2014 in 8 Days: Top Bruins Moments

(Photo by USA Today Sports)

by Dakota Antelman

2014 for the Bruins started off great got rough in the middle months and ended even rougher. They ended the regular season with their second ever Presidents Trophy by virtue of their clinching the best record in the NHL. 

They rolled into the playoffs and promptly defeated the Detroit Redwings to move to the second round where, after seven games, the Bruins season ended in a game seven loss. 

From there the Bruins blew it up in the offseason. They did not pay Jarome Iginla and thereby lost him to the outbidding Avalanche. They drafted Czech forward David Pastrnak and then promptly traded Johnny Boychuck to the Islanders. 

What has that gotten them? Well, whatever way you put it, with just four days left in 2014, the Bruins are 18-14-3 and out of the playoff mix...

1) Bruins fall to Canadians in second round

After their dominant dispatching of Detroit in the first round, many favored the league best Bruins to easily topple their French Canadian rivals.

The long and the short is that many were wrong. 

The Bruins and Canadians split the first four games of the series. Though the Bruins then won game five to take a 3-2 lead, Montreal used superior speed and puck smarts to win Games Six and Seven.

2) Bruins trade Johnny Boychuck

On October Fourth, just days before the season began, the Bruins traded longtime defensive rock, Johnny Boychuck to the New York Islanders. Though they snagged a pair of second round picks and a conditional third round pick in either the 2016 or 2017 draft, many within the team and the fan base were unhappy with the departure of Boychuck. 

A Bostonian of six years, Boychuck brought physical defense to the top of the defensive zone and played smart up against his own net. Without him, the Bruins defense has been marked with youngsters and penalty kill misalignments. 

3) Zdeno Chara goes down with PCL tear

Without Boychuck, the Bruins needed their few experienced blue-liners to stay healthy. They took their first blow in trying to do that when Zdeno Chara delivered a hit on John Tavares and, in doing so tore his PCL, a ligament in his knee.

Chara missed over 7 weeks of play with the injury and even once he returned, he was nowhere near top shape

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The post Iginla, inaccurately played trials of 2014 Milan Lucic

October 18th, 2014
by Dakota Antelman

One year ago Milan Lucic played 80 games, scoring 24 goals and assisting on 35 others. He was a hitting machine, fore-checking teams into oblivion and mashing pucks loose in unthinkable ways. One year ago, Lucic was an all-star hockey player.

Now, 6 games into his 2014 season, Lucic is yet to score a goal. He has -2 rating and has mustered just 10 shots on goal. Now, Lucic is lost, more reminiscent of a 2012 season in which he would go weeks without a goal and less reminiscent of last year’s wonderful anomaly.  

What changed? The answer is simple; Jarome Iginla left Boston.

Iginla’s time in Boston was short but wonderful. He netted 30 goals, elevating his line mates (Lucic and Krejci) to a higher level of scoring consistency. Despite his success, due to painful cap issues, the Bruins were unable to keep him.

“I had one of the best [years] of my career, one of the most exciting years last year, one of favorite years, the whole experience coming to this,” Iginla said. “I made some good friends that are on their side playing with the team, and we had a very good team. So it was a little different, for sure. It hasn’t been too long, it feels almost like you’ve just been gone for a long vacation, but it’s part of the game.”

The loss of Iginla was painful for the Bruins who definitely recognized the consistency that Iginla played with.

"It was tough from the perspective of losing a player like that who can shoot, a right shot, and is obviously very experienced, a very good player, a Hall of Fame player,” said GM Peter Chiarelli.

At the same time though, Chiarelli felt that his team could fill the void left by Iginla.

“The year before we had a Hall of Fame player in [Jaromir] Jagr, a few years before we had a Hall of Fame player in [Mark] Recchi, so my point is we usually manage to rebound,” he said.

But so far, that has not happened.

The absence of Iginla on the Krejci/Lucic line is glaring and the Bruins are paying the price for not paying the price Iginla demanded in last summer’s market. David Krejci is the only member of the 1^stline who has scored this season as wingers, Milan Lucic and Seth Griffith has been nearly non factors.

What was worse was due to an injury to Krejci in the preseason, the line was missing its center for the first week of the year.

When they played the Avalanche, Iginla discussed how he still had faith in his former line and supported them specially when Krejci returned.

“Oh, I think it’s early,” Iginla said. “I think everything is so magnified at the beginning of the season. I do follow, looking at the scores at night. I’ve got a lot of friends over on the other side, so I follow how they’re doing and stuff, and they’re close games. To get Krech back will be a big boost. He’s a big part of the offense, big part of the team over there. And they’ve had some guys out, so I don’€™t doubt that they’ll be just fine and hard to play against as ever.”

But they are not! The Bruins first line is not fine. Milan Lucic is no longer consistent, Milan Lucic has simply been playing unintelligently this season, making bad decisions and inaccurate plays with the puck.

However the low point came Thursday in Montreal. After a minor penalty for tripping, Milan Lucic flashed an obscene gesture at Canadians fans while skating to the penalty box. He was swiftly fined $5,000 by the league garnering some bad publicity about his professionalism and discipline.

In a scathing column published on ESPN Friday afternoon, reporter, Joe McDonald wrote “…when it comes to pro athletes gesturing toward the fans in the manner in which Lucic did Thursday night? That’s not acceptable.”

AP writer Stephan Harris said in his article in the Boston Herald , “And as much as passion and emotion are key elements in his play, he should be long past the point where he is in need of an anger management course.”

Hockey players are professionals but so far this season, Lucic’s play has begged otherwise. Being so dependent on the presence of another player, as Lucic is with Iginla, is something that is far from appealing. Furthermore, his continually offending fans through lewd gestured and arrant postgame comments has shown that Milan Lucic is no first line rock. 

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Cost per goal is changing the landscape of the NHL: Colorado Avalanche is the team of the future

Since the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, their core that was once renowned as an archaic foundation for a dynastic reign similar to those enjoyed across the NHL in the 70's and 80's. And yet, as the salary cap as sliced down on the team's roster like a butchers knife does a flank of beef, there remains hope. Now devoid of guys like Michael Ryder, Mark Recchi, Andrew Ference, Shawn Thornton, Nathan Hornton, Tyler Seguin, Tim Thomas and now Jarome Iginla, the Bruins have been shown that veteran talent is beginning to become something that no team can win a Stanley Cup off of. 

More and more often now, cup champions have been winning via homegrown and or young talent. In both LA Kings victories, guys like Dwight King, Kyle Clifford and Jordan Nolan have made great, sustained contributions to the team at very little cost. The same could be said for some of the Blackhawks key role players like Dave Bolland, Viktor Stallberg and Nick Leddy who also contributed to the team 2013 Cup win at minimal cost to the team. 

