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In 2006-07, the Boston Bruins, a once proud Original Six franchise, were a complete embarrassment.
On top of being an utterly terrible hockey team (Boston’s 76 points were the third fewest in the Eastern Conference, barely above the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers), the Bruins were a faceless entity just coasting through the post-lockout (the first 21st century lockout) league.
The ‘Big Bad Bruins’, as they were once affectionately known throughout the Hub, were dead and buried. But things, after two painful years of muddling about, changed in the summer of 2007.
In dire need of some pushback -- because hey, if you’re gonna lose at least make it somewhat respectable in other departments -- the Bruins added enforcer
Shawn Thornton to their squad on a three-year deal worth $1.5 million. Thornton, fresh off winning a Cup with the Anaheim Ducks and even serving as the captain of the Portland Pirates (the club’s AHL affiliate), was brought to bring into Boston to bring some accountability to the B’s table. No longer would teams push the Black-and-Gold around near effortlessly, and pushback would come from somebody besides the club’s still growing captain,
Zdeno Chara, a player that the B’s actually needed on the ice.
And it really took all of five minutes for Bruins fans to fall in love with Thornton.
Beginning his career on the same line as then-rookie
Milan Lucic, Thornton became a fixture in the B’s bottom six, skating with the aggression and physicality that Boston fans longed for, and over time, Thornton became more than just an enforcer playing seven minutes a night. Credited as one of the club’s vocal leaders throughout every playoff run, Thornton embraced his role with the club, and became a true team player, serving as the healthy scratch without issues along the way to the club’s first Stanley Cup in 39 years. It seems strange to think that such a minor signing (at the time) turned into a player that’s played more games with the Bruins than names like
Jean Ratelle,
Derek Sanderson,
Gerry Cheevers, and
Pie McKenzie.
Seven years later, though, it sounds like the 36-year-old Thornton is not in the club’s offseason plans.
“I thought [Thornton] had a kind of up and down year. He got, obviously, the incident with Pittsburgh and there’s trends in hockey and the fisticuffs trend -- again, this doesn’t characterize Thorty [Shawn Thornton] as just a fighter because he contributed on that line. That line has had a lot of success in the past -- But there is definitely, we’re trending away from that style,” Bruins general manager
Peter Chiarelli said last weekend. “I had a discussion with Thorty this morning and I said, ‘Look, give me a couple weeks to digest what’s happened and then we’ll go from there.’”
Finishing this season with 10 fighting majors -- the 15th most in the National Hockey League -- there’s an undeniable change in the role of enforcers throughout the league. In essence, they’re becoming hockey’s version of the tyrannosaurus rex. Whether that’s due to the loathed instigator rule or the tragic deaths of both
Derek Boogaard and
Wade Belak - - losses that started to expose the dangers of taking repeated fists to your brain -- enforcers are on the way out.
Formerly thought to be a mere hope or prayer of the anti-fighting crowd, the thought that you don’t need an old school, code-abiding enforcer to keep things sane out there has grown. You know this because it’s seem to hit one of hockey’s most fight-friendly organizations, the Bruins.
The change may be coming after a second-round series where the Bruins’ fourth line was killed by Montreal’s fourth line, which to be fair, did feature out-of-place center
Danny Briere, too.
“In this business, I don’t want to be too shortsighted but you’re as good as your last shift, and that applies to managers and coaches, etcetera. Sometimes it shouldn’t but it does,” Chiarelli said of the fourth line’s playoff performance. “These guys — the fourth line — they’ve been a character group for a while and they’ve given Claude [Julien] a real good tool to play them against higher lines and to play them and change them in and all that. He can speak to that, but have I got to tell you what I’m going to do with these guys? I mean, they didn’t play well there for the most part in the last series, but I’m not just going to gut the team because players didn’t play well.”
But the decision to ‘gut’ Thornton this summer could be based on the ‘extra’ stuff that’s come with his game. On top of the 15-game suspension Thornton was assessed for his attack on Pittsburgh’s
Brooks Orpik in Dec., the childish water squirt on
P.K. Subban that the Canadiens “used as motivation” in their series comeback certainly tarnished Thornton’s image throughout the league, whether that’s fair or not. Above all else, the Bruins may want to move on from a player they gave just three minutes and 28 seconds of time-on-ice in a must-win Game 7.
Especially when there are cheaper options waiting in the wings in Providence. Among the few that could be set for full-time action in Boston include
Justin Florek,
Matthew Lindblad, or maybe even
Anthony Camara. And at the very worst, if the Bruins need an enforcer to skate against the Buffalos and Torontos of the hockey world, the 32-year-old
Bobby Robins, a player with 537 minutes in penalties (that’s not a typo, by the way) at the minor league level since the start of the 2012-13 season, remains under contract with the P-Bruins.
There’s an obvious love for Thornton in Boston given his involvement with the club and City of Boston (Thornton and his family are full-time residents of the city), and there’s no denying that the soon-to-be 37-year-old would prefer to stay here in the city he now calls home.
“I’m hoping I’m back. I don’t know. I haven’t had my meetings yet, but if not I am still going to be in the community. I’m still going to be here,” Thornton said last week. “This is where we live now. This is home. That stuff will not change. I’ll be here, trying to get back when I can. I love it here.”
Now it’s just up to whether the Bruins love having him here, I suppose.
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.Anderson[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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