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As the Boston Bruins put forth yet another valiant (losing) effort in Southern California, falling to the Los Angeles Kings by a 2-0 final on Tuesday night, I couldn’t help but stop and realize that I’ve seen this movie before. I know the plot. The characters are the same. The injuries. The lows. The highs. The lows (again). I’ve lived this before. Then it hit me.
Right now, the 2014-15 Bruins, are, well, the 2009-10 Bruins.
Now 26 games into the year, this year’s Bruins squad boasts a 14-11-1 record, good for 29 points. That’s a 1.12 points per game pace. At that point in 2009, the Bruins had a 13-8-5 record. That, at the time, was a 1.19 point per game pace, though the year ended with the Black and Gold rolling at a 1.11 point per game pace. The 2009-10 Bruins finished the year with 91 points. This year’s club is on pace for a 92-point season. Things would have been worse for the ‘09 club at the beginning of their year, too, had it not been for a four-game winning streak in November, and 11-game stretch where they won seven games and grabbed points in all but one, seizing 15 of a possible 22 points (68.2 point percentage). Of a possible 24 points last month, the Black and Gold grabbed 17, failing to earn at least one point in just three of their contests (70.8 point percentage).
The starts are strangely similar, and go beyond mere point totals and projections, too.
Up front, the Bruins have been without their top-line center for much of the year, too. David Krejci, the club’s playmaker supreme and driving force of the offensive game, has played in just 11 of 26 games this year due to an undisclosed (but believed to be a hip) ailment. When in the lineup, Krejci’s been an offensive force, though, with three goals and 10 points. At the 26-game mark of 2009-10, then-No. 1 center Marc Savard had played in just 11 contests, too, with four goals and 10 points to his name. Savard had points in all but four games up to that point, too. Krejci has points in all but three games this year.
Both of these players’ contributions are even more impressive given the situations around them, no less.
In the 2009 offseason, the Bruins were by all means broke. They lost their first-line right winger and top goal scorer from the year before, Phil Kessel, when they couldn’t figure out a contract that could appease both he and the Bruins. Fast forward to this past summer, and you can replace Phil Kessel with Jarome Iginla. On the backend five years ago, general manager Peter Chiarelli moved top-four defenseman and noted ‘locker room guy’ Aaron Ward out of town for nothing but cap space (unless you wanna count Patrick Eaves, whom the Bruins bought out almost immediately after acquiring from the Hurricanes in the trade. This year’s Bruins squad did the same with Johnny Boychuk. (As a weird aside that really means nothing: Both of these players had weekly radio spots on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s morning drive show, Toucher and Rich, prior to being traded out of town. The Toucher and Rich show aired on the now extinct 104.1 WBCN airwaves during Ward’s tenure with the Bruins.)
The impetus behind these moves, both in 2009 and 2014, came from an organizational belief that they had the depth on their roster and within their pipeline to replace the departed talents (within reason). Those beliefs came on the heels of career years for just about everybody from start to finish and top to bottom, too, as the 2008-09 Bruins were a juggernaut that fell a point shy of the Presidents’ Trophy, while the 2013-14 Bruins won the Presidents’ Trophy last season. In both instances, the Black and Gold believed that the highs were simply the realities of the players they had on their roster.
And like it wasn’t in 2009, that’s simply not true. Or hasn’t been the case to this point, anyway.
The 2009 Bruins’ top line was a disjointed mess from start to finish. Byron Bitz, Steve Begin, Marco Sturm, Danny Paille, Blake Wheeler, Trent Whitfield, and Miroslav Satan all had their turns skating on the first line that season. This year, it’s been an equally diverse revolving door, featuring first-line stints from Seth Griffith, Matt Fraser, Chris Kelly, Loui Eriksson, Ryan Spooner and Simon Gagne at various points through the first 26 games of the season. Beyond the top line, Reilly Smith and Eriksson have struggled to find the back of the net, while injuries and inconsistencies have forced the Bruins to get crafty with their forward corp on a near nightly basis.
Five years ago, Boston’s defense struggled as Matt Hunwick didn’t project as the defenseman that showed promise the year before, Mark Stuart battled hard-luck injuries, and Dennis Wideman struggled to produce a watchable sequel to a 50-point 2008-09 season. This year, Matt Bartkowski has struggled to skate with consistency as a two-way defender the same way Hunwick did (though Bartkowski has played much better in the last few weeks). Adam McQuaid has found himself back on the shelf with an injury, and Torey Krug has just seven points in 22 games this season, a staunch change from a year ago when the Michigan-born defenseman tallied 40 points in 79 games.
And without much cash to spend in either 2009 or 2014, the Bruins took a flier on a reclamation project to address their undeniable scoring woes. A decade removed from a 40-goal season with the Buffalo Sabres, the Bruins brought Miroslav Satan in as a cheap gamble to contribute somewhere in their lineup. And in 2014, almost a decade after a monster 47-goal season in Philadelphia, the Bruins did the same with Simon Gagne. (The biggest and maybe only difference between these situations, however, was that the Bruins waited until Jan. to bring Satan into the mix on the deal, whereas Gagne won a spot on the roster in October.)
The 2009-10 Bruins, for lack of a better term, were simply not that skilled or healthy enough to be a legitimate powerhouse like they were the year before. And while it’s still somewhat early, and there’s still ample time for the B’s to go on a significant run (one of the things that saved the 2009-10 Bruins was a strong 11-3-2 run away from the Garden to finish the year), especially with Zdeno Chara set to return within a week or so, this could ultimately be the reality of this year’s squad. In essence, that’ll force the Bruins to win games in different ways -- as in more 2-1 games than 4-3 contests or shootout victories where Tuukka Rask straight-up robs a team of a two-point night -- and simply keep their head above water.
They’ll get another chance to get back on track in California tonight, too, as they wrap up their tour of the Golden State with a trip to San Jose against Joe Thornton and the Sharks. Dropping two straight one-goal contests (the loss in LA was a two-goal loss, but only after an empty-netter from Tyler Toffoli), the Bruins are gonna have to get crafty if they’re going to avoid a California sweep. And that’s a test in and of itself for a B’s squad that’s skated without a noticeable identity or face throughout this turbulent season.
But, there’s gotta be comfort in knowing that this season can’t end any worse than 2009-10 did. (If it does, however, history is telling me that Simon Gagne will have some sort of involvement.)
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