Among many other trends that are all becoming more and more evident in the evolving NHL, rookies are now the way to win. Small figure deals to young players with not enough experience to command any more money allow for teams to get the best bang for their buck. Or more simply, if you are able to base your team around rookie deals and rookies goals you end of paying much less money per goal than you would if you based your team around the Jaromir Jager's and the Jarome Iginla's of the league. 

To solidify that assumption, I point towards the Tampa Bay Lightning. By the end of the year, the Colorado Avalanche had produced a Calder Trophy winning player in Nathan McKinnon. McKinnon scored 24 goals for Colorado last season but cost the team a cap hit of just $925,000. When you divide those two numbers, you are given a cost per goal total of $38,541. When you compare him to Johnathan Tavares who scored the same number of goals in 2014 as McKinnon, the $229,000 the Islanders paid per Tavares goal was nearly 6 times more than that that the Avs paid for McKinnon's goals.  

Now an argument could be made that Tavares had an off year in 2014 that was obviously cut 20 games short by an MCL tear suffered in Sochi and so therefore the stunning rip off that the Islanders suffered was a onetime thing. However, if you look at an player with much less of an offensive reputation than Tavares, the veteran vs rookie cost per goal trend still stays true and says the same thing. The Bruin's Milan Lucic who was not even the top scorer on the team scored 24 goals in 2014 just like McKinnon. But unlike McKinnon, Lucic made 6 million dollars thus inflating his cost per goal to a whopping $250,000 per goal.  

Furthermore, beyond the pay checks handed out to individual players, one could also look to overall team payroll to judge the truth behind this trend. Looking at a veteran heavy team like the Bruins, the overall payroll is whopping. Last season the Bruins paid out over 73 million dollars to a total of 26 players. Those 26 players scored a total of 258 goals in repayment of their team. But much like the sheer rights to name those players on their roster, the Bruins had to pay dearly for all those goals. They had to pay $282,945 for each of those goals. That is an astounding number but some believe that it is a necessary sacrifice because to win a Stanley Cup a team needs veterans.

Nathan McKinnon's Avalanche however, do not agree. As of now, the average age of players listed as Avalanche starters is 25.6 years old. The average age of the players listed as Bruins starters is 27. While almost a year and a half difference is not a very big difference in the spectrum of life, when you take into account the quirks of contract negotiations it is substantial. Most great players start their careers by signing a 3 year rookie deal worth 3 million dollars paid when a player is 19 years old. That deal concludes when a player is 22 at which point a player, if he is good enough, then signs a longer generally 5 yearlong deal that can at times cost a team 20+ million dollars. Obviously the more players under the age of 22 a team has the lower their payroll will be. As of now the Bruins have just 1 such player while the Avalanche have 3.

As a result of that that they paid their players a total of only $54,799,000 last season which amounts to a cost per goal of $239,995. That is $42,949 fewer dollars than those paid per goal by the Bruins.  

So what does this all mean? This means that unless teams like the Bruins, Penguins and Blackhawks ditch their veteran hungry ways, they will quickly run out of money. Looking forward if the NHL continues to turn towards this rookie driven future than we could be treated to a nearly constant turnover of NHL dominant teams as the worst teams one year nab top picks the next and run away with the league for a few years before loosing their stars and falling back to the bottom. 

*** Please note ***

All salary statistics for this report were gathered from Capgeek.com and Sportscity.com. 

All ages of players discussed were gathered from Bostonbruins.com and Coloradoavalance.com.

All goals scored statistics discussed in this report were gathered from NHL.com

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Thoughts on Jarome Iginla signing 16 million dollar 3 year deal with Colorado: Iginla's priorities mixed up by deal

When free agency began early on the first day of July, the Bruins watched as three key players were hacked off their roster. The first of those was backup goalie Chad Johnson who signed a 2 year 2.6 million dollar deal with the Islanders. The second was the beloved 4th line anchor, Shawn Thornton who signed an identical deal with the Florida Panthers. But neither of those two losses were the most painful nor the most surprising.

Chad Johnson was widely known to be a short term fix in goal while the Bruins prime young prospects like Niklas Svedberg and Malcom Subban for an NHL job and especially after the Bruins upped Svedberg's contract last month this move was expected. The Shawn Thornton loss, though crippling to the Bruins' forth line was also expected. We were told almost 2 weeks ago that Thornton would not be resigned by the team.

All of these were expected. The loss of Jarome Iginla especially to the Colorado Avalanche was almost bizarre. After toughing it out in a city that never won anything for over a decade, Iginla decided last season that it was time to win the Stanley Cup. He shortlisted 4 teams he would accept a trade too. Those teams were the Chicago Blackhawks, the LA Kings, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins and they all had one thing in common. They were all recent cup winners with the personnel and coaching styles that could help them win again. When Iginla was traded to the Penguins they were on a 15 game win streak and were poised to win the cup. When he was signed a year later by the Bruins they were a team in defense of the Eastern Conference Title and were really just one step away from winning in 2014. The point of all of these travels made by Jarome Iginla was to find a place where he could win a Stanley Cup and now suddenly, he breaks the mold. 

Contrary to the perennial, state of dynastic success that Iginla jumped into in Pittsburgh and Boston, Colorado lacks any established core. Their goaltender, Semyon Varlomov is a man riddled with off ice issues, while their captain, Gabrial Landaskog is just 21 years old. They are a young team that can score on breakouts but lacks any physicality, chemistry or therefore, passing skill. What does that all translate out to in regards to playoff success? Not much. If you look at the past 4 Stanley Cup Champions ('11 Bruins, '12 Kings, '13 Blackhawks, '14 Kings) all of them have played hardball hockey and used established veterans to groom a few young speedsters to greatness. The Avalanche do no have that, meaning that in the time that Iginla is there,  they will really only be able to get him through a series or two before they meet a real champion like the Kings or Blackhawks and get bounced.

His decisions seems bizzare and almost hypocritical as it undermines his reasoning for getting out of Calgary. Choosing Colorado over Boston? What the heck? In this season and many in the past, Boston was a better team and it will stay that way for many years to come. 

But regardless, Iginla did have reasons to leave and both he and his former Bruins GM tried to explain the deal the best they could. Iginla told TSN after the deal with Colorado was signed that,  "It was a tougher decision than I thought. On one hand, it was very, very difficult. I loved playing there, my family loved it, I got a great opportunity and it's a great organization. Their team is, on the ice, a great team and they're going to be contenders for year, but their team off the ice is a great group of guys, too. I love playing with them, but that's on the one hand, it was a tough decision. But on the other, it wasn't, because there wasn't really an opportunity there in a tough position with the cap." 

Frankly, there was an opportunity just not one that allowed the Bruins to pay Iginla 5 million dollars a year for any length of time. If Iginla really wanted to stay in Boston the team would have loved to have him and may have been able to deal him as much as two or three million dollars as well as giving him a much better chance to win a title than he will ever get in Colorado.  But that was not enough.

