For two preseason games now, the Boston Bruins faithful have seen Ryan Spooner, Jimmy Hayes and Brett Connolly play together on a line. Whether or not Claude Julien decides to make this a long term line in the regular season remains to be seen, but all signs point to these three “sort of new members” of Boston getting a chance to try things out.
Puck Prose
“We had some ups and downs and all that kind of stuff.” said Ryan Spooner on his performance so far with his new line mates, “We didn’t really get hemmed in our own end which is good to see. I think for the most part it’s been good.” The Boston Bruins will be relying heavily on this third line to produce a big chuck of the offense this year. In order to make the playoffs, they needs to have all four lines clicking and, if these three players end up doing just that, this line could be very dangerous.
Brett Connolly seems to already know exactly what he, and his line mates, are capable of and what their roles are. “Me and Jimmy like to play a north south game and Spoons is up the middle and he’s good on his edges.” Connolly explained during his interview, “Obviously when Spoons has the puck he can make plays for us to the shoot the puck on net.”
Spooner will have two shooters to work with in Connolly and Hayes, so it is up to him to be the line’s playmaker. “Creating chances, you know, I don’t think I’ve done that to the best of my ability right now, so I’m trying to get back into that.” Both Connolly and Hayes have the ability and potential to get close to a twenty goal season, but only if Spooner is able to give them the scoring chances they need.
“Obviously when Spoons has the puck he can make plays for us to the shoot the puck on net.” – Brett Connolly
Such results demand more chemistry and understanding of your teammates, something that will continue to improve as camp comes to a close. “For the most part, it’s been getting better everyday.” continued Connolly, “I think for Jimmy, he’s trying to find out our tendencies too, so we’ve been getting better, he’s been getting better too as the camp’s gone on and we’re looking forward to hopefully staying together for a while here.”
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There are most certainly other options that the Boston Bruins can look at for their third line. Current top six players like Matt Belesky, Loui Eriksson or David Pastrnak could possibly make an appearance. Also, if injuries were to strike, Alexander Khokhlachev, Brian Ferlin, Chris Kelly or Joonas Kemppainen could get a promotion. However, for now, it looks like the Connolly, Hayes and Spooner line is Julien’s choice heading into the end of training camp. It will be interesting to see how long they can manage to stay together.
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