Bruins’ roller-coaster year in review
OK, OK, we know. The year 2020 is one that most of us would rather leave on the curb for the trash collectors, never to be contemplated again.
But we just can’t do that. Every year at this time we revisit the big events in the Black-and-Gold World, no matter how painful it may be. The hurt this year, obviously, goes well beyond the Bruins not winning the Stanley Cup. Bemoaning the fact your local team did not win a sports championships does feel a tad trite. But this is what we do.
When the Great Darkness fell upon us in March, it had a profound effect in the B’s, who had pretty much been the NHL’s best team from the drop of the puck in October. But they never regained their mojo after the pause. So, if you can bear it, let’s look back and see how it all unfolded. Here are 10 key Bruin dates of 2020.
1. JANUARY 19 Bruins blow 3-0 lead and lose to Penguins, 4-3.
In a pre-pandemic regular season filled with mostly highs, this Sunday matinee in the Steel City might have been the low point. The B’s had blasted out of the gates at the start of the season and had established themselves again as one of the elite teams. They were on their “Unfinished Business” tour after losing Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final at home the previous spring. But for well over a month at this point, they’d been getting away with spotting teams leads and staging dramatic comebacks. The truth of the matter was that they weren’t playing very well.
The final wakeup call came on this afternoon when they gagged the lead to the Pens and couldn’t even manage a point. Changes had to be made. It looked like a minor one at the time, but Jeremy Lauzon came up from Providence and replaced John Moore in the lineup on defense, giving the B’s a bit more size and jam. In the following game, Lauzon scored the B’s first goal and they beat Vegas. They went on to win 10 of their next 11. There were more tweaks to come.
2. FEBRUARY 21 The Bruins deal David Backes.
As most of us expected when he signed a five-year, $30 million deal with the B’s as a 32-year-old with hard miles on him in the summer of 2016, Backes was not able to remain a significant contributor throughout the life of the contract. But for a couple of years, the rugged forward was a key cog in helping the B’s transition from Claude Julien’s team that won a Stanley Cup in 2011, through a youth-infused rebuild on the fly, to Bruce Cassidy’s team that fell just one game short of the Cup in 2019. He wore a letter on his sweater proudly. But by February it was clear that he was no longer in the team’s plans. He was placed on waivers in January and he cleared, but through mutual agreement he did not report to Providence.
Finally, the B’s pulled off a significant deal, trading Backes and most of his contract (the B’s are still on the hook this year for a $1.5 million cap hit) along with their 2020 first-round draft pick and prospect Axel Andersson to the Anaheim Ducks. In return, they received a player the B’s hope will be the long-sought second line right wing, Ondrej Kase. The jury is still out.
3. FEBRUARY 24 Bruins trade Danton Heinen for Nick Ritchie.
Heinen grew up in the B’s system and proved to be a valuable, if a tad maddening, player. But the B’s wanted to get bigger and nastier. In fact, with the moves the Tampa Bay Lightning had made to sign Pat Maroon and obtain Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman, they needed to get bigger and nastier. GM Don Sweeney tried to address the issue in the previous offseason when they signed Brett Ritchie, but he didn’t provide the oomph that the B’s had hoped for and was jettisoned to Providence.
But that didn’t stop Sweeney from going back into the same gene pool when, on trade deadline day, they moved Heinen to Anaheim for Brett’s younger brother Nick, a 2014 first round pick taken 15 spots ahead of David Pastrnak. While it’s too soon to make a final determination on Nick Ritchie, the results weren’t all that better than they were with Brett. As is the case with Kase, the B’s still don’t know exactly what they have with this player.
4. MARCH 7 Bruins and Lightning tangle in game of the year.
Outside of Boston, the Bruins are always perceived to have the upper hand in the physicality department. But when matching up against the Bolts, that has simply not been the case for several years. When they beat the B’s in five games in 2018, the Lightning had the edge in both skill and heaviness. And Tampa Bay had added a heavy dose of muscle in the offseason and at the deadline.
But on this night, the B’s demonstrated that they might be ready to stand up to Tampa in a series. They’d already beaten the Bolts in Tampa earlier in the week and, though the B’s lost this Garden affair, 5-3, they stood toe-totoe with them – 94 PIMs were handed out in the game – and created ample opportunities to come all the way back from an early 3-0 deficit. Andrei Vasilevskiy was brilliant in stopping 35 shots.
The inevitable playoff showdown was going to be something special, we all thought.
