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A Bruins-themed day of thanks

November 26, 2015, 3:34 PM ET [19 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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You can admit it-- You didn’t think you’d have much to be thankful for when it comes to the Boston Bruins around this time when they began their season in an 0-3-0 hole. My, how things have changed. Winners of four straight, the B’s made their way to American Thanksgiving with an undeniably pleasant 12-8-1 mark, good enough for third place in the Atlantic Division (though still 11 points out first).

So, maybe it’s time to take a look at the near-quarter mark and discuss some of what the B’s have done on the ice (and maybe off the ice, too) to make you a bit more thankful to call yourself a Bruins fan.

No. 1, and No. 1 by a country mile, is the success of the Boston power play. This thing is a machine.

And at 30.8% (the Bruins are 20-for-65 on the power play), it’s the best in the league.

I admittedly had my reservations about putting your top three centermen -- Patrice Bergeron and Ryan Spooner work as two of the three forwards (Loui Eriksson is the third forward) while David Krejci patrols the blue line opposite Torey Krug -- on one unit. I thought it was a bit too reminiscent of an NHL2004 Hero Line. In essence, I thought it left you without a second unit.

But the way that head coach Claude Julien has divvied up the minutes has been nothing short of brilliant. Most of the time -- and there are some slight variables that can throw this out of whack at times -- you’ll see the B’s star-studded first unit out there from anywhere to a minute to a minute and a half. And after that is when your second unit, which though seemingly revolving has found success as well, comes out to finish the two-minute party. No matter the unit, it’s become a game-changer.

“It’s an important weapon,” Julien said of the power play. “It continues to be a weapon. And you’ve got to ride it as long as you can, and you hope to continue to go in that same direction.”

To put their power play success into perspective, the Bruins are only 18 power-play goals away from matching last year’s power-play goal total (38). And they still have a whopping 61 games to go. That means they could go 18-for-148 on the power play for the rest of the season and still be as good as they were last year. (But something tells me they won’t post a 12.2% on the man advantage from here on out, so I wouldn’t hold ‘em to such a disappointing finishing number. Just a hunch, I’d say.)

Bruins fans should be thankful for a scouting department that identified two players in their backyard -- forward Frankie Vatrano and defenseman Colin Miller -- as must-have pieces for their organization. Vatrano, an East Longmeadow, Mass. native, played his college hockey for UMass-Amherst just a year ago, while Miller skated in Manchester, N.H. for the LA Kings’ AHL affiliate. Both have been huge in terms of the upgrades the Black and Gold were looking to make within their organizational structure.

Vatrano is a shoot-first player with speed and dogged determination along the wall. He’s an embodiment of the ‘anxiety’ GM Don Sweeney wanted to put in the B’s opposition on a nightly basis. Most people viewed the term ‘anxiety’ as a physicality thing for Sweeney, and while that was certainly a part of it, anxiety can mean a lot of different things for your opponent. Vatrano, a smart skater that will shoot the puck from literally anywhere he can, instills a different sort of anxiety in an opposing defender.

And Miller is what you want out of a defenseman in the ‘new NHL’. He’s a quick-thinker, and he shoots the puck hard as hell. (Perhaps the easiest way to tell that he’s an LA defensive prospect.) Plucking this player out of the Kings in the Milan Lucic trade is proving to be a huge win for the Black and Gold.

You can also be thankful that Sweeney and Co. didn’t pull the trigger on trading winger Loui Eriksson out of town this summer. Eriksson, looked upon as a potential cap-dump by some, has been Boston’s best winger all year long. And hey, that’s what happens when you give a top six winger a, y’know, role in your top six. Eriksson wasn’t relegated to third-line minutes in his first two seasons in Boston because he was a third-liner. Not even close. It started out as a natural fit given his concussion woes, and then sort of happened when Julien and the B’s realized that Carl Soderberg needed Eriksson on his line.

Eriksson is a player that does just about everything right. And you can’t have enough of those.

“I think people are starting to realize that he may not score 40, 50 goals, but he is a great player in all situations,” Julien said of Eriksson’s third year in the Hub. “When a coach has players that he trusts, that he can put on at the end of the game, he’s always one of those guys that’s on the list. So that says a lot about his game. His first season was a rough one with the concussions, but since then I think he’s just gotten better and [he’s] getting more comfortable with our team and our surroundings.”

On Boston’s top line and with left and right wing capabilities, the 30-year-old has tallied nine goals and 19 points in 21 games this year, and is currently paced for what would be a career-high 74-point year.

And is it fair to suggest that you’re thankful that the Black and Gold didn’t bend over backwards to re-sign Dougie Hamilton? Maybe it’s too early to judge (and when I say ‘maybe’ I of course mean ‘definitely’), but Hamilton is off to a downright terrible start to his Calgary Flames career. In 22 games with the Flames, the Toronto, Ont. native has just two goals and five points, along with a minus-4 rating. Hamilton’s also posted a 48.4% CF% (he was never below 54% in his three years with the Bruins), and hasn’t exactly looked like the piece that was going to put the Flames over the top.

I’ll be the first to admit what a horrendous mistake I thought the Bruins were making in bailing on Hamilton just three years into his career. And still, in a way I think the Bruins mishandled the trade by not maximizing the return (I think you should have been able to get at least one NHL-ready body out of the Flames deep prospect pool) and/or let other teams know he was available. But early on, you have to be thankful, even if it’s only a little bit, that the Bruins didn’t give in to straight-up ludicrous contract demands (think $7 million per year for seven years) and trade even more pieces to keep him in town.

Lastly, I wouldn’t the corny son of a gun that I am if I went through this without saying that I’m thankful for the opportunity I’ve had with HockeyBuzz.com for five years now. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again-- It’s really weird to write for HockeyBuzz. It’s weird ‘cause I remember being in high school and checking HockeyBuzz from my high school’s library during Trade Deadline Day. Looking back on it, the Marian Hossa sweepstakes of 2008 is probably why I was failing eleventh-grade math. (No, that’s not it, I just really sucked at math.) It’s crazy to think of the chance that Ek, EO, and others took on me as a wide-eyed 18-year-old back in 2010. It’s been a crazy ride, and I wouldn’t still be here doing it if I didn’t truly love being part of this community and this family. And for that, I thank all of you.

Have a turkey leg and nap for me today.

Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Boston Chapter of the Pro Hockey Writers Association since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
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