From 2008 to about 2012, the Boston Bruins as an organization seemed to go through their share of goaltenders. They had Tim Thomas and Tuukka Rask taking up stalls in their locker room in Boston, sure, but what happened if one of those guys went down?
On the farm, the Bruins took their chances on a slew of players that really never quite panned out for one reason or another. There was Adam Courchaine, an undrafted talent. Courchaine bounced around a bit between the AHL and ECHL, and can currently be found playing in the 20-team Ontario University Athletic Association, where he tends goal for Ryerson University. Then came Matt Dalton, a college standout with Bemidji State University, who spent two years in Boston’s system before bailing for the greener (maybe) pastures of Russia’s KHL. He’s still there. And then there was the club’s third rounder from 2008, goaltender Michael Hutchinson.
Hutchinson, taken with the 77th overall pick that year, outlasted the aforementioned options.
But when he was ultimately passed on the club’s organizational depth chart by Swedish import Niklas Svedberg in 2012-13 and with 2012 first rounder Malcolm Subban set to enter the professional ranks, Hutchinson’s tenure in the B’s organization was over. And with 13 wins and a mild .914 save percentage in 30 games for the superpower Providence Bruins of a year ago, Hutchinson’s future in the professional ranks of North American hockey was described as murky at best.
Maybe he could go the way of the Dalton and head to Russia. Or maybe he’d even pull a Kevin Regan and drop in for a quick stop in the Italian league or the British Elite Ice Hockey League. In a position with as tight of a competition for jobs as there is -- I mean God, just think of the veterans forced into early retirement or European exile over the past few years -- Hutchinson’s chances of finding a fresh start somewhere in North America seemed slim. The game’s cruel like that for most.
But there was one team that decided to take a gamble on Hutch; The Winnipeg Jets.
At the very worst, Hutchinson could be a minor league backup. At the very best, he could hold the team that drafted him six years ago to one goal on 33 shots and stop all three shootout attempts against en route to his first National Hockey League victory. Tonight, the Jets saw Hutchinson’s best.
Making just his second career start, the 24-year-old netminder stood up to the challenge put forth by a Boston club with nothing to play for, and made the big stops when his team needed it. And though the B’s struck first when Brad Marchand pushed his way around a soft Winnipeg defense for his 24th of the year, Hutchinson shook it off and took his game up another level.
The Barrie, Ont. native’s second period shorthanded stop on a Jarome Iginla one-timer in the second, and when it looked like he was going to take another hard-luck loss with the Jets unable to strike (he was victimized by a shutout against in his NHL debut against the Minnesota Wild back on Apr. 7), a goal from Evander Kane with 1:57 left in the third put the B’s and Jets at 1-1.
Once again, the Black-and-Gold allowed a late period goal to tie things up. Going back to the Philadelphia game on Mar. 30, it was the third time that the Bruins had allowed the game-tying goal to be scored against them with less than two minutes to play in regulation. This is, without saying, highly concerning for the B’s. If we’re nitpicking one thing (which we’re going to do when we look at how well this team has performed over the past two months or so -- heck, the past 80 games really), this is it. It’s an alarming trend and one that’ll cause Claude Julien’s head to explode ala that dude from the movie Scanners. (I still don’t understand that scene, by the way.)
In fact, the entire 65-minute effort (or lack) of the B’s seemed to infuriate Julien tonight.
Claude Julien: “Every once in a while your players will disappoint you and this is one of them."
— Amalie Benjamin (@AmalieBenjamin) April 11, 2014Julien also noted that they were outworked by a team that skated for over an hour last night, and that the club’s top line of David Krejci, Milan Lucic and Iginla were ‘disinterested’.
After 80 games, that’s basically the last thing you want to hear your coach say about his top line. But at the same time, shouldn’t this be expected, even just a little bit? You’d have to think so. If we’ve come to know one thing about the regular season Bruins, it’s that they disappear at times. They hit a point where they become disinterested in the malaise of the 82-game grind. That usually happens in March or in, you guessed it.. April! Now, they obviously didn’t go through that this March, so maybe giving them a bit of a break when Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron and Tuukka Rask are all out of the lineup, seems like a sensible thing to do. Playing out the string, baby.
On a minor lineup note, Bergeron’s scratch tonight (which apparently was not a healthy one according to the Bruins) leaves the Bruins with just three ironmen remaining on their roster; Marchand, Reilly Smith, and Gregory Campbell have played in all 80 games.
And with an assist on Boston’s first goal, David Krejci now has 50 assists on the year. It’s the second 50-assist year of his career. He had 51 helpers in 2008-09.
The Bruins are back at it on Sat. afternoon when they play host to the Buffalo Sabres for their final home game of the regular season. The Bruins have 30 wins in 40 games at the Garden this year.