Takeaways from Bruins/Senators: McQuaid gritty in return, Chara continues alarming trend

(Photo by the AP)

by Dakota Antelman

The Bruins fell to the Senators Saturday afternoon in Boston, loosing in overtime by a score of 3-2. The game was dotted with budding animosity and had fans watching closely as young stars, Tory Krug and Seth Griffith complimented a host of Bruins veterans working to get the game to overtime. 

Bobby Ryan's overtime goal sent ultimatly them home sad for a second straight game though as the Bruins fell to 19-15-5 on the season. 

Below are a few takeaways from the game. 

Bruins take it to overtime once again

As much as December was a down moth for the Bruins they did get to overtime in five of their fourteen games. Though they were not winning with consistency, they were snapping up meager points where they could get them.

The same was the case Saturday with Boston dragging the contest past regulation for the second straight game.

Boston battled hard, tying the game in the second period and jumping out to a lead midway through the third. Despite then conceding to Ottawa, the Bruins held down the fort in the final frame dominating in the face-off circle and forcing Ottawa's shots to the perimeter.

Though they did not get two points, the "looser's point" which came for their getting to overtime locked them into a tie with the Panthers for 5th in the Atlantic Division.

Adam McQuaid gritty, fundamentally strong in return

Adam McQuaid who had not played for the Bruins since November 18th, made his return for the Bruins Saturday afternoon. He bumped young defender Matt Bartkowski out of the lineup and returned to his rightful spot alongside veteran Dennis Sidenberg.

McQuaid played 17 minutes and 26 seconds in his return. He blocked a shot and worked on the Bruins penalty kill unit all afternoon logging over a minute of shorthanded time.

His main strong suit as a player and as a player in this specific game vs the Senators however is his physicality and battling spirit. McQuaid did not hold back in his return. breaking out the face washes and late jabs to the chest by the dozen. He cleared the front of the net all afternoon and repeatedly sent Senators players complaining to officials in search of judicial retribution for various sneaky infractions.

Only once however did the officials oblige as his sole violence penalty came in the second period in the form of a rough against Clarke MacArthur.

McQuaid's physicality worked for the Bruins and gave them impressive grit and fire especially in the first period. If he can sustain that kind of lead-by-example play, he could be soon working wonders for this team.

Tory Krug continues hot streak, getting more aggressive in offensive zone

Tory Krug scored again vs. the Senators when he ripped a second period slapshot past Craig Anderson to tie the game at 1.

Krug now has goals in back-to-back games and also has points in four of his last five games. He has been jumping into the attack with more and more confidence and seems to be earning the trust of his coaches who are letting him do so.

One of the best examples of his offensive activity vs the Senators actually came on a play that was not reflected on the score-sheet, in his favor, in any way.

On Brad Marchand's slick skated, elusively placed goal to start the third period, Krug, who started the play at the blueline, rotated in behind Marchand as he skated out from behind the goal. As Marchand brought the puck out beyond the tops of the face off circles, Krug slid into a screen position and in turn drew tight coverage from the Ottawa defense.

That left Marchand open enough to get his clear, goal scoring shot off before being taken down by Clarke MacArthur.

Krug's involvement in the offense has the Bruins rolling. The addition of his slapshot goal to his resume also gives Boston a defender with 7 goals this season. That aspect alone is one that they can brag about being one of the best in, in the NHL.

Zdeno Chara uncharacteristically struggling with positioning, keeping on opponents

In his 16th NHL season, Zdeno Chara is finally showing signs of age. He has just two goals and six assists this season and has a +/- of two.

Chara is also moving slower and is almost appearing less aware of where his assignments are on the ice this season. That was starkly evident Saturday.

The Bruins captain was on the ice with shutdown partner Dennis Sidenberg for the overtime shift that was eventually end with Bobby Ryan's OT winner for Ottawa. As the play that spawned that goal developed, Chara ended up chasing opposing captain Erik Karlsson into the corner. Karlsson spun out of the corner and, in doing so, felled Chara to the ice.

Chara hobbled on his knees for a split second as Bobby Ryan shook off his defenders and cut back towards the goal. Unfortunately, by the time Chara slowly found his feet Ryan was already in front of him enough so that when the puck came back to him, he was able to tip the puck into the net before Chara could play the body.