You see, when we compare this deal and all the others that were drafted by the Bruins before free agency began, they are different in two fundamental categories. Money and skill. The Avalanche offered more money, the Bruins offered much better chances at winning the Stanley Cup. What did Iginla choose? Money. 

Honestly though, what could we expect, this is professional sports. 

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Thoughts on Jarome Iginla's contract situation: Veteran winger a necessity for Boston

Frankly, the Bruins are a team that seems to annually struggle with complying with changing salary cap regulations.

After the Stanley Cup win in 2011, the Bruins found themselves over the salary cap for the next season (2011-2012) and were forced to part ways with their high scoring 3rd line winger, Michael Ryder. A year after that they lost several key depth players such at Jay Pandalfo and Mike Mottou and a year after that the cap stole both Andrew Ference as well as their brilliant rookie backup Anton Khudobin.

But now the Bruins are in danger of suffering a loss even more crippling than any they have suffered post Stanley Cup. Jarome Iginla’s contract is up and as of now he does not seem too willing to take a hometown discount of any sort. The fact of the matter is that Iginla will go to the best team that gives him the best offer and that could include a whole host of teams. Some of those teams are already are already being proactive in their attempt to snatch the Boston stud.  It was announced today that Iginla is now listening to offers from other teams and those potential deals are rapidly increasing in their frequency. If the Bruins do not act soon, Iginla is bound to sign one of those deals. 

But if the Bruins are going to prolong their longevity as a Stanley Cup contender, that cannot happen. In just the 82 games since he was signed last off season, Iginla has taken Boston's offence and made it absolutely lethal, infusing the attack with consistency and order in a way that no one else could. 

Obviously, the Iginla story and his relation to Boston does not just confine itself to this season. Prior to the 2013 season, Iginla had been capturing the imaginations of teams for over a decade as he lit the lamp at a ridiculous pace as the captain of the Calgary Flames. However, after sticking it out as a 30 to 40 goal scorer on a last place team, Iginla decided midway through the 2013 season that it was time to win a Stanley Cup and that was not going to happen in Calgary. Additionally though, after almost locking down a trade deal with Boston, Iginla bailed on the team approving a trade to the Penguins instead. 

Well Bruins fans you all know how that worked out for him. The Bruins swept the Penguins in the Eastern Conference Finals and went on to play in one of the greatest Stanley Cup Finals in history. As a result of that, Iginla went down the "if you can’t beat em' join em'" road, signing a 1.8 million dollar 1 year deal with Boston.   

The Bruins gave Iginla a serious vote of confidence by forgiving his slap to their collective faces earlier in the season and paying him a serious contract to do what he does best. He did that and more in Boston.

You see, the wonder of Jarome Iginla goes beyond just the number of goals he scores. As the Bruins first line anchor, Iginla never went more than 10 games without a goal and actually seemed to score more against good teams in important games than he did in other games. Iginla was also clutch with 10 of his 30 goals winning the games they were scored in. In all truth, Jarome Iginla is the perfect Bruin. Though he scored 30 goals in Boston which is something that very rarely happens largely because of Claude Jullian's selfless style, Iginla was no puck hog. His line mates, Milan Lucic and David Krejci both scored 24 and 19 goals respectively and Iginla assisted on 31 goals scored by his team. 

As shown by those stats in particular, Iginla's consistency was unique in the fact that it helped more than just his game. He revived the games of Lucic and Krejci when they both were beginning to fall from grace and made the Boston first line as physical as it was potent offensively by throwing hits along the boards while Milan Lucic creamed people behind the net.  

If this train of thought seems overwhelming it is because Iginla's commitment and the new blend of offence that he brought to Boston are almost innumerable. Without him Boston would not only have lacked the goals he himself scored but they also would have lacked probably 50% of the goals Krejci and Lucic scored simply because the two of them were down right awful at times in the year before Iginla came to Boston. 

If Iginla never came, if the team was to hurt by his passing up on them in 2013, there is a great possibility that the team could have absolutely crumbled. I say bravo in reaction to Peter Charelli's signing of Iginla last year but also say that he has to pull of such managerial magic once again. The Bruins need Jarome Iginla.

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Bruins lose, season wasted

Are we in Boston spoiled by our divinity in the sports world? Yes. But at the same time are we wrong to when we see a Bruins team with a Vesnia Trophy favorite (Tuukka Rask), a Selkie Trophy finalist (Patrice Bergeron), two 30 goal scorers as well as one of the most balanced attacks in the hockey universe, look at them and expect more than a second round loss? No. 

In truth, we expected a championship. But the Bruins failed to give that to us when they lost to the Montreal Canadians in Game Seven of the semifinals Wednesday night and so, for the sake of complete simplicity, the season has been wasted. 

You see from day one of the season, the Bruins seemed to have had the makeup of a Stanley Cup winning team from top to bottom. As listed earlier, the team has all the right players positioned in all the right places. Their goalie Tuukka Rask dominated the league with 36 wins in just 58 starts. In a season where he started more than 10 more games than he had ever in his career, Rask was consistently amazing.  His GAA held fast at or around 2.00 all season long and not once did his season save percentage dip below .910. From his first few starts of the season, Rask's play was eerily reminiscent of the shutdown hockey played by Tim Thomas in his second Vesna Trophy winning season back in 2011.

But as we turned towards these playoffs, watching the Bruins demolish their March and April opponents with 12 game winning streaks and 14 game point streaks, Tuukka Rask was not the only player on the team whose game was whispering of postseason dominance. 

The entire Bruins top line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Jarome Iginla had taken changes in personal makeup from the season before to the present one in stride. Aside from a few rough weeks as the beginning of the year, Lucic found his regular season scoreing touch coupled with his rediscovery of the body-check as a prime method of intimidation and puck possession and became a huge role player in every Bruins win  this season. At the face off dot, David Krejci actually climbed out of the shadow of Patrice Bergeron this season and gave the Bruins as huge one-two punch at center on each of their top two lines. Also, though he did not score in bunches (aside from his March hat trick against Florida), Krejci's proved his talent cannot be defined by the number in his goals column. After playing in 80 out of 82 games this season, Krejci was a +39 with a team leading 50 assists and an average ice time per game of almost 20 minutes. 

Finally perhaps the best part of the Bruins top line this season was their gifted right winger, Jarome Iginla. After finally signing with Boston during the off-season, Jarome played with a youthful drive that could only be attributed to his lack of a Stanley Cup ring on his finger after over a decade and a half in the NHL. With 78 starts this year, Iginla crafted 2013-2014 into a season involving 61 points, 8 game winning goals and his 13th 30 goal season which just so happened to be the first 30 goal season by a Bruin since 2010-2011. 

In addition to Iginla, Patrice Bergeron also scored 30 goals in 2014.  

All and all, the Bruins were filling the mold of all gritty Cup winners in past few years perfectly and many experts picked them to earn the same finish to their season that the teams who made that mold enjoyed. And in their first round series with Detroit they solidified the expert's reasons for picking them to win it all. 

