Wanna blog? Start your own hockey blog with My HockeyBuzz. Register for free today!
 

A Puncher's Chance

March 26, 2015, 11:37 AM ET [30 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Be sure to 'like' Hockeybuzz on Facebook!

It might be a five-game losing streak or 70-plus games of frustration speaking, but I couldn’t help chuckling seeing the talk from Boston Bruins fans actually hoping that this team continues to slide in an effort to have a greater shot at landing one of Massachusetts native Jack Eichel or the OHL’s Connor McDavid at this year’s draft. In their eyes, a three percent chance at landing a generational talent is greater than their chance to win the 2015 Stanley Cup. Or even come close to it for that matter. Maybe they’re right. Technically speaking, with the Bruins currently in the ninth spot in the Eastern Conference as of this moment, they do have a greater chance of landing an Eichel or McDavid in June than they do a Cup. So, credit where credit is due, I suppose.

At the same time, this is a downright ridiculous hope. It’s not one without an agenda, either.

For most, failing to make the postseason means that general manager Peter Chiarelli, the club’s face of the front office since 2006, is fired. It could also mean that head coach Claude Julien, a fixture behind the Boston bench since 2007, is fired, too. That’s their takeaway from B’s CEO Charlie Jacobs’ early January presser that put everybody in the organization on notice for an ‘unacceptable’ season, anyways. (Which again, I don’t think is necessarily wrong.)

If you talk to fans, the axe has loomed over Chiarelli’s head for some time now, too. Hell, most of ‘em have already swung it down and moved themselves on to the idea of legitimately unknown change. When you look at what the Bruins were, and what they’ve gone to in an incredibly short period of time, many have quickly pointed to questionable asset-management from the Harvard grad.

There’s a contingent of Black and Gold fans that will never be content with the return from the Tyler Seguin trade (which now reads Loui Eriksson, Reilly Smith, and Joe Morrow after losing Matt Fraser to waivers earlier this season) no matter the off the record off-ice issues Seguin dealt with during his three-year tenure here. Chiarelli and the Bruins also made the ‘mistake’ of going all-in for it last year with a bonus-laden contract to Jarome Iginla that had a 100% chance of blowing up in their face the next season (this year) given the number of games played bonuses in Iginla’s one-year deal. October’s Johnny Boychuk trade to Long Island has been a season-long issue for a lot of people, and really made the Bruins worse without a realistic backup plan on the table. Some, myself included, also believe that Chiarelli unnecessarily rushed to re-sign Reilly Smith to a two-year contract rather than let it play out and see if the price could have gone down on a pending restricted free agent with little to no rights. Others have pointed to poor drafting, too, although David Pastrnak’s quick emergence into the National Hockey League has left other teams questioning how this player fell into Boston’s hands.

(So, yeah, they’re pissed ‘bout some stuff.)

When it comes to Julien, there are fans that will always be critical of Julien’s willingness to ‘adapt’ or let offensive players ‘thrive’ in spite of a defense-first system. For what it’s worth, the Bruins have finished in the top-10 in goals scored four times in Julien’s eight-year tenure with the B’s. No matter the success the 54-year-old coach has (and he’s had a ton of it in Boston), or how he mixes talents into the NHL when he feels that they’re ready (cough, Ryan Spooner, cough), there’s criticism for his style and stubbornness when it comes to rolling four lines at all times (I admit, that’s happened a bit this season).

But these moves, as crazy as it sounds at the height of frustration in the Hub, would be shortsighted, in my opinion. Chiarelli, despite twice dealing with the arguably self-inflicted issues of a cap-crunch (2009 and 2014-15), has maneuvered this team into a situation where their core is locked up for the foreseeable future. And it’s tough for me to commit to chasing an executive out of town when his track record has led you to two Stanley Cup Final appearances since 2011. (Seriously, I thought I’d be lucky to see one in my lifetime when I was watching the Bruins sign the cadavers of both Alexei Zhamnov and Brian Leetch after the ‘04 lockout.) And Julien, operating with less than a full deck this season -- and arguably the worst one of his stint here -- is one of the top-five coaches in this league if you ask me. Moving on from two proven winners after one bad season and watching them thrive elsewhere (any team with an opening at either position would be lining up to bring one of these guys in), would be, again, shortsighted. Almost as shortsighted as the club’s decision to move on from Seguin after one turbulent year. Y’know, that kind of thought process that these same people criticize Chiarelli for.

At the same time, this isn’t to excuse everything that’s happened this year, either.

Did the front office bank on too many repeat performances to what were career years (Krug, Lucic, Smith, and Soderberg)? Without a doubt. Did they overrate their defensive depth’s ability to step in and replace Boychuk without skipping a beat? Undeniably so. And when that failed, did they seem to think that a top-four defender was somehow going to fall in their lap come deadline day? It would appear so.

