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The 2014-15 season was a year of hits and misses for the Black and Gold.
In spite of a 96-point season, the Bruins saw their seven-year postseason streak come to an end, realized that their core may be aging faster than they originally anticipated, and ultimately saw their general manager take the fall for the club’s shortcomings. In the month of May, we’ll take a look at the season of every player on the B’s and their future with the club heading on into 2015-16.
The series rolls on with the club’s third-line center, the Big Swede,
Carl Soderberg.
The Basics
Player: Carl Soderberg
Age: 29
2014-15 Stats: 13 goals, 44 points, plus-10 rating in 82 games played.
Contract: $1.008 million cap-hit through 2014-15 season.
How he got here: Acquired via trade with St. Louis Blues in July 2007, left Sweden to join Boston Bruins on a three-year deal in Apr. 2013.
Overview
Depth down the middle has always been the strength of the Boston Bruins. Though I think that most are actually referring to
Carl Soderberg, the club’s third-line center since the start of the 2013-14 season, when they say that. In his first full season after coming to the NHL from his home country of Sweden, the 6-foot-3 pivot posted an impressive 16 goals and 48 points in 73 regular season contests, along with one goal and six points in 12 playoff games. Those would’ve been Calder-esque figures if he met the requirements (Soderberg was simply too old to be a ‘rookie’ by NHL standards).
He impressed for much of 2014-15, too.
One of just two Boston players to play in all 82 games (
Dennis Seidenberg was the other), Soderberg’s 31 assists and 44 points were good for third among the team in both categories. That production, for much of the season anyways, was beyond that of your average third-line center, and that was evident in their usage, too. When injuries and inconsistencies struck the Bruins’ first line -- typically centered by
David Krejci -- Boston head coach
Claude Julien often turned to Soderberg’s line (with Loui Eriksson and Chris Kelly on the wings) to score timely goals.
With another 40-plus point season under his belt, Soderberg’s three-year NHL resume now features an impressive 29 goals and 94 points in 161 games played. Not bad for a Yeti, huh?
The Good
The first three months of 2014 were without a doubt the high point of Soderberg’s season. In the first 38 games of 2014-15, the 29-year-old recorded an impressive eight goals and 27 points. And seven of those points (four goals and three helpers) came on the man advantage for the Malmo, Swe. native.
Soderberg’s goals seemed to matter, too. The Black and Gold finished the year with a 9-3-1 mark in the games in which No. 34 scored at least one goal. A weird stat about that figure? Soderberg’s goals seemed to always come in games that had bundles of goals for the B’s. (Those nights were rare, too.) Of those 13 games in which Soderberg scored, just one game saw the Bruins score less than three goals.
“Normal season for me,” he said when asked about his year at the B’s year-end availability.
He also finished the year with an impressive 1.92 points per 60 minutes in all situations.
The Bad
If there’s a month Soderberg could erase when it comes to talking a new contract with anybody this summer, it’s February. In 12 games, Soderberg failed to score a goal and put up just two points. He was basically a ghost, too. It was frustrating to watch, and was undoubtedly the low point of Soderberg’s season. It also made up the majority of a brutal 24-game goalless stretch he endured.
“I have,” Soderberg said when asked if he had ever been part of a stretch like that. “I played on a team back in Sweden where we had a lot of good seasons as a team and I had stretches without a goal.”
Another critique of Soderberg’s game? He didn’t really seem to thrive when he was going against the rough-and-tough, legitimate top-pairings of the league when the B’s failed to have a matchup game working in their favor. I always described Soderberg’s year as a great one for a third-line center, or an OK year for a second-line center. He was great in spurts, sure, but there was little to make you think that he could be more than a great third-line player or rather pedestrian top-six talent.
The Future
Unfortunately for the Bruins, I think Soderberg is as good as gone. It’s a perfect storm of issues that’ll keep him out of Boston moving forward, too. The biggest issue, of course, is the money that Soderberg could and will demand in a market short on skilled centers. The Black and Gold will be unable (or unwilling) to give No. 34 a four of five-year contract worth anywhere from $4.25-5 million per season. Especially when the Bruins have to give almost all of that theoretical money to
Dougie Hamilton. And then there’s the biggest reason, in my opinion, which comes back to the professional progression of both
Ryan Spooner and
Alexander Khokhlachev. Spooner, in my opinion, is ready for NHL minutes (he was one of the few positives in the B’s final few months), and Khokhlachev is knocking on the door, and will continue to with a strong training camp showing.
Where will Soderberg end up? Your guess is as good as mine, really. But I know that he wants to remain in the NHL for at least a few more years, and that he enjoys big market hockey. He likes playing in a city with a strong sports scene and/or a large hockey market. Yet, for some reason, I see Soderberg landing in Nashville this summer. It’s a pure hunch. But yeah, I’ll put some money (a dollar) on that.
Previous Bruins Year in Reviews
Gregory Campbell
Brett Connolly
Milan Lucic
Reilly Smith
Danny Paille
Loui Eriksson
Chris Kelly
Dougie Hamilton
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
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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