After losing Game One, the Bruins came back with a vengeance over the course of the next 4 games, winning them all and bouncing the Wings from the playoffs in swift fashion. In that series it was the predicted stars like Rask, Iginla, Lucic, and Krejci that played like the stars they were. 

After winning that series however, off we went to Montreal where it quickly became evident that the Bruins would not breeze though this series. The Canadians snagged game one in double overtime and would have stolen Game Two from Boston if it were not for a historic 4 goal 3rd period by the Bruins that erased a 2 goal lead for Montreal and replaced it with a 5-3 win for Boston. After dropping Game Three, the Bruins found a spark in games four and five delivering crushing hits and relentless shooting en route to back to back wins that gave them an opportunity to win the series in Game Six. 

They gave it their best shot, no, that's not true. In a pivotal Game Six, the Bruins got blasted 4-0. And then came Game Seven which was a disaster from the start. The Canadians came out blazing with 2 goals in the first 30 minutes of the game. Though Jarome Iginla would answer with his 5th goal of the postseason, Danial Briere would seal the game in the 3rd with a power play goal with just about 3 minutes to go. 

When the clock ran out, the Bruins were done. Their season of dominance overshadowed  by a final two games of patheticness and failure. 

"It's going to be tough to swallow this one," Milan Lucic said. 

Yeah, real deep there.

Peter Charelli had a little more thought behind his remarks about the loss. 

"We have a young back line right now and I'm partially to blame if you want to assign blame," Chiarelli said during his annual season-ending news conference. "Maybe we didn't get enough at the deadline, maybe we overestimated the youth and where they were."

Maybe, what if, it does not matter because the Bruin lost one game they had to win. 

Their Presidents trophy no longer matters when all it is followed by is a second round loss, just like any individual accolades awarded to Bruins players do not matter after the team lost when they did. 

After a regular season for the ages, the Bruins could not make things work in the playoffs. So I have two words for you Boston: season wasted.

 

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Dominance redefined: In a superior month of March, Jarome Iginla helped distance the Bruins from the rest of the NHL

In a resurgent season that had already featured 18 goals for Jarome Iginla, the month of March was just plain dominant.

At the beginning of the year, March was earmarked by many in the Bruins following as the biggest obstacle the team would have to overcome this season. Those people cited its ravenous schedule of 17 games in 31 days combined with there being a road trip of 3 games in 3 time zones that once completed gave way to a week of games against a list of teams that included the Blackhawks, Canadians and Capitals. These people saw the month of March, a month that I point out has been one marred with the struggles of the Bruins in recent years, as a month the Bruins would just have to grind through and hope that it would not diminish their playoff positioning too much.

Instead, the Bruins exploded out of the mid February, Olympic Break finding their groove as these March games got under way and slowly but surely climbing to the pinnacle of NHL regular season excellence. As the Penguins went 7-7-4 in March for example, the Bruins went 15-1-1 earning 31 points in the standings, clinching the Atlantic Division, soaring away from the Penguins for the Eastern Conference lead and jumping 3 points clear of the Blues for the number one spot in the entire NHL. Furthermore, with 110 points accumulated so far, the Bruins have already eclipsed each of their points totals in the past 4 seasons and were just 6 points shy of topping their output from 2008 (the largest points total since 1971).

Their defense has helped win them games just as their goaltender has. Those arguments are fairly defended solely by the team GAA average of 1.94, that the Bruins posted in the month of March coupled with the 3 shutouts (2 by Rask and 1 by Johnson) during the same span. But as we look back on this stretch of superiority, it is the offence that has played the biggest role in these 15 wins.

The Bruins have averaged scoring 3.58 goals per game. Among the list of 61 goals scored by the offence, Jarome Iginla and Patrice Bergeron have accounted for 13 and 11 goals respectively with Iginla basically doubling his scoring output for the season in one month and Bergeron solidifying his case for the Selki Trophy awarded to the league's top defensive forward. Iginla and Bergeron both nabbed "3 stars of the week" honors from the NHL during the month while Iginla also finished the month with the number one star.

Iginla's work in March helped lock up his 12th career 30 goal season while also boosting his season +/- to an immaculate +34. He was also clutch as in 4 different games he scored 2 goals against opponents that included the Capitals as well strong goal-tending teams like Phoenix and Minnesota.

But most of all he has been more consistent than any other player in the sport scoreing in 9 of the 17 games in March.

"It's an honor," Iginla said of the award. "It's been an enjoyable month. For our whole team, we've had a great month. There have been a lot of guys who had great months, great streaks. You look at [Patrice Bergeron] -- he's been as hot as I've seen. So it's been good.

"It's been fun, but it's one of those things you don't really expect. I've gotten some good bounces, some great passes from my line mates, and as a line we've had some fun. But bigger than that it's been a great month for our team and we've all benefited from that."

All and all, Iginla has played with a kind of passion this season that even he has not shown in a long time. 

Mighty Jarome Iginla, with all his brilliance has never won a Stanley Cup and he sees this season in Boston as one of his last chances to change that. 

"I definitely feel blessed that this has gone as well as it has," Iginla said. "I was given a great opportunity to play with Krejci and Lucic right from the start. We had some hiccups during the year, even as a team we had some spells and stuff, but we've been able to work through them. I haven't been on a team in my career where you're battling at the top of the standings for pretty much the whole year, and it's fun. It's a different type of pressure."

"I probably enjoy more battling at the top of the league and preparing for the playoffs. I do feel fortunate to have experienced that this year. I knew it was a very good team I was joining."

As has been well documented this season, Iginla has greatly elevated the play of his line mates. The Bruins first line has scored 67 times this season up increasing their consistency and creating momentum better than any other line in recent Bruins history.

In one month, Jarome Iginla has shown the league that he still has it dominating the hockey world and helping the Bruins become the best team in hockey. 

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The Old Man Nets 30: After scoreing his 30th goal Jarome Iginla has solidified his position as the MVP of the Bruins and the entire NHL

After scoreing his 30th goal of the year, Jarome Iginla has solidified his position not only as the most valuable player on the Bruins but also the entire NHL. But for Bruins fans, they did not always want or expect that things would turn out this way. If you do not remember, there was a bit of anger on the part of Bruins fans for Iginla at the beginning of this season because of what happened the year before. 

Prior to the April 15st trading deadline, 35 year old right winger, Jarome Iginla let it be known that he wanted out of the Calgary Flames organization that had employed him for the entirety of his then 15 year old career. He wanted to go somewhere where, as his career drew to a close, he would have a chance to nab that elusive Stanley Cup ring. He told Calgary of 4 teams where he believed that would be a possibility including the Kings, Blackhawks, Penguins and Bruins. However as the deadline came even closer Chicago and LA fell out of contention for Iginla’s services and so all of the focus turned to the Eastern Conference's twin powerhouses - the Bruins and Penguins. On March 27th, it seemed that we had been given out answer and Iginla's destination had been set.  He was held out of the Flames game with Colorado that night and rumors of a deal with the Bruins quickly turned from roomers to reality...so we thought. 

