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The last time the Boston Bruins opened up a training camp following a season in which they missed the postseason,
Claude Julien was the fresh face behind the Boston bench, set to embark on his first year as the Boston benchboss. That, believe it or not, was eight years ago now.
Since then, Julien has been a model of consistency in the Hub, with the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup in 2011 and advancing to the Cup Final again in 2013, with Boston making the postseason in all but one of Julien’s eight years behind the bench. That year, of course, was last year.
But as camp opens later today, it seems as if the Black and Gold have to start rolling off the bat -- beginning with a strong camp -- if Julien and company will make it through a ninth season in Boston.
General manager
Peter Chiarelli -- ultimately replaced by former assistant general manager
Don Sweeney in May -- already took the fall for the 2014-15 Bruins’ shortcomings. Sweeney put his stamp on the team with the trades of both face-of-the-franchise types in
Dougie Hamilton and
Milan Lucic (along with secondary scorer
Reilly Smith).
And, if league history and trends are any indication of Sweeney’s next move, a slow start from the Black and Gold would all but guarantee that Julien would be the next one forced out of a job in Boston.
First, the roster. In total, they’ve invited 60 players to camp. All have contracts with or are property of the Bruins with the exception of goaltender
Jonas Gustavsson, who is attending camp on a professional tryout after a three-year stint with Detroit. There’s 33 forwards, 20 defensemen, and including Gustavsson, seven goaltenders in the Boston room. It’s crowded, to say the least.
The 33 forwards? They are Noel Acciari, free agent big fish Matt Beleskey, Patrice Bergeron, Anton Blidh, Anthony Camara, Colby Cave, Andrew Cherniwchan, Brett Connolly, Austin Czarnik, Jake DeBrusk, Brandon DeFazio, Loui Eriksson, Brian Ferlin, Jesse Gabrielle, Seth Griffith, Colton Hargrove, Jimmy Hayes, Justin Hickman, Chris Kelly, Joonas Kemppainen, Alex Khokhlachev, David Krejci, Brad Marchand, Eric Neiley, David Pastrnak, Zack Phillips, Tyler Randell, 2015 trade pickup Zac Rinaldo, Zach Senyshyn, Ben Sexton, Ryan Spooner, Max Talbot, and UMass (Amherst) product Frankie Vatrano.
No real surprises there. You can basically identify the 12 that will make the Big B’s off the bat, too. They will be Beleskey, Bergeron, Connolly, Eriksson, Hayes, Kelly, Krejci, Marchand, Pastrnak, Rinaldo, Spooner, and Talbot. That 13th spot has some interesting possibilities (and more on that in a bit).
The 20 defensemen? Linus Arnesson, Chris Breen, Brandon Carlo, Chris Casto, Zdeno Chara, Tommy Cross, Max Everson, Max Iafrate, Matt Irwin, Torey Krug, Jeremy Lauzon, Adam McQuaid, Colin Miller, Kevan Miller, Joe Morrow, Dennis Seidenberg, Frankie Simonelli, Zach Trotman, Ben Youds, Jakub Zboril.
Like the forward corp, this one seems like an easy seven for the NHL squad: Chara, Irwin, Krug, McQuaid, Kevan Miller, Seidenberg, and Trotman. The Bruins won’t carry eight defensemen, either. So for a guy like Colin Miller or Morrow to make the squad, you’re going to need to be completely wowed.
And the seven goaltenders are Matthew Ginn, Gustavsson, Zane McIntyre, former Vezina Trophy winner Tuukka Rask, Jeremy Smith, Malcolm Subban, and 2015 third-round pick Dan Vladar.
With off-ice testing kicking things off this morning, it’s time to take a moment and look at five stories to watch when it comes to the start of camp (and preseason games within a week) at TD Garden.