This marks the second straight game where Chara has been at fault for a goal. On New Year's Eve vs Toronto, he was caught moving in the wrong direction against James Van Reimsdyk and, as a result, gave up a clear breakaway that resulted in a then go-ahead-goal.

Finding his strength has been a spoken about struggle for a little while now with Chara; but the sudden appearance of these positional miscues has Bruins fans both worried and angry as their captain continues to cost them in key moments.

Read More

Loui Eriksson elevating play of line as he improves his own

(Photo by Charles Krupa/AP)

by Dakota Antelman

Bruins left winger, Loui Eriksson has been streaky to say the least since he came to Boston in the Tyler Seguin trade of July 4^th, 2013.

Over the course 96 games with the Bruins, Eriksson has thrice put together point streaks of more than three games. Between those intermittent bursts of hope he has wallowed in goal-less droughts that have lasted for weeks.

As Eriksson celebrates his second Christmas since the trade to Boston though, his current hot streak seems to have the makings of a redefinition of him as a player rather than just a streak. In the eight games since the Bruins December 4th loss to the Sharks, Eriksson has scored six goals and assisted on two others. He is a +6 in these games. He has scored a power play goal. In the minds of many, Eriksson has found his grove.

He scored a pair of goals in a game last Tuesday; a 5-3 victory over the Nashville Predators.

"I’ve been feeling good," said Eriksson following the game. "We’ve been creating chances. When you get on a roll you usually get on a good scoring streak and it keeps coming. It’s what I’m feeling right now. I have my confidence up, making plays and scoring goals.”

With only three goals scored going into the month of December, Eriksson has tripled his scoring output for the year in these eight games. His points totals have soared to 21 total points making Eriksson now the fourth leading scorer on the team.

Needless to say, the vast improvements have not gone unnoticed.  

"Right now, a lot of it has to do with confidence," said Head Coach Claude Julien. "I think he’s skating better. When you’re confident, a lot of things come easy to you; when you’re not, you’re skating out there sometimes you feel like you’ve got a piano on your back and your sluggish and everything else."

Julian has rewarded Eriksson for his efforts with increased playing time. He has played at least 19 minutes of each of the last three Bruins games. That is only the second time that has happened all year.

"But right now I think he’s feeling it. Like all players in this league when they get on a roll, they feel good about themselves and I think, to me, he’s showing the kind of player we’ve always thought he was. He’s scoring some goals, he’s making some plays, he’s killing penalties. He’s a guy that you can use in all kinds of situations, so right now I think we’re seeing some of his best hockey."

Eriksson’s newfound consistency has also elevated the play of his linemates, Chris Kelly and Carl Soderberg. Kelly scored his first goal in 22 games in game seven of Eriksson’s hot streak. He has also assisted on a total of six goals since December 4^th. On the opposite wing of Eriksson, Soderberg has hopped back into the points column with a goal and four assists in the last eight games.

Finally, Eriksson has helped open space for the defenders behind him. In that 5-3 win over Nashville, Eriksson shot a stellar feed, back to defender Matt Bartowski who ultimately took a wide open goal scoring shot. The Predators, who had done their research, had allowed Eriksson to catch the defense leaning his way, leaving the rest of the Bruins unmarked.

Bartowski’s goal through an open lane was the direct byproduct of one of the first instances of Eriksson being treated like the 30 goal scorer he was in Dallas.

For the longest time, Bruins fans worried they would never get that. The common fear was that young forward Reily Smith would be the best thing that came out of the Tyler Seguin trade. Though that fear has not been put to rest yet, Eriksson is playing fundamentally good hockey this month.

He is getting power play time. He is getting into the corners in all facets of the game; and, as a result, he is getting on the scoreboard.

“I’m just trying to play my game and try to help the team as much as I can here,” Eriksson said. “These past couple games it’s been really good, so hopefully I’ll continue doing that.”