However, at the last possible moment, these flightless birds swooped in and robbed Iginla from Boston at the least possible moment. After the fact, Iginla admitted that he chose the Penguins because he believed they had a better chance at winning the cup that year. Honestly though, can we blame him. On March 27th 2013, the Bruins had posted a win loss record of 5-4-1 in their last 10 games while the Penguins had just won their 13th straight game beating the Bruins twice in that period of time. But from there, things did not work out so well for Iginla. He scored just 5 goals and assisted on just 6 others in the final 13 games of the regular season and in the playoffs showed that he never really meshed with the finesse based offence of the Penguins. But for Jarome undoubtedly the hardest part of the Pittsburgh debacle was the final 4 games of it. The team he picked was swept in the Eastern Conference Finals by the Bruins team he rejected. Furthermore it was only fitting that it was Iginla who fired the final shot of that series right into the glove of Tuukka Rask as the buzzer sounded. 

But as tough as it was to swallow, Iginla still wanted that Stanley Cup. Just after free agency opened, Iginla's agent - Don Meehan - sent the Bruins front office a "take me back plea" basically begging them to sign Iginla the second time around. He was done with Pittsburgh and so in mid-July, he signed a 1 year 6 million dollar contract with the Bruins. 

But if you do not remember, Bruins fans were not so quick to forget what Iginla did just months before. They were mad that he passed them up and Iginla knew that. It would not be so easy for him to earn himself with these die hard hockey fans and so he knew that he would have to go above and beyond in Beantown. 

On this day just about 1 year to the day after the first attempt at acquiring Iginla, the aged scoring star has proved he still has it. He has scored 30 goals this season, assisting on 30 others while completely elevating the game of those playing around him. Playing alongside David Krejci and Milan Lucic, the Bruins first line has scored 37 goals beyond the 30 scored by Iginla himself. As has been noted by many across the Bruins media community in the past few months in particular, Iginla's poise under pressure and his constant execution combined with his knowledge with the strategy that the game of hockey demands has brought a kind of constancy to the games of Milan Lucic and David Krejci that we have never seen before. 

"It's been great having him here," Lucic said of Iginla. "You can see he's obviously come into his own here and starting to feel good about himself. We all know what he can do from what he's done in the past and he's definitely a confident guy that's always pushing for more. You see the little things in him that has made him so successful throughout his career and it's starting to show more and more as this season goes on."

Obviously, Lucic would want this stunning vet with him even after his contract ends this season. An extension is preferable. 

"Obviously it's out of my control, but he's been a great fit for us on the ice, on our line and in the dressing room, so obviously that would be great,"

As for Claude Jullian who has now coached 3 future hall of famers in the past 4 seasons including March Recci and Jaromir Jager undoubtedly recognizes that Jarome Iginla may be better than all of them. 

"He's exactly what he was advertised as," Julien said. "He's a good team player, a hard worker, and a competitive guy. I can see why he had a letter in Calgary because he has that leadership quality in him."

But with all the praise, Iginla recognizes that he is not the number one leader here in Boston and so he deflects much of this appreciation towards his teammates. 

"They're right up there and I'm very fortunate to get to play with them," Iginla said when asked about how he would rank his current line mates compared to those in Calgary and Pittsburgh. "It's awesome to play with these guys. They're very competitive. They're very hungry. It's not just their skill level, which is very high, but it's their compete level, their drive and physicality." 

As the season concludes, Jarome Iginla jumps into the playoffs looking for the one thing he has not been able to do in this illustrious NHL career. That is, winning a Stanley Cup. 

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On a mission: Bruins extend winning streak to 11 games and clinch playoffs using their size to their advantage

The Bruins have not lost a game since March 1st against Washington. That means that in 21 days, the Bruins have won 11 straight games, to account for their longest win streak since 1971. This streak has included wins over great teams like the Rangers, Habs and Lightning but it was Friday night that drew the attention of the hockey world. 

In a game that started at 9PM, Eastern Time, the Bruins were in a position where, if they could grab a win against the surging Avalanche, they would be in the playoffs regardless of what any other team did. But Colorado did not plan to make it easy and they certainly followed that plan. 

You see this game was a one played by opposites. The Bruins are a team built on power and brutality on and off the puck. They are also a team that relies on guys like Jarome Iginla, Patrice Bergeron and Milan Lucic to pound the puck into the net. Those are all veterans. But Colorado is different. Coming into the game, they had logged just 26 fighting majors that were enough for 19th in the league. But Colorado does not need fights. They win games not with checks or punches but instead with dazzling explosions of speed and proficiency and calmness with the puck on their stick. They get the large majority of their scoring from players like 3rd year left wing - Gabrial Landeskog and rookies Matt Duchane and Nathan McKinnon. 

With these two teams going at each other with playoff positioning on the line, this game threatened to turn into one of those documentaries about the Serengeti. The small nimble wildebeest (Colorado) spends hours running as fast as it can away from the angry lion (Boston) only making that lion angrier when it cannot catch dinner. 

Instead, this game just followed the plot line of World War Z. After pushing back in the first few minutes of the game, the Avs were caught puck watching early and eventually converted from foe to victim of the Bruins army. 

Even the referees could not stop the onslaught. Just 1 minute and 48 seconds into the game, massive Bruin rookie - Kevin Miller, locked his sights on Avalanche rookie, Nick Holden. Locked up in a tight puck battle, Miller, finally delivered the hit that sent Holden crashing to the ice wondering what state he was in. Bizarrely, the hit was deemed an elbow and Miller was sent to the box. But that did not crush the Bruins sprites. Just about 3 minutes after the Holden hit, Patrice Bergeron broke the game open with his 21st goal of the year. The goal came as a result of great work by Patrice Bergeron to push the puck through 4 Colorado players. 

Dougie Hamilton took the puck at the blue line and awakened the Avalanche to their defensive error that left both Brad Marchand and Zdeno Chara wide open inside the hash marks. Colorado overcompensated though and did not leave a man to cover Bergeron who proceeded to dash towards the net, and bang in Hamilton's rebound for the goal. 

“He made a good play to go to the net, and I just put it into him,” Hamilton said when asked about the goal. “I think I hit him right in the chest at the start, and it was a good finish after that, so I was pretty happy to have that.”

Colorado mustered a bit of a push after that goal, but the Bruins quieted that when Gregory Campebll dropped the gloves against 6 foot 2, 210 pound Cody McLeod. Though McLeod pounded at Campbell's head like he would a nail, Cambell held his own and eventually came back in the fight to land at least 3 strong jabs to MeLeod's jaw. That fight showed that the Bruins were not here to play street hockey. 