5. MARCH 12 NHL hits the pause button.
The Bruins were hitting their stride. After the raucous game against the Lightning, they delivered one of the finest performances of the season when they shut out a tough Flyers team in Philadelphia.
The B’s were scheduled to gather at Warrior Ice Arena for a practice and then fly to Buffalo for a Friday night game. But trouble was brewing. The night before, the Utah Jazz’ Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19 and the NBA abruptly suspended its season. Though Bruin players trickled into the Brighton facility on this morning, there was a sense that they would neither be practicing nor traveling to Buffalo.
Sure enough, the plug was pulled on the practice before the team hit the ice and the players were sent home.
“See you guys in a couple of weeks,” said Torey Krug to a few media people as he departed the facility.
If only.
6. JULY 13
Bruins open training camp. Again.
After some Herculean efforts from the league and Players’ Association to work through testing, protocols, the creation of two o playoff bubbles and a new CBA that would only later bother some owners, the B’s opened a two-week training camp in order to shake off four months of rust. And it would become clear quickly that this would not be a continu- ation of the promising 2019-20 regular season, but rather a unique, stand-alone entity.
From the start, it did not go well for the B’s. Because of protocol violations, both David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase missed virtually all of the camp and Kase missed some games in Toronto because of it. Both of their bubble performances suffered because of the late start and, whether it’s related or not, Pastrnak had to undergo hip surgery in the offseason.
Things would only get worse.
7. AUGUST 16 Tuukka Rask opts out.
Citing family issues back home, the B’s No. 1 goalie and Vezina Trophy candidate decided to leave the bubble and head home. Rask k later revealed that there was an emergency situation with one of his children.
Despite words of support from management and teammates, Rask’s departure led to wild speculation that he had played his last t game for the Bruins. That does not appear to be the case. In fact, their goalie situation is such that it seems more prudent to re-sign Rask to a short-term deal.
But there’s little question that Rask’s departure all but ended the B’s quest for the Cup. Jaroslav Halak stepped into the breach and performed admirably, helping the B’s secure a five-game series win over the Carolina Hurricanes. But while Halak was able to climb the hill that was the Hurricanes, the mountain that awaited would be too much to ask.
8. AUGUST 31 Lightning 3, Bruins 2. Season over.
If the B’s had a chance to beat the Lightning, Halak had to be airtight and he was not. Though the B’s stunned the Bolts in Game 1, much like they had in 2018, they dropped the next four, including two in overtime. In the clincher, Victor ctor Hedman Hedman, reclaiming his perch as the world’s best defenseman, scored the gamewinner in double OT.
If you wear Black-and-Gold glasses, you could look at the closeness of each game and believe that the series was closer than the 4-1 result indicated. Then again, the Hurricanes could argue the same thing about their loss to the B’s in the previous round. That’s how the playoffs work.
Would the B’s have fared better against the ubertalented Bolts if they were able to ride the momentum of their terrific regular season? That’s a question that can never be answered. And time is running out for this core to add another Cup.
9. OCTOBER 9 Torey Krug signs with St. Louis.
Don Sweeney has done a good job of re-signing his own high-end players to reasonable contracts, but this one promised to be a tough one. Krug is as good a power-play quarterback as there is, but despite earnestly improving in his own end, his size makes him only an adequate top-4 defender. Still, with his bankable production, some team was going to give him a big deal.
Throw the pandemic and a shifting financial landscape into the mix, and the slim chance the B’s had of re-signing Krug got even slimmer. In the end, Krug signed with the Blues for a seven-year deal worth $6.5 million annually, which is believed to be similar to what the B’s offered him pre-pandemic. But Krug said that the B’s had taken their offer off the table. So a player who wanted to stay left a team that signed him as a free agent, nurtured him and loved everything about him. Such is life in a salary cap world.
The Krug departure could be just the start of a major blue line transformation. As of this date, Zdeno Chara has not yet decided to return.
10. OCTOBER 10 Bruins sign Craig Smith.
Many B’s fans were still smarting over the loss of Krug when news broke the next morning that the B’s signed the veteran right wing formerly of the Nashville Predators. It was not a strong enough balm m to soothe the sting from Krug Krug’s s departure for many, and it’s hard to argue that the trade-off makes the B’s a better team.
But Smith provides the B’s not with just depth on the right side of the forward group, , but quality depth. He was on his way to his sixth 20-goal season when the pandemic hit and he’s just the type of shoot- first straight-line player the B’s s need. They also got him at a reasonable price ($3.1 million for three years). He will be a good addition. Good enough to o push the B’s closer to the Cup in 2021? That’s a tall ask.