Boston Bruins: Front Office Keeping The Faith
The Boston Bruins have had an ugly start to the season. At the moment, the Boston Bruins are ranked 29th overall in the league. The only team that is fairing worse than the Black and Gold is the Los Angeles Kings. (Makes you wonder how bad of an idea that Milan Lucic trade was.) While many of the fans are discouraged the front office is still optimistic about the Bruins chances.
More from Bruins News
- Bruins release Prospects Challenge roster, schedule Tuesday
- Bruins bringing back familiar forward on tryout contract
- The Bruins should take a look at these four free agents
- NHL Network lists Ullmark as sixth-best goalie in the league
- The Lasting Legacy of David Krejci
At the beginning of the season, the Bruins tried to reassure the fans about the team. The front office doubled down on its faith and commitment about their captain, Zdeno Chara. “I don’t want to be writing off Zee. He’s in such great shape, and he really looks after himself as good as anybody does. Just because of his size and strength, he really makes it difficult for players,” said Bruins President Cam Neely just before the season started. “I think what we’ve added that we didn’t have in the past is some more skating ability outside of what we’ve had. We can get out of our own zone a little quicker, and make it a little less taxing if we’re not playing in our zone as much. . . especially last year.”
The Bruins still have faith in their 38-year old captain. While the Bruins weren’t successful in Chara’s return, the Bruins number one defenseman did help mitigate the damage while he was on the ice. Neely wasn’t just supportive of the captain, but every player on the team.
“You can’t really just say it’s about one player though, right? I think he’s one of the best – if not the best – defensive defensemen, and I think his reach alone is something that makes it very difficult on players. He’s so strong and he’s very smart. But it’s more about the group. We have a world class goalie in Tuukka, we feel our backup situation is going to improve and I think our forward group is deeper through the four lines.”
Live Feed
Puck Prose
“The takeaway pieces that are important to our team is that you better make sure that you have your depth,” said Bruins general manager Don Sweeney about the team just before the start of the season. “Training camp has allowed us to see if there are some players that are going to emerge. As far as taking 29 or 30 minutes a night, Zee is capable of playing it.”
Chara put in a solid 22 minutes in first game out. If Chara’s knee can hold up, then it is still quite possible of him playing at that level. If he can do that, then the Bruins will be able to climb out of their current hole.
“But it’s like with Tuukka where if we roll him out there 82 nights, he’s not going to play as well,” said Sweeney. “We’d like to be smarter when we utilize. It doesn’t mean that Zee’s impact on the game – or Dennis [Seidenberg] when he comes back – won’t be equal to what it was, but if we do a better job of spreading around the minutes we’ll be better off in the long run.”
So the Bruins advice to the fans is this; Stay the course. Once Seidenberg comes back (in as soon as two weeks), the Bruins will sort out their defensemen. Once that happens, things will start to look up for the team. If Tuukka Rask finds his old game, then things will get better in Boston. The B’s still have 79 games left to play this season, and they just might surprise us after all.