Over the next 2 periods, his were common. 

“I think it was a normal situation, considering we've been off for a couple of days, and again, there's thin air here, and that first period's always a bit of a challenge,” Coach, Claude Julien said. “So all of those things together, we knew we had to grind it out through the first.”

But in the second, they were just plain bullies. They defended their blue line like it was their house and the Avalanche were a hoard of zombies and forechecked and backchecked as if the winner of this game were not the team who scored the most goals but instead the team who broke the most bones.

“Second period, we kind of had to start getting pucks behind their Ds and playing more in their end, and the further the game went, the better we got. I thought we played a smart third, just putting pucks in deep and making them go back for every puck they wanted to bring up the ice. So that was kind of what we looked for and as the game wore on, I thought we got better all the time.”

The hits helped generate chances especially in the 2nd and 3rd periods when strong forechecking by the Bruins wingers allowed for their centers to pick up at least 3 great chances in front of the net. But the big hero of this game was Chad Johnson who earned his 2nd shutout of the season Friday night. He saved all 31 shots taken against him. 

“To be in front of these guys with such good systems, and a good D corps, and offensive players that want to play defense, too, you know, it helps me out a lot,” Johnson said after the game. “It helps the goalies out, and our whole team, so it's fun to play in front of our team when we're so committed defensively and we're out there to win and we expect to win.”

All and all, the Bruins are looking to be one of the scariest teams in hockey for other teams to play against. In a part of the schedule Bruins fans have dreaded all year, their team has owned the hockey world, climbing out from a tight race for the division and into a position now where massive numbers work to fairly define the magnitude of Boston's late season charge. They are 16 points clear of the Tampa Bay Lightning for the Atlantic Division lead. They are 6 points clear of the Penguins for the Eastern Conference lead and they are tied with St Louis for the title of best team in hockey. For the 4th time in the Claude Jullian era and the first time since 2011-2012, the Bruins have topped the 100 point plateau and for the first time in the Claude Jullian era, they have won 11 straight games.

Bruins fans, whatever you have been doing during these games for the past 2 weeks, DO NOT CHANGE IT! Let’s keep this streak going. 

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Bruins veterans shine in 6-1 demolition of Flyers: Iginla, Chara both score twice proving that the young call ups are not the only thing that helps this team

Zdeno Chara looks real big in that picture not only because the man on his right stands at just 5 feet 9 inches but also because his 2 goals had his team and he flying high en route to a win labeled by many as their best of the season.

Fact is for many veteran guys on this team, the shocking, unexpected work of guys like Ryan Spooner, Kevin Millar, Reilly Smith, Torey Krug, and Matt Bartowski has stolen their thunder this season as well as steeling their points. Reilly Smith leads the team in goals scored, while Kevin Millar has outhit, massive Johnny Boychuck himself. Even guys like Matt Fraser have made their mark in Boston as that 23 year old right winger helped provide a much needed aspect of physicality for the team especially during last month's Shawn Thornton suspension.

Fact is with all these injures to top players like Dennis Sidenberg and Adam McQuaid, the unexpected talents of these rookie call ups and 1st year starters has been one of the biggest reasons the Bruins are the best team in the Atlantic Division this season, but nevertheless, they are not all of it. Through the first 50 games of this season, Chara has quietly assembled quite a goal tally. He is on pace to tie his career high in goals of 19 and actually leads the Bruins in power play goals with 8. At 37 years old, Chara is playing 25 minutes per game and yet he is taking the fewest penalties of his career. If one were to call Zdeno Chara a star than they would have seen him shining Saturday afternoon in Philly. The 6 foot 9 inch defencemen assembled his best statistical game of the season scoreing 2 goals, taking 4 shots while blocking 4 more. For Big Zee, his 10th and 11th goals of the year snapped a 15 game goalless streak and undoubtedly provided backing to his being named the CCzechoslovakian flag bearer for the 2014 Winter Olympics but he was not the only veteran snapping streaks during Saturday's game.

Like Chara, 36 year old Jarome Iginla who has been praised this year for his rookie like drive to win his first Stanley Cup of his carrer had, despite logging 15 goals in this season not scored since January first and was caught in his longest scoreing drought as a Bruin. However, in true Iginla fashion, he snapped that trend via his 21st carrer 4 point game scoreing 2 goals and assisting on 2 more. Of those 4 points 3 of them were logged on the power play scoreing 1 of Boston's 3 power play goals midway through the 3rd period. Even David Krejci was a huge force in this game assisting on 3 out of 6 goals each one better than the last.

"I thought, right from the drop, every single guy was ready to go," said Iginla "And it was a fun game to play, for sure."

As Iginla hinted at, the Bruins were almost constantly scoreing distributing their 6 goals evenly over all 3 periods and never going more than 15 minutes between goals. Late in the 3rd, when Jordan Caron took a brutal high stick to the jaw, chipping a tooth and knocking out another the Bruins scored twice on the ensuing double minor penalty. Those goals were separated by just 55 seconds and effectively turned this game from a convincing win to a full out obliteration of the struggling Flyers. 

But back to the story of veteran contributions. While the works of Zdeno Chara, Jarome Iginla and David Krejci were all offensive, Tuukka Rask proved to the world that while last season was great and while he has struggled at times this season he is still having a career year in 2013-2014. He stopped 25 out of 26 shots, held a shutout through the first 47:55 of the game and overall, lead the team to their 23rd win of the season with him between the pipes. In this his 39th start of the season, he has already topped his career high in wins set back in 2009 and furthermore is on pace to up that total to nearly 38 wins by years end. 

"Yeah, it was great," Rask said as he was swarmed by reporters following the game, "Really kept it going the whole 60 minutes. I think the first period was the most even, both teams had chances, and we ended up scoring. And the good thing is, that we never let our guard down, we just kept pushing and getting more goals."

"Great game."

In a game that Philadelphia captain Claude Giroux labeled as "the most embarrassing" of his carrer, the Bruins distributed their wealth across 8 different players, snapping streaks and reviving memories of the kind of dominant routs powered by veterans that the Bruins so artfully enjoyed back in their Championship winning 2011 season. For 3 hours Saturday afternoon, the Bruins never quit, never stopped pressing and never stopped working. All of those qualities are ones that can only be fully mastered by those who know this league like the back of their hand and that was shown Saturday vs. the Flyers. 

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A tale of human error: How referees cost Bruins game against Senators

8 penalties were called Saturday night and yet they were not called as a result of a dirty game. Goal were scored, passes were made and yet an inability of Saturday's referees to simply let the players play ultimately made it so that the Bruins were unable to salvage a win in the back half of their home and home series vs the Ottawa Senators.

