Amid flurry of Bruins and NHL moves, the P.K. Subban trade is still the most jarring
COMMENTARY
Yeah, yeah. I know. I tend to write about the Bruins in this corner of the internet rink only when they’ve won a Stanley Cup or just missed out on winning a Cup. I’ll admit, too, that I’m ready to ditch this column at any moment should Al Horford — let alone Mr. Durant — make a decision on his NBA destination. But, for now, my fourth of July weekend is all about hockey. Cheap beer and grilled chicken, too, yes. But also hockey.
The various and flurried NHL transactions in recent days have been a blast to watch and try to comprehend, even for a sports fan whose preference is the other winter sport. Lord Stanley knows there’s been enough to digest, beginning with the zany 10-15 minute stretch Wednesday afternoon when the Oilers traded Taylor Hall, the Canadiens swapped P.K. Subban in a straight-up challenge trade with the Predators for Shea Weber, and Steven Stamkos decided he wouldn’t bolt the Lightning after all.
That kind of action is irresistible, even to a casual — OK, bandwagon-boarding — hockey fan. How can you not laugh — or cry, I suppose, depending upon your rooting interests — at the realization that Peter Chiarelli has now traded the top two picks in the 2010 NHL Draft? (Has he figured out a way to acquire No. 3 pick Erik Gudbranson from the Canucks, just so he can trade him for some magic beans too?)
… Or that Chiarelli, who should know better than anyone that Milan Lucic is an incurable enigma, for some reason signed the former Bruin to a seven-year deal that takes him through age 35?
… Or that Dennis Seidenberg, who teamed with Zdeno Chara as a lockdown defensive pairing during the 2010-11 Stanley Cup run but was never the same after his knee injury, was bought out by the Bruins, ending the tenure of one of the classiest players in recent history?
… Or that the Bruins — speaking of Chiarelli’s dubious trades — saw Loui Eriksson depart in free agency, but signed longtime Blues center David Backes, just the kind of skilled guts-and-grit player Bruins fans fall for, but one who arrives with some skepticism since he’s already 32?
… Or that Torey Krug, a fine offensive defenseman — and that is not an oxymoron, but perhaps an indictment of his effectiveness in his own end — is now making more than $5 million per year? In all sports, I suppose, we have to ignore the salary and just accept it as the price of doing business if we like the player.
But it’s not a specific Bruins move — or a move by their former general manager, who clearly learned nothing from his failings here — that resonates the most. Instead, it’s a move made by a rival that keeps taking shifts in my sports mind.
The Bruins-Canadiens rivalry is going to dearly miss Subban, and so will you. He’s the quintessential “hate him on the opposition, love him on your team” player, a gulp-and-hold-your-breath threat in big moments (every time he teed up that slapshot from the point in a big spot, you figured it was going to get through Tuukka Rask) and an utter nuisance at all other times (he dove more than LeBron James flops).
You loathed him and feared him and respected him at once. He was dastardly, but not evil, like an Ulf Samuelsson, and it was only magnified by the sweater he wore. It won’t be the same now that he’s in Nashville, just as it wasn’t the same when Patrick Roy got traded to the Avalanche, or if Guy Lafleur had somehow been swapped to the California Golden Seals in the summer of ’75.
My first choice would be for Subban to be a Bruin. My second might be to have him remain in Montreal. Good, respectable villains are hard to find these days. (Not to mention that he is apparently a mensch as a human being, and one who chose not to enflame what some internet cops were trying to portray as a shameful situation for Boston.)
I can’t think of too many Boston sports rivals like him, who you could loathe and admire at once. Derek Jeter? Eh, the national media’s constant buffing of his image and reputation was a bigger issue with him than what he accomplished on the field. Besides, it’s good he stayed in New York his whole career — who would have wanted the Yankees to have a good defensive shortstop? Magic Johnson? Larry respected him and then some, and thus we had to as well. He was as much a born Laker as Bird was a born Celtic.
A terrific rival has moved on. Subban has gone from being a predator versus the Bruins to a Predator versus everyone. Of all of the changes in the NHL this week — even the frigid and necessary dismissal of Seidenberg — this one is the most jarring. I’ll miss Subban, and I’ll miss fearing and loathing him, and it just won’t be the same.
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