Read More

Why someone's to blame for Matt Bartowski hit on Brian Gionta

(Photo Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images)

By Dakota Antelman

Sunday night in Boston, Bruins defensemen Matt Bartkowski was assessed a total of 20 penalty minutes following a brutal open ice hit on Buffalo Sabers forward right wing Brian Gionta. At first glance, the almost universal consensus was that Bartkowski was in for some supplementary discipline but as Sunday turned to Monday, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced via Twitter that Bartkowski would not even be called in for a hearing.

In a series of Tweets published Monday morning, the Department of Player Safety said that the Bartkowski hit on Gionta was an “example of incidental contact on an otherwise full body check.”

The league put the onus on Gionta to avoid situations where contact to the head would be unavoidable. They decided that the fact that Bartkowski’s shoulder made contact with Gionta was the fault not of Bartkowski but rather Gionta. Furthermore, the Department of Player Safety’s also insisted that Gionta’s head was not the “PRINCIPLE” point of contact and therefore the hit did not classify as a head shot.

Very simply, the final answer the league reached on the question - should Bartkowski be suspended - was no.  

Understandably Bartkowski was satisfied with that conclusion.

"I watched the replay and I didn't see any head contact," Bartkowski said. "It's not like I was trying to hit him in the head or anything. I was just riding the [blue] line and it was just a play in the game."

Needless to say though, even if the Bartkowski hit wasn’t technically illegal, the ferocity of it was of the sort that solicits cringes and explicatory remarks aimed at trying to absolve the league of any blame for allowing players to be knocked down in the way that Gionta was. Gionta was hit hard by a 196 pound man in Bartkowski. He was flipped 180^o through the air and thrown in a way that ended up with him landing with the entirety of his own 176 pound frame upon his head and neck.

Gionta was injured, dazed, nearly knocked out by the hit. But in terms of the rulebook, the hit was 100% illegal. Thus the conclusion can be drawn that very obviously, the Department of Player Safety got the call right and the on ice officials got it wrong.

Bartowski was given a game misconduct, a fighting major and a major penalty for interference adding up to 20 total penalty minutes earned on one play. The officials saw grievance and malice in the hit and as a result emptied the bag on Bartowski.

However, in empting the bag they seemed to have gone too far. With little definitive evidence in favor of the hit being truly illegal, vilifying him with such a statistic as 20 penalty minutes is something Bartowski does not deserve.

The officials saw a brutal hit and immediately assumed that it was illegal. They saw Gionta lying on the ice, shaken up by the force of 372 pounds of human colliding at 10 miles per hour, cringed and assessed unearned penalties.

They did not account for the fact that a game that features big muscular men skating as fast as they can with the goal of ultimately slamming into each other, can see people get hurt in totally unassuming or in this case, at least legal ways.

The on ice officials calling of the hit cast an unfair precedence on the Bruins D-Man that seemed to create bias among many observers (myself included).

Ultimately, hockey is a rough game and when the roughness turns painful, we must not vilify the players involved. Rather, simply support the player collapsed on the ground. End of story. Matt Bartowski is playing Tuesday night.

***

Video of Bartkowski's hit on Brian Gionta. Comment or mention @GoTitletown on Twitter with your opinion on whether or not the hit was clean. 

Read More

Dennis Sidenberg goal catalyzes Bruins comeback: 4-3 final on Kokhlachev shootout winner

November 21st, 2014

by Dakota Antelman

A slow start proved to be nothing that could not be overcome by a resilient Bruins team Friday night.

After falling behind 2-0 early in the first period, the Bruins scored three times in the final 20 minutes of the game to eventually tie things up and secure at least a point . From there they stumbled through a tight OT period and a seven round shootout before finally rookie forward Alex Kohlachev ended things for Boston. 

For those present, the polar changes made between the first two periods and the third were so drastic that they seemed to break Friday’s game in two.

“As a team we kind of let go of our 1st period problems and started going hard in the 3rd period,” said Bruins goalie Niklas Svedberg.

The Bruins were outshot, out hit and generally outplayed early on with Svedberg himself making key positional mistakes. Both of his goals allowed came on deflected shots taken when he was deep in his own net. 

 Beyond that, the Bruins defensive core was physically lacking with younger defenders Matt Bartowski and Kevin Miller surrendering the neutral zone to Columbus’ rushes with frequency.

