These Boston Bruins have gone from DOA to full throttle
AP Photo
COMMENTARY
Well now the Boston Bruins have gone and done it.
Despite what many of us took for hollow hope from this team’s front office in the wake of its construction, this team wasn’t even supposed to be here. Not now. Not yet.
Too old. Too young. Not enough defensive depth. A lame-duck head coach. A premium-priced goalie delivering bargain-basement results. No identity.
At least, that’s the way things looked only a little more than a month ago, when in this space, we declared the 2015-16 Bruins a mess, lacking direction and focus.
“I was excited about the potential,’’ Bruins head coach Claude Julien said after a 5-4 loss to the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 17. “There’s reason to be excited about the potential, because we’ve seen it. But disappointed in the fact that you never know what you’re going to get, either from period to period or game to game. That’s the disappointing part right now.’’
The Bruins, at 8-7-1, were indeed a disappointment. Not that anybody around here expected that June might boast another run at there Stanley Cup, but the offseason shredding and rebuilding of this team seemed to have paved a long road en route to becoming the sort of team that president Cam Neely and general manager Don Sweeney have in mind.
Of course, these are also the same Bruins who can overtake the Montreal Canadiens for first place in the Atlantic Division with a win Tuesday night over the visiting St. Louis Blues.
The Bruins’ turnaround has been nothing short of remarkable. Coming off Sunday’s 2-1, shootout win over the New Jersey Devils, the Bruins are in the midst of an 11-1-3 streak, rocketing them into fourth place in the Eastern Conference, only a point in back of both the Canadiens (2-8-0 in their last 10, reeling without the injured Carey Price) and New York Islanders, yet still a healthy 10 behind the first-place Washington Capitals.
The Bruins were in 11th place in the conference on Nov. 19 with 17 points, just as many as the Buffalo Sabres, and one more than the Philadelphia Flyers and Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flyers, Sabres, and Leafs remain 11th, 13th, and 14th, respectively, in the East. The Bruins have amassed 25 points since then, and find themselves in the upper echelon of the conference.
“I don’t think you can put a time limit on how fast things will jell together,’’ Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara said. “We are better than we were at the start of the season. Sometimes it’s quicker, sometimes it takes time, but I think that we try to make everyone comfortable and aware of the situation we’re in, how we want to play, how we want to improve. It takes 24 guys to buy into it and follow that plan.’’
But first, the coach has to buy into it, and while it didn’t seem that this was a team that Claude Julien could have success with — a veteran presence that depends on contributions from a younger set, a defense lacking presence, and a penalty kill that couldn’t stop the 2010-11 Bruins power play. But Julien, left twisting in the wind by Bruins management during the offseason as Neely and Sweeney decided whether or not to bring him back behind the bench, has adapted, and the results have been eye-opening.
“We’re achieving a lot of different things,’’ Julien said. “We wanted to get our transition game going well this year. We wanted to remain good defensively, which we, lately in the last month or so, we’ve gotten back to. But the physicality is something the Boston Bruins always like to have.
“We’ve adapted to the games and kind of done the right things to find ways to win.’’
So much for losing Chris Kelly, the Bruin that fans most like to needle for his contributions, even though most of them presumed the team would desperately miss his two-way style of play and ability to kill penalties when he went down for the season with a broken femur last month. Yet during the last month, the team has gone from dead-last shorthanded to 16th in the league (81.2 percent). Meanwhile, Tuukka Rask, who posted a 3.29 goals against in October, and 2.67 last month, has a GAA of only 1.18 in December. But this was never really about talent, even considering a guy like Rask and his struggles to begin the season.
“Obviously we got a new GM, we got some new faces, so kind of getting used to the system, and getting used to each other,’’ forward David Krejci said. “You have to create chemistry off the ice and then kind of click on the ice as well. It takes some time. After those ten games, I thought we were rolling pretty good. We were winning games, even if we lost a game it was in overtime, or we lost by one goal. I thought we have something good going but we have to keep it up.’’
A year ago on this date, Boston was 17-14-3, only good enough for ninth place in the East. Of course, the team would amass 96 points and remain on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. After letting Peter Chiarelli and his confusion of the cap go to Edmonton, the Bruins are on a 108-point pace, a lofty goal that they can’t presume they’ll arrive at without some help along the way.
“We have some cap space which we haven’t had in a while so we have opportunities down the road,’’ Neely said prior to the season. “If there’s a situation that arises where Don feels like he can do something that can help us improve, I really feel like we’ve got guys who want to compete for Stanley Cups on our roster. We brought in guys that do want to compete- they want to win. And you know we’ll see where things go throughout the season. But I like the fact that we have opportunities to improve if need be and that’s you know it’s a lot easier to do that when you can add without having to subtract.’’
That might have been a shot across the bow to Chiarelli, but it was also a precursor to Julien keeping the ship afloat. Alas, now the Bruins no longer have to decide if they are contenders by the NHL trading deadline. Barring another morose stretch like the one that plagued them last season, they already are contenders, looking for a piece of significance to put them over the top. That means a Top 4 defenseman, for starters.
It won’t be cheap, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a front office that insisted it wasn’t in full rebuild mode, right?
Photos: Remembering the Big, Bad Bruins
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