Now I do not mean to complain about every call, or simply whine about the loss and blame the referees but as you examine this game in even the slightest detail it becomes clear that while very few calls were missed, on several occasions they were made when such a reaction was not warranted. For example Bruin forward, Brad Marchand was whistled for a slash early in the 1st period and yet the play occurred just 11 seconds into the game and Marchand had taken just 2 strides away from his prior position near the center dot. This play was one that must have been allowed to proceed penalized not only because of its lack of severity and force but also because of the timing. Very rarely do you already feel any sort of anger directed at an opponent so early in a game meaning that even if Marchad intended to slash downward with his stick it was a completely defensive movement and I point out barely hindered it's Senators recipient in his move to break into the Boston zone.

Marchand would be whistled later in the game as well although that call, a hook against Kyle Turris, was acceptable.

"I think we deserved a win today," Coach Claude Jullian said to a gaggle of reporters after the game possibly hinting at 2 missed calls in particular that if reversed would have given the Bruins the win.

After falling behind 3-1 going into the 3rd period the Bruins battled back admirably tying the game at 3 off of goals by Jarome Iginla and then David Warsofski. For a brief time they even believed they had taken the lead when Jarome Iginla banked a puck off his skate and into the net. The play was overturned but not before the team in stripes held a long meeting with the Toronto review department via the penalty box video monitors. Jarome Iginla seemed a little disheartened by the call.

"I didn't really expect it to be a goal," Iginla said. "I knew (the puck) was coming to my foot, but I was hoping it wasn't a kicking motion. At the same time I understand the call, but you're always hoping for the best for sure."

While he did move his skate prior to the puck hitting it, it was in a motion to prevent himself from sliding straight into Craig Anderson rather than kick the it past him. 

What was even more atrocious however was the play that was allowed to stand despite it being a blatant offside. Mere minutes after the overturned Iginla goal, Bobby Ryan made a forceful steal of the puck from Torey Krug and sped unchecked towards the Boston goal. However, as Krug charged back, Ryan seemed to lose control of the puck as he crossed the Boston zone. Amidst that bobble at the line there was confusion as to whether or not it was offside as lead linesmen Michel Corbille almost immediately waved the goal off while his fellow officiating partners immediately came rushing together to re-award the goal to Ryan.

As shown on replay, it is no secret that Ryan did not have the puck firmly positioned on his stick as he entered the zone and furthermore there is a case to be made that both his heels were forward of the blue line while the puck was still on it. According to the NHL definition of offside, this would be a discounted goal and yet the officiating team did not even seek the help of Toronto to get this one right.

"The position of the player’s skates and not that of his stick shall be the determining factor in all instances in deciding an off-side. A player is off-side when both skates are completely over the leadingedge of the blue line involved in the play.

A player is on-side when either of his skates are in contact with, or on his own side of the line, at the instant the puck completely crosses the leadingedge of the blueline regardless of the position of his stick."

The latter part of that definition was not firmly proven on this play and so the original call of no goal must have been counted by terms of the NHL regulation saying that without conclusive evidence, the on ice call is the one that will be upheld.

Saturday night in the Canadian capital, we saw a refereeing team plagued by inconsistency as while penalties like Marchands were called plays involving David Krjeci getting decked to the ice away from the play were not. Marginal kicking motion calls were made on plays like the Iginla no goal while they were not on the would be Ryan offside.

If you were going to let them play you needed to do just that from the first horn to the final horn and such was not the case vs the Senators. 

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July 4th, 2013: They day Reilly Smith just fell into the Bruins lap

He is the leading scorer of the Boston Bruins, he has since become the Bruins top finisher on the power play and 2 and a half months ago, he was completely unknown.

Like many other Canadian boys, Reilly Smith was raised in a hockey rink skating with pewee, bantam and junior teams for the first 18 years of his life. He was however, shot down as he looked to bust into the world of big time amateur hockey thus spending 3 years in minor Toronto based leagues before making a far from illustrious jump to the roster of the Miami RedHawks based in Oxford Ohio. 

College hockey has always been a strange venture for Canadian hockey players as given their culture the stranded blueprint for how to excel in the nations favorite sport often necessitates a 4-5 year stint in the OHL or CHL followed by a selection in the draft and an infusion into an NHL team’s system. In the minds of many, collegiate hockey seems like career killer. Smith however thought otherwise. 

“I really enjoyed the whole college lifestyle – it’s more laid back. Being able to get an education while playing hockey is pretty cool." Smith said to a Dallas Stars reporter back in March of 2012. He played better than he had ever played in his life with the RedHawks scoring 68 times in 121 games with the club. It was that sudden ability to put the puck in the back of the net that attracted the attention of a Dallas Stars team that in 2010-2011 scored the 4th fewest goals in the NHL and was in desperate need of a potent goal scorer. 

Smith was drafted 69th overall in 2009 and made his NHL debut during the 2011-2012 season. It was not much but it certainly was a start.

 “It’s an absolute dream come true. I’ve put in a lot of work to get up to this level, so right now I am just trying to act like a sponge and take everything in. I’m just here to have fun and contribute.” Smith said during that same online interview with the Stars. Furthermore, he recognized the differences between college and the NHL knowing that his 185 pound frame could lead a decreasing of his scoring output. "The speed of the game will be a challenge. It’s obviously going to be a lot faster and a lot more physical. When you are playing with guys that almost 20 years older than you, there’s going to be a period of adjustment. There will be a mental side to it as well, but I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
 

Smith would be demoted within weeks of his debut in 2011 but he had since gotten a taste of NHL action that he desperately wanted to turn into a feast.  

Sadly, that opportunity to do so seemed like it might never come as the irregularities in his game made the Stars skeptical of his abilities as a starter. In his only major stint in Dallas, Smith scored just 3 times in 37 games. However, as a situation in Boston rapidly developed that lack of a future was reversed. 

Smith with the Stars

As his 3rd season since being drafted 2nd overall by the Bruins came to a close, Bruin winger Tyler Seguin began to fall under question. There was a suspicion that the star was immature and reports came out detailing situations where the Bruins origination had to station guards outside of Seguin's room during their 1st round series with the Leafs in an effort to keep him from partying late at night. Furthermore, Seguin's lack of professional respect was shown by a team source writing that Seguin had shown up to team meetings on 3 straight days wearing the same dirty t-shirt as the day before. Even during games, roomers of Seguin's immature qualities ran rampant as during that miracle Game Seven comeback against the Leafs he was said to have ignored the orders of his coach and jumped on the ice prior to Bergeron's OT, Game Seven winner.  

Management conducted a 'sit down' with their star forward and from there it was clear that his days in Boston were numbered. 

"I definitely heard the rumors," Seguin said during a conference call. "When the trade was announced, I don't know if I was surprised. As far as the professional comments, I talked with Peter about it right after the trade happened. I come to the rink every day and act professional and work my hardest. My first three years so far have been a big learning curve and I look forward to getting better every day and I'm more motivated coming to a great city like Dallas." 

