James Hagens is silencing the biggest concern about his game

The Boston Bruins slow-played James Hagens' entry into the NHL last season by starting him in the AHL and limiting his minutes once he reached the NHL. One primary concern was his attention to detail in the defensive zone and whether he could play against the league's best night in and night out as a 19-year-old.

We are long past the point of anyone having concerns about that, and it now feels impossible to imagine Hagens ever being pulled from the lineup for performance reasons. The team's former first-round pick is now an important piece, less than two years removed from that draft, and the worries everyone had last season seem almost foolish.

Instead of looking at this negatively and saying the front office and Marco Sturm didn't know what they were talking about last season, I'm going to say slow-playing was the right move here. If the Bruins had fed Hagens to the wolves, he might not have developed this defensively reliable part of his game or become one of the team's important pieces this quickly.

Hagens is now tied with Ivar Stenberg for first with nine points in the rookie scoring race. He is also tied with Roman Kantserov and Trevor Connelly with four goals. The offense is starting to blossom, but he is also leading the entire league, not just rookies, in blocked shots among forwards with 16 - an impressive stat for someone who couldn't play last season because he might not be responsible enough.  

James Hagens is more than just an offensive player

Hagens certainly has some warts still in his game, as does almost every other 19-year-old who hops over the boards into an NHL game. I'm sure some of those blocked shots came when he was caught out of position in the defensive zone and had to make up for it, or when he failed to get a puck out off the wall and had to bail himself out.

Nevertheless, the rookie hasn't hurt the Bruins, which is all Sturm can really ask for. In fact, with Elias Lindholm and Casey Mittelstadt on his line, Hagens now has to play some important defensive minutes, and none were more important than his performance Saturday night against the San Jose Sharks.

Any forward who wasn't defensively responsible would've been caved in by Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith, no matter how good his two linemates were. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, as in their game against Celebrini, but when the Sharks' forwards got into the offensive zone, the makeshift trio didn't give up much either.

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