Young talent carries Bruins into next round
BOSTON, MA » In terms of the regular season, the 2017-18 Bruins will be remembered as the team that arrived a year earlier than anybody would have expected.
But now that they really have arrived — as in 112 regular-sea- son points — the expectations have changed.
And so when the Bruins finally, finally, finally finished off the Toronto Maple Leafs last night at the Garden, roaring back with four third-period goals and claiming a 7- 4 Game 7 victory, Bruins fans weren’t just cheering. Turn up the Garden volume a bit and you could hear sighs of relief. Many of ’em.
The Bruins wiped the Leafs off the Garden ice in Games 1 and 2. And then everything changed, as the Leafs came back to tie the series. Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask, often in the crosshairs of the hometown mob, was pulled from a game. Yesterday, Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy’s decision not to dress Harvard boy Ryan Donato for Game 7 led to an entire day of point/counterpoint anywhere in Greater Boston where hockey is the talk.
For now, everyone can calm down. The Bruins live. Their next foe is the Tampa Bay Lightning, which means another chance to see the B’s exciting cast of early-twentysomethings under the bright lights of the Stanley Cup tourney.
“We’re not here without the core group,” said Cassidy, “but we’ve supplemented them with some good young players.”
To put things in perspective, consider the resumes of the Maple Leafs’ Patrick Marleau and last night’s Bruins’ hero, Jake DeBrusk. Each player scored two goals last night. That’s where the comparisons end. Marleau is 38; De
Brusk is 21. When Marleau played his first NHL game, on Oct.1, 1997 for the San Jose Sharks, DeBrusk was just over a year old.
To pick another Bruin, Charlie McAvoy, he wasn’t even born when Marleau played his first game. (On the day McAvoy was born, on Dec. 21, 1997, Marleau was playing for the Sharks that night in Anaheim. That’s nuts.)
But you get the point . . . these are not your father’s Bruins. These aren’t even your big brother’s Bruins. These are the Millen-
nial B’s, and winger Jake DeBrusk is making noise about being the next Boston sports hotshot.
On a night when some of the veterans failed and or flailed — there was a twofor- the-price- of- one Bruins A’struggling when Brad Marchand was taken down as Kasperi Kapanen moved in on Rask and badly deked the goaltender for a shorthanded goal — it was the kiddos who gave you hope for the future.
Except that we’re now talking the near-future, not some far away future.
DeBrusk’s second goal, the one that gave the B’s a 5- 4 lead and effectively snuffed out the Maple Leafs, was as vivid an example of the March of Youth as you’ll ever see. It might have looked like nothing more than pure speed and hustle at first glance, given the way the kid rocketed up the ice to the left of Toronto goaltender Frederik Andersen, but the way he moved the puck to his forehand at the end and then sent it into the net had nothing to do with youth. That was raw talent.