Tyler Seguin was never fit for Boston and for that reason he was traded to the Dallas Stars on July 4th 2013.  

As first reported by ESPN Boston's  Craig Custance "The Bruins sent forward Tyler Seguin, center Rich Peverley and defenseman Ryan Button to the Stars for forward Loui Eriksson and prospects Reilly Smith, Matt Fraser and Joe Morrow.”

You notice that the topic of this article was listed as 'prospect' in that sentence on ESPN meaning that for Bruins fans, the only name they really cared about was that of Loui Eriksson. Eriksson had scored 150 goals in 7 seasons with the Stars and had scored 25+ goals in 4 of those 7 seasons. 

"Loui's a big, strong skating, left-shot right wing," Chiarelli told the Bruins' official website following the trade. "He can play both sides, but he would be playing right wing for us. He's had four [straight] seasons of 25-plus goals. We got a real good two-way player. It's been well-documented; we've got to rebuild our right side so he's the first piece. We are going to have a couple younger guys challenging him. We may go out and get another guy, too."  

There was excitement regarding Eriksson but as the season progressed the Bruins soon realized that they would have to look beyond the poster boy of the Boston half of the trade in order to find a positive in it. 

As Eriksson struggled to find the net and he fell victim to a duo of brutal concussions, his former Stars teammate, Smith began his accent to greatness growing his following as well as his goal tally.

Now while it is difficult to pinpoint the point during the season in which Smith officially clicked it seems like the Bruins 3-2 shootout loss to the Stars would be a fair candidate for such a distinction. Prior to that, Smith's 14th game as a Bruin, he had scored just 1 goal while assisting on 5 others while in the 14 games following it, Smith caught fire tallying 3 goals and 5 additional assists. He was beginning to shine and yet it was this December string of excellence that finally made us realize that the biggest benefit the Bruins got out of the Seguin trade was not Eriksson.  

"Just look at the stats," Claude Jullian said acknowledging Smith's unsuspected importance to the team. "He's been a real good player for us. He's a young player that's probably not been overlooked but kind of been in the shadow for a long time and he's emerged with us here. He's played a big role for us. He's a real smart player. He's creative, has good hockey sense and makes good plays. We're really happy. We talk about getting Loui Eriksson in that trade, but I think [Smith's] another key asset in that trade, as well."

"We always seem to overlook his age and he's a young player," he later said. "And the way I think he's handled himself in pressure situations, handling the puck a little bit better and holding onto it. And at the same time, I thought tonight he shot the puck a little bit more; he had a little bit better of a nose for the net and before, [he was] looking to make plays versus shooting the puck. So he's really turned a corner and is really coming along well for a young player." 

To this point in the season, Smith has scored 12 goals and is tied with Milan Lucic for the team lead. However one of the biggest weapons he has provided the Bruins with has been his power play capabilities. On 4 different occasions this season, Smith has scored on the power play as in situations like that he utilizes a quick release wrist shot to beat goaltenders. However the 8 goals he has scored during 5 on 5 play this season have come as a result of more than quick reflexes. 

"That's a high-pressured situation as a forward and he looks great back there," first line winger, Jarome Iginla said of the man he spends a lot of time watching from the bench"Then 5-on-5, him, [Chris Kelly] and [Carl Soderberg], they seem to be getting better and reading off each other. [Smith's] one-on-one skills, he seems to beat one guy a night going down the wing. … It's great, another young guy who is in high-pressured situations, but he's enjoying it and thriving in it. He looks very confident there." 

Smith has an uncanny ability to shove pucks in-between the skates of opposing defenders as the hand eye coordination he exhibits by making some of the NHL's best defenders look foolish is a kind that in most cases takes years to develop. Furthermore, once he beats a defender, Smith who, as mentioned before weighs just 185 pounds has shown on multiple occasions his ability to brace against opponents and simply power his way into a shooting position. As recently as December 14th, Smith simply held the puck with 1 hand on the stick and released a goal scoring shot right as he barreled into Vancouver goaltender, Roberto Luango. 

Reilly Smith was all but invisible in the Western Conference and yet as we revel in the glory of his current goal scoring ability it still seems ridiculous that prior to the season there was no hint of how great this kid really is. Reilly Smith is no longer a prospect and on this day in December, he is an All Star that no one and I mean no one saw coming. 

“This is the first time he’s gotten a good shot at playing at this level and making sure he has the opportunity to play in the areas we feel he can excel in,” said Claude Julien. “He’s done a great job."

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Boston Bruins vs. Buffalo Sabers game preview: Win crucial for battered B's

Boston Bruins (23-10-2, 48 points) vs. Buffalo Sabers (9-23-2, 21 points)
TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts
December 21st, 2013, 7:00PM 

Call it what you will, but Thursday night's 4-2 loss to Buffalo was demoralizing. Coming into the night, the Sabers had scored just 7 1st period goals all season long while winning 3 straight games just once all season. They were and still are the worst team in hockey and yet over the course of a near 18 minute span, they turned a 2-1 Boston lead into a 4-2 loss for the Big Bag Bruins. Tell me how that does not sting. 

Now the Bruins did not necessarily play badly during that 5 minute stretch in which goals 3 and 4 for the Sabers were scored as for the majority of the 3rd period they dominated play out shooting their division rivals 15-5 in the frame. However if you felt the need to blame somebody for both those goals that somebody would in both cases be 27 year old Bruins goaltender, Chad Johnson. The streaky goaltender has already played more games this season than he did in his previous 3 seasons combined. However, after failing to come through for his team in key situations Bruins fans may be forced to ask the question, is Johnson necessarily the answer to the question, who should back up Tuukka Rask? 

But he is not the only question mark on this Bruins roster going into the second half of Boston's first home and home set of the season. Over the past month or so, the injury report has been constantly growing as the Bruins defense alone has been ripped apart more than any other facet of the team. By the end of Thursday's game, 3 Bruins who without injury would have been on the ice were not even present on the bench. D-Men Dougie Hamilton, Kevin Millar and Adam McQuaid have all been missing for the past few weeks with an assortment of injuries ranging from a lower body ailment for Hamilton to a concussion suffered by young call-up Kevin Millar. 

As a result of these injuries, the Bruins have been forced to call up a wide array of young AHL starters including but not limited to, David Warsofski, Matt Fraser and Nick Johnson. One byproduct of that infusion of young men into this lineup is the fact that the existing Bruin's veterans are forced to truly stand up which is not necessarily a bad thing. Zedeno Chara has already shouldered 200+ minutes of ice time in the month of December while others like Jarome Iginla and Milan Lucic have stepped up the physical play and rocked anyone who has tried to go after their near teenage teammates.  

This kind of peace of mind that can be brought about upon a player whose teammates are taking punches for their sake and yet what definitely feels even better is a strong, dominant win. 

When the Bruins and Sabers square off this evening, they will have a chance not only to beat a weak Sabers team but beat them up.

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