Boston Bruins: Another Dougie Hamilton Hatchet Job.
There are times you’ve just got to love Boston media. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile on a five-star hatchet job. Once again, members of the Boston media have decided to take potshots at former Bruin(and now Calgary Flame) Dougie Hamilton. Why? Because he just didn’t want to be part of the Boston Bruins.
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On Tuesday’s episode of Felger and Mazz, on ComCast New England, Mike Felger and Jim Murray discussed how certain players just weren’t part of the team anymore. Murray chose to nail two particular players to the mast when it came to calling out two people who weren’t fitting with the team.
The two players on Murray’s list: Dougie Hamilton and Reilly Smith.
“None of this was a surprise to me,” said Murray. “Everything in Joe Haggerty’s column was told to me over the summer, nearly verbatim from a friend who is close to one of the more prominent Bruins players. He said Hamilton and Reilly Smith began to isolate themselves during the second half of the season. They were both standoffish, not involving themselves with off-ice team activities. And Hamilton especially decided at one point around when the second half of the season started up, that he didn’t want to be part of this club, didn’t want to be around here and just completely separated himself from the team.”
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(Murray admitted that this information was acquired during a drunken conversation with a random source reportedly to be close with a key member of the Bruins.)
In regards to Reilly Smith, I’d say Felger (and a lot of other Boston media people) is on the money. Smith seemed to take his foot of the gas pedal. He certainly came across as one of the ‘passengers’ mentioned by Bruins forward Brad Marchand (and defenseman Torey Krug) during an interview with Joe Haggerty. While I can’t speak for his actions inside the locker room, his on-ice performance was certainly lacking. Sending Smith to the Bruins’ new favorite trading partner, the Florida Panthers, made sense.
In regards to Dougie Hamilton, it seems more like a traditional post-Bruin hit job. Hamilton was no way near the personality problem of Joe Thornton(who wasn’t that bad), no way near the ‘uncoachable’ player as Kessel, (who is still one of the fastest players in the game)and there wasn’t a string of drunken escapades and poorly thought out tweets on Twitter as Tyler Seguin(who seems to thrive in a center position in Dallas).
Taking a look at Hamilton’s advanced stats, one thing pops out. His 5-on-5 performance in 2014-15 wasn’t as good as 2013-14. Was it because Hamilton was a brooding loner? No. The Bruins were without the services of Zdeno Chara were an extended period of time and Dennis Seidenberg certainly didn’t look like he was one hundred percent.
Hamilton was asked to take on a role he wasn’t ready for. He was asked to play top-line defensive duties on a full-time basis with inferior support, and bad things happened in Boston. They missed the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
Dougie was a solid player with Zdeno Chara as his line mate. When Hamilton was asked to work with younger talent, things went awry. Things got usually worse when Matt Bartkowski was on the ice, and that certainly didn’t help Hamilton’s stats. If I was asked to continuously play NHL-level hockey with players that weren’t able to play NHL-hockey(and watch my stats and standings take a nose dive to boot), I might be a little cranky myself.
It’s a shame that Boston media has decided to once again beat the dead horse known as Hamilton’s career in Boston.