But however bad as things seemed, the coaching staff seemed to diagnose and remedy their problems with ease and decisiveness during their address to the team during the second intermission.

“We were doing good things in the first two periods but in the end it was those little things that were getting us,” Bruins coach Claude Jullian said of his addressing the team at the break. “Little things we had to get better at. Those being just getting some presence on our shots, we were taking these shots with nobody there for rebounds. We just needed more net and that’s what we got in that third period.”

The Bruins, ignited by whatever was specifically said in that second intermission, saw their 

competitive spirit fanned into a roaring bonfire when Dennis Seidenberg hammered an 80ft slap shot past Sergei Bobrovsky to break the shutout. The goal which was scored just over a minute into the third period was the catalyst of the eventual comeback.

“Those first two periods were kind of boring, but that third period must have been fun to watch!” Said Svedberg.

Svedberg would surrender a late goal that sent the game to overtime but was generally strong. He stopped 8 of 9 third period shots. For him though, the dominance was most notably felt in the shootout where he stopped all of Columbus’ seven shots.

Jullian glowed about his goalie’s performance after the game.

“They got some pretty good shootout players on their team and Svedberg stood tall and really played great in that shootout,” he said.

Needless to say, some sort of scoring must be achieved to win a hockey game. In the end it was another rookie who got the job done. Alex Khokhlachev, who still does not have an NHL goal, grabbed his first shootout winner when he slipped a wrist shot under the pad of Bobrovsky in the seventh round.

The goal served as Boston’s walk off for the night with the Bruins skating over to congratulate Kokhlachev before immediately turning their focus to Saturday’s meeting with the Canadians.

All and all, the team was happy with how they exhibited their ability to turn games around when they seem surely lost.

"That was a good comeback win, knowing we're down two goals going into the third," said Julien. "To be able to get that short-lived 3-2 lead was a good sign from this hockey club."

Read More

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. 

Read More

Bruins blown out by Redwings: Why this loss may serve as a welcome wake up call to the team

The look on Matt Bartowski's face (number 43 on the top right corner of the above picture) just about says all that needs to be said about last night's game. 

The Bruins did not want to lose the game but instead of getting involved in the play and going back to basics, they sat there as bystanders, hanging their goaltender out to dry and as a result walking out of the Joe Louis Arena last night victims of their largest loss of the season and their first 5 goal loss since March 13th, 2012. A total of 115 games. 

A 6-1 score is either a really good thing or a really bad thing and after last night's dismantling by the Redwings, we know for sure that in this case, 6-1 is a bad thing. 

"It was pretty much everything we didn’t want to see out there." Patrice Bergeron said of his team that shot the puck just 17 times. "We didn’t execute. Yeah, they played a good game but we pretty much handed it out to them," he proceeded to say. "No disrespect to them but it wasn’t even close to playing our game, it wasn’t even close to executing. We left Tuuks out to dry most of the night and you definitely can’t win playing like that." 

For Boston, the trouble started early on when the Redwings, who despite losing the early physical battle spent most of the opening period in the Bruins zone. These neutral zone deficiencies within the Bruins game were pounced upon when Detroit scored their first goal of the night. 

After Johan Franzen took a mid-frame high sticking penalty, the Bruins dominated the ensuing power play only to forget the man coming out of the box thus leaving no one back to defend the Boston net. The Bruins were at a standstill as 3 Wings came charging into the crease and the puck soon ended up behind Tuukka Rask.  For fans, the confusion and anger at the Bruins incompetency when defending was only amplified as the game went on and the Wings proceeded to pound in 3 quick goals in the second period. 

"That’s why I called a timeout," Claude Jullian said of his decision to call his lone timeout following the 3rd of those quick goals. "What I saw from our team was all of the sudden we started to really get away from our game and everybody was trying to do everybody else’s job and when you get to that stage, it just gets worse...Everything we did tonight was just disastrous. We dominated on face-offs, that’s a positive, but I think the rest, from the back end to the front end…We just didn’t generate much." 

In truth, it took the Bruins all of 58 minutes of game action to generate their first goal, one scored with just over 2 minutes to go in the game that did a little to boost morale more than anything else. 

