Eagles could fly for US Juniors
Flush with a half-dozen Boston College Eagles, including freshman goalie Jacob Fowler, Team USA held its final training camp in Plymouth, Mich., late this past week for the upcoming World Junior Championship in Sweden. Puck drop in Gothenburg is Dec. 26.
The 6-foot-2-inch Fowler, a Canadiens draft pick (69th overall in June), has played all 17 games with the Eagles this season, going 13-3-1. He is competing for the starting spot against fellow Floridian Sam Hillebrandt (OHL Barrie) and Trey Augustine (Michigan State). The Americans expect to keep all three on the 25-man squad.
BC also sent defensemen Drew Fortescue and Aram Minnetian to the camp, along with forwards Cutter Gauthier, Ryan Leonard, Gabe Perreault, and Will Smith.
BU contributed defenseman Lane Hutson to the preliminary roster, while fellow Terrier Macklin Celebrini, the dazzling 17-year-old forward, reported to Team Canada’s camp in Oakville, Ontario. The gifted Celebrini, who won’t turn 18 until next June, is the son of Rick Celebrini, director of sports medicine and performance for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Leonard (Amherst) and Smith (Lexington) are the only two players from Massachusetts vying for the US squad, which planned to fly overseas Saturday for a couple of tune-ups prior to the Boxing Day opener against Norway.
The Americans took home the bronze last year and the Canadians won their second consecutive gold, led by Connor Bedard’s 9-14–23 production line in seven games. Bedard is eligible again, but is busy leading the NHL in rookie scoring, after going No. 1 overall to the Blackhawks in June’s draft.
Celebrini, from Vancouver, could be the No. 1 pick in next June’s draft, potentially with the Blackhawks again picking first. A Bedard-Celebrini combo could provide Chicago with a cornerstone pair reminiscent of Jonathan Toews-Patrick Kane.
Great read of Bruins history
Impossible to find a better, more poignant $50 gift for a Bruins fan than the 320-page gem of a coffee table book, “Blood, Sweat & 100 YEARS” that Richard Johnson and Rusty Sullivan co-authored to commemorate the club’s century of doing business.
Johnson and Sullivan, long the keystone combination of The Sports Museum and its annual gala, The Tradition, have covered every inch of the franchise’s ice in both word and picture.
Randomly, your faithful puck chronicler stuck a thumb in at pages 102-103, only to find a full-page color photo of a youthful Harry Sinden peering out from behind the Bruins bench on 102, and a black-and-white photo of 1966 training camp “hopefuls” Derek Sanderson and Glen Sather on page 103. Oh, and page 6 has a priceless shot from the Boston Arena, where the Bruins opened play in 1924, featuring a 13-man ice crew, along with the horse that pulled the ice scraper for resurfacing. Frank Zamboni didn’t develop his motorized ice resurfacer, with much greater horsepower, until the late-1940s.
“Truly a labor of love,” said Johnson, the museum’s curator, who co-wrote and edited the commemorative book with Sullivan, the museum’s executive director. “The Bruins are such a family team, in so many ways, and the book really is for all the families who contributed to the franchise’s success through the decades.”
Johnson said he was especially thinking of Milt Schmidt and Woody Dumart — members of the famed Kraut Line, along with Bobby Bauer —ashe and Sullivan worked on the tome.
“Wish those guys were still with us to see it,” mused Johnson, “because it’s really for them, played the game for peanuts and just the nicest guys imaginable.”
Worth the price of admission alone to read a piece by Leigh Montville, the brilliant former Globe Sports columnist, relive a tiny piece of club history through the eyes of a then-teenaged fan, Vonnie Shea, and her crush on Bruins defenseman Ted Green. Young Vonnie, from Roslindale, became president of the Ted Green Fan Club.
“The players,” she recalled, “were like rock stars. Bigger than rock stars.”
Your faithful puck chronicler chipped in with a look back at Don Cherry’s Lunch Pail A.C. gang of the late 1970s. Cherry’s successor, Fred Creighton, was less than three months on the job the night in New York when a number of those guys took their fight right to the paying customers in the Madison Square Garden seats.
