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Chris Kelly departure a sneaky big hit to B's group

July 8, 2016, 4:07 PM ET [23 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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Forward Chris Kelly’s Boston Bruins career, came with a horrific, albeit somewhat fitting, end.

In a seemingly harmless play towards the puck in front of the benches, Kelly’s leg suddenly buckled, made a gruesome twist, and he collapsed down to the ice. Kelly fractured his femur, one of the most dense bones in the human body and thus one of the hardest to break, and was done for the season.

And boy, did the Black and Gold miss Kelly again and again throughout the season. Even if nobody seemed to realize it at that very moment. Again, that would be in line with Kelly’s tenure in Boston.

From the moment he arrived in town in a trade with the Ottawa Senators in 2011, a trade that was originally slammed, mainly because it was a late-night deal that was teased and didn’t end with the B’s finally nabbing Tomas Kaberle from the Toronto Maple Leafs (though that came later), Kelly didn’t do anything one thing great, but rather a bunch of little things extremely well.

The Bruins do not escape their first-round series with the Montreal Canadiens had it not been for Kelly, wearing a full cage and all, and linemates Rich Peverley and Michael Ryder.

Kelly finished that series with three goals and six points in seven games and 13 points in 25 playoff games overall. Kelly fulfilled a serious need for the B’s in that 2011 campaign, too, as the Bruins had recently lost Marc Savard to injury, while the club experimented with different players playing center (I’m pretty sure Mark Recchi, and maybe even Blake Wheeler, played a game or two at center).

From there, Kelly became a fixture in the Boston lineup, and remained in town on a four-year, $12 million deal following a 20-goal 2011-12 campaign and seven-game playoff run as one of the only Bruins to actually have shown up in the club’s first-round exit to the Washington Capitals.

Kelly was a leader, with and without an ‘A’ on his sweater. He wasn’t afraid to challenge his teammates to give more, and he served as the B’s faceoff ace and go-to d-zone centerman behind Patrice Bergeron. The Bruins missed all of that when Kelly missed the last six months of the season.

They desperately tried to make it work with guys like waiver wire pickup Landon Ferraro and Providence callup Noel Acciari, and wasted valuable time in an attempt to squeeze anything out of Joonas Kemppainen, Zac Rinaldo, and Max Talbot, but it didn’t work.

Was the absence of Kelly the sole reason why the Bruins collapsed out of playoff contention for the second straight season? Of course not. But it’s impossible to say his loss didn’t play a huge factor for a bottom-six that was a complete mix-and-match, throw-it-at-the-wall grouping by the end of the year, or that a penalty-kill that did finish 10th, but frequently came up short when the team needed it most.

There was no legitimate, honest spark in the B’s efforts. And now, after a one-year deal worth just $900,000 inked with the Ottawa Senators yesterday, Kelly’s ability to bring that spark to the rink is out of play for the B’s, though the club could still use another (capable) vet presence on that fourth line.

So it’s onto someone else in that locker room to provide that spark for the group, something Kelly’s absence proved a little harder to provide than perhaps initially thought by fans and players alike.

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.
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