5. The Fourth Line and Extra Skater
Barring a major trade, the Bruins will actually have the cap space to roll with an extra skater -- maybe even two -- if they choose to when their season starts on Oct. 8 against the Winnipeg Jets. And they’ll have plenty of options, too. You have the energetic
Seth Griffith, a standout at last fall’s camp and bit player for the B’s last year, scoring six goals and 10 points in 30 games for Boston last year. There’s
Brian Ferlin, who finished the year with the Big B’s and one assist in seven games.
While Griffith had the stats and speed to make your eyes pop, there were issues when it came to his ability to produce at a consistent level when he wasn’t logging heavy minutes next to
David Krejci. And if he’s going to make the 2015 B’s, it’s not going to be with Krejci on the first line, so he’d need to find a way to produce with guys like Kelly and Rinaldo or Talbot on the fourth line. That ultimately might be a situation better suited for a guy like Ferlin, who’s more of a banger that can muck it up with successful puck-battle victories along the boards, which could fit that line’s needs a bit more. (At the same time, if there’s a time to transition your fourth line to more a skilled trio, it’s now, and that’s where a player like Griffith, especially on the opposite wing of a Rinaldo-type, has value.)
And then there’s the big unknown, Finnish import
Joonas Kemppainen.
4. Joonas Kemppainen: the Next Soderberg?
There’s a
lot of hype surrounding Kemppainen and his potential impact on the Bruins. It’s easy to compare the 6-foot-2 center to fellow Scandinavian import of 2013 and former Bruin, Carl Soderberg. But that might not be fair to Kemppainen. In fact, it’s not. Soderberg arrived at the perfect time for the Black and Gold -- and chimed in for two impressive 40-point seasons in two full seasons with Boston -- and found instant chemistry with a third-line opening alongside Loui Eriksson and Chris Kelly.
I don’t think that Kemppainen has that same opportunity, at least from a pure scoring aspect. Although he comes to the Hub after an impressive 32-point regular-season for Karpat and even more impressive 24-point playoff run (19 games) -- and nine points in eight games for Finland at the World Championships in the Czech Republic this past summer -- it seems as if Kemppainen would
have to break in with the B’s on their fourth line. That’s merely because Bergeron, Krejci, and Ryan Spooner seem like absolute locks for the pivot spots on lines one through three given their play.
Talking to those that have watched Kemppainen play, they say that he can … well … play. And although he’s still in the midst of making the jump to the smaller, North American ice, he
feels ready to jump in.
At $700,000, Kemppainen could and would be an absolute value steal for the B’s if he can find a fit within the NHL mix, and expect Julien and the Bruins to try anything and everything to make it work.
3. Figuring out the Defensive Six
It was bad enough when the Bruins lost
Johnny Boychuk for nothing last year. And it didn’t help that the Bruins lost Dougie Hamilton for nothing (that’ll help you in 2015, anyways). In essence, the Bruins lost two proven top-four presences and replaced them with TBDs. That’s a tough approach.
The Bruins think they have a darkhorse for the top-four in
Zach Trotman -- a reason they stayed away from throwing big money at a Cody Franson, Mike Green, or Andrej Sekera -- and added
Matt Irwin on an affordable $800,000 contract. But the defensive unit itself is far from set.
It’s expected that the Bruins will roll with a Zdeno Chara-Trotman pairing on opening night given the chemistry the two seemed to develop late in the season following Hamilton’s season-ending injury.
And with a one-year, $3.4 million contract to his name,
Torey Krug wants to show the Bruins that he can be a top-four defenseman in spite of his 5-foot-9 frame. Krug, a total gamer with a penchant for proving people wrong, could be a potential fit alongside
Dennis Seidenberg on Boston’s second pairing. Krug, though not the biggest skater, has the mobility and smart passing out of his own zone that could help move the puck out of the B’s end opposite Seidenberg, an undeniable issue for the German-born defender and his multitude of pairing partners throughout the 2014-15 season.
That leaves the Bruins with a potential third-pairing featuring Irwin and one of
Adam McQuaid and/or
Kevan Miller. Given his offseason raise, expect that spot to go to McQuaid.