You’re more than right to criticize the club for their failures in assessing what they had.

But you also have to be a realist and look at the hand that they’ve been dealt this season. Their captain, and one of the league’s premier shutdown defenders, missed 19 games this year with a torn knee ligament. And including Chara, the Bruins were at one point without four of their regulars on defense. David Krejci, their best offensive player, has suited up for just 38 of Boston’s 73 games. Tuukka Rask has shouldered an absolutely nutso workload since January, and it’s finally appeared to catch up with him. They’re shooting 8.44% as a team, 24th in the league, and a number that’ll likely give the Bruins their closest brush with 2009-10’s league-worst 30th rank in that department. Their big deadline acquisition, Brett Connolly, was hurt in practice on a net-front shot to the hand from a guy that seems to always miss the net during actual game action before even playing a game. And now they’re likely going to be without Dougie Hamilton for the rest of the regular season.

There’s bad luck, and then there’s the Bruins. In essence, it’s been one unbelievably crappy year.

But don’t you for a second try to say that this is a team that’s better off missing the postseason for the first time since 2007 because it’ll bring the ‘change’ that the team needs. That’s simply not accurate.

Although the outlook has become a bit bleaker than you’d like, I believe that the Bruins have come too far for this to become the ‘hope’ of their fans with less than 10 games to go. Chiarelli and company opted not to sell off a piece like a Dennis Seidenberg or a Soderberg at this year’s trade deadline despite the potentially large return that could have come Boston’s way, instead opting to acquire an asset that they believe could help them both today and tomorrow in Connolly and Max Talbot. This sent the message to the room that they believed that they could compete in this year’s Eastern Conference.

And why shouldn’t they? When you dissect this year’s battle for the East, what do you have? The New York Rangers look like an absolute juggernaut of a club, sure, but we all know how difficult it is for a team to get to the Final two years in a row. There’s some sort of unexplainable forcefield that typically prevents teams from doing this. The Montreal Canadiens are riding on the back of downright disgusting numbers for their goaltender and likely Hart Trophy favorite, Carey Price, but the general belief is that it will come crashing down at some point. Scouts have made the case that neither the Islanders nor Tampa Bay Lightning are ready for the big stage yet, while teams like the Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and even Washington Capitals have had their own bouts with inconsistency from Day 1.

With all that in mind, would I consider the Black and Gold to be anything close to a favorite for the Stanley Cup? God no. But I do know that they possess the elements of what makes a team dangerous in the springtime. They’re grizzled and loaded with playoff experience. They’ve injected a shot in the arm of sorts into their lineup with the speedy, creative offensive punch of Spooner and Pastrnak. And they have the pieces up front (Bergeron, Marchand, Eriksson, and potentially Krejci), on the backend (Chara, Krug, and maybe Hamilton), and in net (Rask) to make things hard for a ‘favorite’.

If they find a way to get in, they have a puncher’s chance. And that’s what it comes back down to.

To get all Mike Babcockian on you here in terms of my analogy here, when I was a young teen, I was aesthetically displeasing to literally everybody. I had this straight-up terrible moptop of a haircut. Think Pedro Martinez jheri curl in ‘04, but on a 5-foot-nothing, 140-pound kid with a fat face that typically had some sort of food sauce on it and wearing a novelty shirt. Much to my surprise, I found that wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Chick Magnet’ on it actually made girls like you even less (weird, I know). During the middle-school dances, the slow songs would play, and I’d sit in the corner, stuffing my face with Skittles or maybe Reese’s Pieces rather than dance with the pretty girls. They didn’t like me, and probably didn’t even know my name. (“You’re Aaron, right? Who are you?”) It was without question the worst part of my night every single time, and even though I knew I had no chance of actually dating any girl that’d be willing to share an unbelievably awkward hands-on-your-hips/your-hands-on-my-shoulders, mummy-walk of a dance with me to some Usher, I’d want the chance to see what could happen.

It’s a simple concept to get behind whether you’re 13 and awkward, a professional athlete on a slumping club, or just somebody rooting for the local sports team. But with their fate almost entirely out of their hands, the only thing Boston fans should openly hope for at this point is the case for some springtime redemption by way of the club’s eighth-straight appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

And believe me, you’d always rather have the chance to dance than eat Skittles in the corner.

Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Join the Discussion: » 30 Comments » Post New Comment
More from Ty Anderson
» Bruins' leaders answer Montgomery's challenge
» B's issued reality check; Duran turns pro
» Bruins' mistakes doom them in loss to Rangers
» Bruins refuse to make it easy for themselves
» Bruins sign Notre Dame D-man; A Maroon setback?