As it stood, the Bruins were being shut out until Jarome Iginla potted his 5th goal of the season following a nice play down in the Bruins defensive zone that had failed them all night long. Iginla took it himself from the mid-line and charged ferociously through the neutral zone before banking the puck off of Jonas Gustuffson and then potting his own rebound via a sliding flick that just managed to thread itself along the inside of the post.  

It was not pretty but you have to give them points for never giving up. They tried to score, and they did but in a more crucial facet of last night loosing like this can often help a team more than it can hinder them. Call it humiliating, call it simply loosing but so long as you do not fall into a prolonged slump losses like this, however unpleasant serve as wake up calls.  

Well, wakeup call felt. 

Read More

The Not so Big Three: How Matt Bartowski, Dougie Hamilton, and Torey Krug will be huge role players in 2013-2014

Not all perfect trifectas need to keep with them with them future hall of famers. Not all super heroes need to weigh 250 pounds an look like steroid users. In fact, not all super heroes or big three’s even need their names to be known among their city of Boston, Gothum or Krypton. 

No, sometimes, those groups of heroes can include guys who are 5 foot 9 and like to blast little chunks rubber into twine backed squares of iron.  

Before this Bruin season, that would not have been the case but with the departure of the big three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Piece and Ray Allen over the past few seasons, in has come a new batch of super hero athletes. And those three men have names: Torey Krug, Dougie Hamilton, and Matt Bartowski. 

Torey Krug: a 22 year old left handed defender came to the Bruins on March 25th 2012.

At that point Krug had never played a professional game yet in 3 years with Michigan, he had already made a name for himself as a high scoring defense man. Torey Krug never missed a single one of the 114 games his Spartans team played from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012 and in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 at least, he was a huge factor in each and every one of the games he took part in. In just those 2 seasons alone, a total of 76 games, Krug scored 23 times. (11 in 10'-11' and 12 in 11'-12')  

In those final two seasons of NCAA excellence, it seemed that Krug was going to be a perennial role player on that Spartans team for at least one more year. But in the blink of an eye, that all changed. 

"Torey has had an outstanding collegiate career at Michigan State," Boston General Manager Peter Chiarelli said after signing Krug. "He is a very intelligent player who is a terrific skater and shooter. But what stands out the most with Torey is his character. He is a two-time captain and a tremendous competitor. We are thrilled to have signed him and look forward to a seeing him contribute to the Bruins." 

"I would also like to thank the Boston Bruins organization for this tremendous opportunity." Krug then said 2 days after the signing. "Every hockey player has the dream to play in the National Hockey League, and I am excited about my chance to prove myself at the next level." 

Fact is Krug was an amazingly gifted offensive defense man in college averaging nearly .75 points per game. But once he came to the Bruins organization, those Bobby Orr esque skills did not immediately follow him. In the 2 games Krug played with Boston in that 2011-2012 season, the Bruins went 1 and 1 with Krug logging just over 34 minutes of ice time, mustering 3 shots on net and putting through 1 assist for his first NHL point. He was not good, but he was not all that bad. 

Nonetheless, the Bruins were determined to develop this kid and even if the fans did not see it immediately, Peter Charalli did, so, instead of dropping him or dishing him back to NCAA hockey, Krug was soon moved down to the AHL. He would spend the majority of this past season down in Providence and in the 63 games he played, his scoring touch soon returned. Through those few months of play, he shot up 45 points on 13 goals all while seeing his Providence Bruins skate to their first division title in over 5 years. 

Yet as Providence collapsed in the second round of the AHL playoffs, they were no more than a side story as the big Bruins captured the minds of the world with a late May tilt with the storied Toronto Maple Leafs. In the blink of an eye, Boston erased a 4-2 Toronto lead to beat the Leafs in OT and march into the second round.  But amidst all the celebration, there was a problem in Boston. Dennis Sidenberg had been hurt on the very play that won Boston into the semifinals, and, going into that crucial series with New York, the Bruins were one D-man short. 

So along came Torey Krug. 

Its seems like one of those go lucky sports movies when you talk, write about or watch the highlights from that series. Over the span of just over a week and a half, everything went right for Boston and in turn for little 5 foot 9 Torey Krug. He scored 4 times in those 5 games and added an assist to bring his points total to 5 in the series and 7 in his career. 

