Exits nothing new for Bruins
In the end, only three weeks separated the departures of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, leaving the Bruins’ front office with the Herculean lift of reconfiguring the offense around the Nos. 1-2 center spots, where those two last season combined for 43 goals and 114 points.
That’s a whole lot of rearranging the deck chairs, with Pavel Zacha and
Charlie Coyle expected to get first dibs next month at filling the primo vacancies. As challenges go, though, the century-old Black and Gold franchise has lived through an even greater, broader, more harrowing talent drain.
In the summer of 1972, fresh off winning the Cup for the second time in three seasons, the Bruins saw no fewer than five key roster members, including franchise netminder Gerry Cheevers, bid adieu to Causeway Street.
Cheevers, 31, along with forwards Derek Sanderson, 26, and Johnny “Pie”
McKenzie, 34, as well as defenseman
Ted Green, 32, departed for larger paydays in the rival WHA. Steady Eddie Westfall, 31, a glue guy in the Cups wins of 1970 and ’72, was filched in the June expansion draft by the new NHL franchise on Long Island.
Those departures, keep in mind, came a few months after the Feb. 23 inseason trade of future 60-goal scorer
Reggie Leach, 21, and solid defenseman Rick Smith, 23, to the California Golden Seals for experienced blue liner
Carol Vadnais.
Oh, and on March 1 of the next season, popular winger Garnet “Ace” Bailey, 24, was wheeled to Detroit, netting defenseman Gary Doak for his second tour in Black and Gold.
All in all, the body count came to eight players dropped from the roster, with only Vadnais and Doak in return (Sanderson was back soon from the Philadelphia Blazers, but his best days were behind him). Superstars Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr were still on the job, which mitigated some of the sting among a deeply wounded fan base, but it was that wholesale change across all three positions that in large part served catalyst to the November 1975 blockbuster deal that saw Esposito and Vadnais swapped to the Rangers for Jean Ratelle and Brad Park.
Before and after the big swap orchestrated by general manager Harry Sinden, the Bruins reached the Cup Final three more times in the 1970s (’74, ’77, and ’78), but the next title wasn’t delivered until 2011.
The 39-year drought indeed had many fathers, a large number of whom sported that large CH logo on their tricolored chests. But some of those bitter season endings might have turned out sweet, through the ’70s and perhaps into the ’80s, had the roster not been gutted in the summer of 1972 and those surrounding months.
The Bergeron-Krejci losses, not nearly the surprises we witnessed here more than a half-century ago, came in the fairly recent wake of the Zdeno Chara and Tuukka Rask departures. Chara was not invited back following his final twirls in Boston in the spring of 2020. Rask made his last stand in winter of 2022, following a four-game test of his rehabbed hips.
In a matter of some 36 months, the Bruins have said farewell to three guys who each played 1,000-plus games here, two of whom (Chara, Bergeron) were captains, and a goalie whose 308 wins stand as the club record.
The losses only felt deeper this offseason when prized deadline acquisitions Tyler Bertuzzi, Dmitry Orlov, and Garnet Hathaway exited in July as unrestricted free agents. All three offered tantalizing glimpses of what the future might look like during their short stays in Black and Gold, only for UFA to be the WHA of the modern NHL.
Training camp opens soon, Sept. 13 for rookies and Sept. 20 for the varsity. The franchise with one title in 51 years, though once faced with a bigger buildback, has some serious work to do.