forced new general manager Don Sweeney to make bold moves in order to keep his team a contender. One of those biggest moves was sending Lucic to Los Angeles.
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Lucic understands that he’ll be singing for his supper this season. While he knows that’s important, he just wants to focus on doing the best job possible for his new team.
“You don’t want to put the emphasis on that heading into the season. You want to put the emphasis on playing well and the team winning, and like I said, that usually takes care of itself if you’re focused on the right things.”
“At the end of the day, for me, looking at this season going forward, you want to have a good season just because if you’re looking at the team, of the opportunity that you have, as a player, when you look at your lineup, you realize that as you get older that you don’t get to have that many opportunities to play on that many great teams like this. If the team’s winning and everything’s going well, all the personal stuff tends to take care of itself. But obviously, yeah, this is going into a UFA season, and I do always set high standards for myself regardless if it is a new contract or not, and that’s no different going into this season.”
Lucic’s performance next year will certainly tell us how right Don Sweeney was in moving the power forward out west.