Start to finish, according to Johnson, the book, published by Triumph Books, took a year to create. It’s on sale at the Bruins Pro Shop in North Station, as well as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
From penalty shot to penalty
Watch the game long enough, and you might see a penalty shot lead to a 10-minute misconduct? Yep.
Such was the case Tuesday night when a peeved Brady Tkachuk, his penalty shot snuffed out by a startling, dangerous poke check from Hurricanes goalie Pyotr Kochetkov, got himself tossed out with 4:21 to go in regulation.
Tkachuk, with a chance to cut the Senators’ deficit to 4-2, went careening into the rear wall when the diving Kochetkov took out the big winger’s right skate as he barreled toward the net. Tkachuk’s ire was understandable. The Russian goaltender targeted his poke for Tkachuk’s skate, not the puck, the rubber disk ultimately rolling into Kochetkov’s midsection.
The fiery Tkachuk and the equally red-hot Kochetkov were kept at bay by the linesmen as they jawed at one another. Tkachuk ultimately got tagged with the misconduct when he continued yapping.
Penalty shots are a rarity, but GMs and supervisors for the guys in stripes will have to consider a tweak to the rulebook in light of Kochetkov’s move. A well-orchestrated poke check is a lost art, and in today’s game a rarity at least on par with a penalty shot.
But the direct, intentional poke at Tkachuk’s skate was a dangerous play that could have resulted in severe injury when the 6-foot-4-inch heavyweight knocked into the rear wall like a runaway curling stone. The right call — if only allowed for in the rulebook — would have been to award the Senators with two more penalty shots, the first as a do-over for Tkachuk’s failed attempt, and the second for Kochetkov’s attempt to injure.
It was an illegal maneuver by Kochetkov, by the way, that set up the penalty shot. Under heavy fire, and with Tkachuk pressuring near the left post, Kochetkov dropped his stick flat in the crease as he shifted to his right to cover the open post. The dropped stick, the one moments later used for the poke check, correctly triggered the call for the free attempt.
Somewhere, Battlin’ Billy Smith had to be smiling.
Loose pucks
Conor Geekie, the 19-year-old brother of Bruin forward Morgan Geekie, was among Team Canada’s World Junior camp hopefuls in recent days and is expected to be a key component of the Canadian squad. A 6-3 leftshot center, the younger Geekie was selected No. 11 in the 2022 draft by Arizona and has led WHL Wenatchee this season in scoring (20-29–49 in 26 games) . . . NHL GMs continue to look at ways to improve the three-on-three overtime experience, some of them voicing displeasure with the amount of reloading that sometimes leads puck carriers to circle out of the offensive zone and even retreat behind the red line. It’s not exactly the fast action everyone desired. Thought here: Once the team in possession crosses the offensive blue line, expand the attacking zone to include the red line. It would negate offside calls for the duration of the possession, thus creating the potential for long passes and poaching around the net. In other words, the sweet mayhem of pond hockey . . . The NHL’s holiday trade ban begins Tuesday at 11:59 p.m, with rosters frozen until 12:01 a.m. Dec. 28 . . . NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” that there are no plans for any of the Original 32 franchises to relocate, although Ted Leonsis could move his Capitals 4 miles south of D.C. to a new arena/entertainment center in Alexandria, Va. — a possibility, Bettman noted, that “could be very special.” The league also has no interest in expanding, Bettman added, but there has been interest from Quebec City, Atlanta, Houston, and Salt Lake. The last expansion fee (Seattle) was $650 million, a 30 percent bump over what Vegas paid . . . Wishing speedy recoveries to former NHL forwards Tony Granato and Kelly Chase, both of whom early this past week revealed their cancer battles, Granato with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Chase with leukemia (following recent treatment for prostate cancer) . . . A very candid Bill Armstrong, GM of the much-improved Coyotes, told Judd Sirott and Bob Beers last Saturday on 98.5 The Sports Hub that he doesn’t figure his team will make the playoffs this season. Armstrong said he is encouraged by what’s developing and continues to build a roster with size and speed. Rare, and refreshing, for a GM to be so blunt. More, please.