This is a mere projection at this point, though, and if last year taught you anything, it’s that Julien is notorious for his willingness to mix-and-match defensive units in order to find a spark. With these seven -- and Morrow and Colin Miller expected to join the mix -- all bets are off there. But if there’s a focus, at least for me, it should be in finding a mobile partner for Seidenberg (I’ve beat this drum to death), and finding a lineup that doesn’t utilize both McQuaid and Kevan Miller as they are almost the same talent.
2. The Health of Zdeno Chara
The nine-year captain of the Boston Bruins, 6-foot-9 defenseman Zdeno Chara was a shell of himself by the end of the regular season. Chara, who missed 19 games with a torn knee ligament this past season, was never completely healed when he returned. He even finished the final three games of the season playing on a fractured ankle sustained on a blocked shot in a late-season win over Toronto.
Let me repeat myself, for clarity-- Chara, a perennial Norris contender, was not healthy last year.
This seems to be lost on most when it comes to dissecting the play of the Bruins’ defensive leader.
He doesn’t want to make excuses, so he won’t. But if you thought that you were seeing No. 33 at anything even close to his best at the tail-end of last year’s disappointing fall, you’re wrong. Chara, a noted fitness freak, has had a full offseason to recuperate. Words can’t express what that means.
But you still need to see it translate on the ice. It’ll be impossible to gauge Chara’s health after the preseason, I know. But watching the towering Slovak skate will be the first step towards believing.
1. Just who wins the backup job?
If Claude Julien had a backup that he trusted last year, I’d make the case that the Bruins make the playoffs. For whatever reason,
Niklas Svedberg was not a player that Julien felt as if he could rely upon to give
Tuukka Rask much needed breathers, and even though the Bruins found themselves in survival mode for much of the season, that simply can’t be the case in 2015-16. So finding a backup that you can depend on -- even for just 20 games -- has to be the focus of this camp.
For one last time, let’s take a look at last year’s numbers for Rask. He made nine (nine!) starts on the second leg of a back-to-back in which he played the previous night. In those nine games, Rask had one win and a .913 save percentage. The Bruins nabbed just four of a possible 18 points there. Take those figures out of the equation and Rask’s season line reads as an impressive 33-15-11, with his save percentage bumping up from .922 to .924. Subtle-but-major differences. If the Bruins trust a goaltender that could win three or four of those nine contests, and thus keep Rask fresher and ensure a few more wins of his own there, the Bruins find themselves in the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
I don’t even think that there’s much of a debate there.
That’s why all eyes simply have to be on the three-way -- maybe even four-way battle if you care to include
Zane McIntyre (which I, personally, do not because I literally couldn’t tell you one modern goaltender that’s jumped straight to the NHL from the NCAA ranks) -- between Gustavsson,
Jeremy Smith, and former first-round pick of the B’s,
Malcolm Subban.
Experience favors Gustavsson by a wide margin, yes, but the money should be on the AHL journeyman Smith. Already on the books for a $600,000 payday at the NHL level if he makes the team, Smith returns to the B’s organization after an impressive season as a platoon guy with the P-Bruins. In a 39-game workload, Smith finished the season with a .933 save percentage, the third-best among AHL goaltenders while his 2.05 goals against average was the fourth-best in that category.
Meanwhile, Gustavsson has played in just 41 games over the last three seasons, and suited up in just seven games for the Detroit Red Wings this past season, earning three wins a .911 save percentage.
Subban does have some NHL experience as well, although he’d probably rather forget it, surrendering three goals on six shots in a nightmare of a half-game against the St. Louis Blues this past season.
No matter the winner of this race to open doors for about 60 nights a year this upcoming season, trust has to be the name of the game. The backup has to win the trust of Julien, which is not always an easy task when he has a Vezina-caliber netminder on the bench. And he has to earn the trust of his teammates, as the B’s lack their usual group of experience on the blue line, which could and will more than likely lead to some ugly nights in terms of the shot totals going against the club (a former rarity).
The good news there is that with a seven-game preseason, everybody will get a look.
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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