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Given the way things have gone since the cap-forced
Johnny Boychuk trade before the start of the 2014-15 season, or maybe even the season (Milan Lucic threatening to kill people in handshake lines) and summer before that (trading Tyler ‘I’m going to score 90 points a year for the next 15 years’ Seguin for peanuts that have yet to pan out/prove to be a fair tradeoff), it’s easy to poke fun at the Boston Bruins, a team you previously never wanted to ‘poke’. Almost
too easy, actually.
To the shock of no one, laughs followed when the Bruins failed to pull off a successful trade for a top-four defenseman by the end of Friday’s first round of the 2016 NHL Draft in Buffalo, N.Y. That was until you found out that St. Louis Blues general manager
Doug Armstrong wanted everything, including the shirt off B’s general manager
Don Sweeney’s back, in a trade for
Kevin Shattenkirk. But even so, you felt that the Bruins, who had drafted strong-skating, intelligent d-man
Charlie McAvoy (Boston University) at No. 14, would escape the night as winners.
Then came the 29th overall pick. With their second first-round choice of the night, with the pick obtained in the Martin Jones to San Jose trade, the Black and Gold went way off the board -- anywhere from 25 to 30 spots so, according to who you talk to -- with the selection of
Trent Frederic.
The first reaction: “Who?” I should have prefaced that with the acknowledgement that I am
not a draft expert. There’s simply not enough hours in the day for me to tell you why 17-year-old Player A has a greater compete than 17-year-old Player B, or the ‘old’ 20-year-old Player C without lying through my teeth. I leave the in-depth draft analysis to those in charge of such things.
At the same time, I don’t think you’re in the wrong if this pick leaves you with a little bit of a sour taste in your mouth, at least at first glance. Frederic projects as a tough to play against, two-way presence that can slide into a team’s third line center role in due time. That’s great, every team needs those guys, and the Bruins are no exception. But is that something you actively look for in the first round?
Probably not.
“People spoke very highly of Trent as a character, his compete level is extremely high, he’s going to a good program and he’ll continue to develop,” Sweeney said of Frederic, who will embark on a college career with Wisconsin this fall. Again, these are great traits, but even with the aforementioned style and versatility, is it all enough to nab the player at No. 29? I just don’t know, but I still lean towards no. If the Bruins invested a first-round pick in a player that they view as a potential
Chris Kelly replacement at the very best, then that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not fine as a first-round gamble.
And that’s where this comes back to for a lot of Bruins fans.
If this pick was not going to be used in a trade to impact the NHL roster this season (which it was not), it should have been used on a worthwhile gamble on an area of major need for the Black and Gold. The Bruins have grit out the wazoo, and you can find grit every offseason from now ‘til the sun burns out. Grit struggles to find work in September. You could make the case that the B’s are losing understated grit with the expected departure of
Loui Eriksson as an unrestricted free agent next weekend.
With the way the league has shifted, the Bruins remain a group in need of skill up front. Badly, too.
At 29, the Bruins had ample chance to add more skill to their group.
For me, there’s one name:
Alex DeBrincat. At 5-foot-7, it’s easy to overlook what DeBrincat, a Michigan native, has done over the last two years. At the same time, you’d be foolish to do so. In two seasons with the Erie Otters, the shifty winger has put up an absurd 102 goals and 205 points in 128 games played. Yes, DeBrincat has had the benefit of playing with some all-world centers, but this is a player that really embodies everything about what you’ve seen the NHL shift towards in recent years.
DeBrincat uses his diminutive size to his advantage, actually, with an absolutely elusive skating game, and his absolute rocket of a shot helps him capitalize on the space and tight corners he often deals with.
He’s in the same mold of a
Johnny Gaudreau, too, a player the Bruins have unsuccessfully tried to pry out of Calgary on numerous occasions, although Gaudreau is listed a whole two inches taller.
Given the fact that this pick did not originally belong to Boston, and that it’s their second pick of the first round (the lower pick of the first round, too, if that helps your case), DeBrincat was the perfect pick for a gamble. And also, while we’re at it, stop acting like all draft picks are not gambles. So, factor in the numbers, a skill-set reminiscent of a player you’ve had interest in, and where this pick slotted into your draft plans, and it’s really rather puzzling that the Bruins passed on this player. Instead, they let DeBrincat slip to Day 2, where he was nabbed by the Chicago Blackhawks, a team that realizes you can never have enough skill and have paid for it in Cups and cap crunches (mainly Cups), at No. 39 overall.
It’s about maximizing your picks, and it’s just increasingly tough to feel that the Bruins have done that.
Dating back to last season, the Bruins have made five selections in the first round.
Defenseman
Jakub Zboril, whose progress as a prospect has come under scrutiny of late, was the first of a three-in-a-row first round that followed with
Jake DeBrusk and
Zach Senyshyn. DeBrusk and Senyshyn put forth solid years -- and Senyshyn, originally considered a massive reach, put forth perhaps the best year of the three -- but there were still heavy passes made by the B’s with those picks; Matt Barzal, Kyle Connor, Colin White, etc., etc. The list is long and painful.
The Bruins reached and hit on guys like Senyshyn and Danton Heinen, and that might help the overall case for the Frederic pick at 29. However, this can’t help but feel like another Jurassic-esque “We need to be tougher to play against!” reach of a pick from a team that can’t get out of its way when it comes to moving beyond the ‘Big, Bad Bruins’ identity that won the team a Stanley Cup over five years ago.
When push came to shove, the Bruins gambled on grit over skill. And so it goes.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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