But Krug was not the only bright light that looked shine in that series. No there was another... and his name was, Dougie Hamilton

Dougie Hamilton: picked up as the final piece of the trade that sent Phil Kessel to Toronto, the Bruins exercised their 2011, 9th overall pick in the draft by selecting a Toronto born D-man with some serious promise. 

Unlike his now teammate Krug, Hamilton: a Canadian with hockey woven into his veins never played in the US's NCAA hockey leagues. In fact he spent 4 years not even going to college and playing OHL hockey for his home town Niagara Ice Dogs. When playing in Canada, he sure didn't have the perfect attendance record of Tory Krug but still was even more productive in the 213 games he did play. He averaged .88 points per game and scored 12 or more goals twice in his career as he led his Ice Dogs to a Memorial Cup championship in the spring of 2012. 

He sure caught eyes and in truth that was why the Bruins drafted him. Like Krug he was a offensive defense men, and with Zdeno Chara regularly patching in 10 goals a year it is all but obvious that defense is not all that a Bruin defender needs to worry about doing. 

"He's a big strong kid with a good offencive skill set." GM Peter Charelli said about his new pick.  "Honestly, we didn't think he would fall this far." 

"We didn't think he would fall this far." Charelli said but nevertheless, he did, 8 teams passed up on Hamilton all for different reasons, and while in the end Boston would get their hands on him, he still was not NHL ready. So back to juniors he went. 

But unlike the 3 years of OHL hockey he had already partook in, in that final season, Hamilton had a goal, and that goal would be achieved on Saturday, January 19th 2013 when he made his NHL debut. On that day, Hamilton was the only rookie on the ice and all the attention was on him, and he did not disappoint. While he may have got off to a relatively goalless start, Hamilton finished the month of January with 4 NHL points and a professional contract with the Boston Bruins.

So, with goal one was crossed off the list on he went to his next major pursuit: actually scoring a goal. Now in the end, the pursuit of THAT particular piece of glory would not take long as on February 15th he finally broke through with a tally against one of the best goaltenders in hockey: Ryan Miller. 

Over the next few months, Hamilton would add 4 more regular season goals along with a point total of 16. Now he, like Krug saw his team into the playoffs but that is where the similarities end. Once Hamilton got to the postseason any hint of his offensive skills dried up in a shriveled mess of nerves and shining performances by mighty Krug. 

Hamilton still had the skills, he still had the future but after 7 playoff games over 2 different series, his postseason was done long before those of his teammates were. 

But still there is more. 

 Matt Bartowski. After coming to the Bruins alongside now star D-man Dennis Sidenberg, Bartowski signed with Boston on April 29th 2010.

As for semi pro hockey, well, Bartowski followed a path similar to that of Tory Krug all be it with some less frequent burst of goal scoring and instant glory.

Fact is, Matt Bartowski is a D-Man of far more intangible skills, meaning that the illustrious facets of his game are all that more difficult to illustrate. In 20 games over 3 seasons with Boston, Bartowski was yet to put one in offensively, until an almost forgotten play in a game that is all but forgotten. Just under 5 minutes and 35 seconds into Game Seven of the Toronto series, Bartowski took a weak pass off the stick of Phill Kessell before moving into the center of the ice and blasting the shot past James Reimer to give Boston the 1-0 lead. 

Matt Bartowski was never the super star that many believed him to be but in the end, he could easily become a key role player in years to come. 

The not so big three: between the 3 of them, their average age is just 22 years 4 months but they have all done so much. Between the three of them, only 34 points have been scored but they have all done so much more that runs up a list far longer than that one of just 34 tics. Fact is, in just a matter of years, Zdeno Chara will be done, and so will Dennis Seidenberg. Andrew Ferance has already gone and with Adem McQuiad beginning to show singes of a concussion problem, his days of play but begin to become numbered as well. 

Long story short, even while the Bruins list of veterans begins to shorten, their list of prime 1st and second year players is beginning to grow handing their club a hope for a future almost as bright as the one Chara, Seidenberg, and company have already given them. 

Read More