This story from The Hockey News Archives discusses the Boston Bruins ahead of the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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Exorcising The Demons - April 18, 2011 - By Mike Loftus
They know people will talk forever about 2010, no matter how the playoffs go in 2011 and beyond.
That doesn’t mean the Boston Bruins spend time talking about their place in NHL history as only the third team to lose a best-of-7 series after leading 3-0. “No, not at all,” said veteran winger Shawn Thornton. “I know it gets brought up a lot around town, but in this room, there hasn’t been any talk about it at all, actually.”
Added first-year Bruin Nathan Horton: “Everybody knows. You don’t really need to talk about it.”
No talk hasn’t equaled no action, though.
Between off-season trades (Dennis Wideman, Vladimir Sobotka), in-season deals (Marco Sturm, Blake Wheeler, Mark Stuart, Matt Hunwick) and decisions not to re-sign free agents (Miroslav Satan, Steve Begin), the number of Bruins who can give first-person accounts of the collapse against Philadelphia has shrunk considerably. “Obviously, that ending left an imprint on us,” said GM Peter Chiarelli. “You don’t tailor your whole team to address the way that series ended, but we injected some new blood.”
We injected some new blood– Peter Chiarelli
Some of the blood is young. Boston will take first-year NHL forwards Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand into the post-season. Rookie defenseman Adam McQuaid enters the playoffs as a full-timer, not an emergency fill-in like last year and fellow blueliner Steven Kampfer has proven capable when called upon.
More new Bruins are old NHL hands, though. Forwards Horton and Gregory Campbell (from Florida, for Wideman), Rich Peverley (from Atlanta, for Wheeler and Stuart) and Chris Kelly (from Ottawa, for a 2011 second round draft pick), plus defensemen Tomas Kaberle (from Toronto, for a first-rounder and prospect Joe Colborne) and Shane Hnidy (free agent), mean Boston’s post-season lineup has changed significantly in a year. Add D-man Dennis Seidenberg, who missed the 2010 playoffs (forearm surgery) and goalie Tim Thomas, who backed up then-rookie Tuukka Rask and the differences are even more pronounced. “Yeah, come to think of it,” said defenseman Johnny Boychuk, mulling the turnover, “we’ve improved. We’ve made our team better.”
Chiarelli stressed that nobody became an ex-Bruin because of their play against the Flyers. If last year’s second round performance was a determining factor, in fact, Wideman (eight assists in the series) would still be in Boston, and Satan (three goals, five points) might have been asked to stay.
Chiarelli, however, concluded that his team hadn’t been deep enough to maintain its seemingly insurmountable lead over the Flyers. Sturm, who became a salary cap casualty this season, sustained a series-ending knee injury in Game 1. Center David Krejci was lost to a dislocated wrist in Game 3; and while Marc Savard returned for the series, history proved he hadn’t fully recovered from the concussion that will force him to miss this year’s playoffs. Seidenberg was never available and Stuart wasn’t at full strength after coming back from an infection related to earlier surgery on his hand.
“We obviously had to improve our scoring and address our depth,” said Chiarelli, whose addition of Horton replaced goals lost when Boston traded Phil Kessel, with the added bonus of subbing Campbell for Begin. “At the end of the day, we didn’t have the depth we needed going into last year’s playoffs. That’s why we added the Kellys and Peverleys (both center-winger types).”
The Bruins like their look. “I think we’re well-equipped,” Seidenberg said. “We’ve got a good mix.”
Although atop the Northeast Division for much of the season, Boston hasn’t always been consistent and Montreal gained ground as the season wound down. Horton and Campbell, making their playoff debuts, have long since carved out roles, but finding the right situations for Kaberle, Peverley and Kelly proved slightly more challenging: The Bruins went 7-0-0 immediately after the pre-deadline trades, then experienced a 1-3-3 dip.
Boston expected all necessary chemistry to be established by Round 1 – at which point questions about last year’s Round 2 were expected to commence, despite the team’s altered state. “We felt we could get to a certain level with what we had and we hoped to improve it – and we have,” Chiarelli said. “Positive or negative, (last year) is experience that we have to learn from. You don’t forget about a series like that, but we feel like we’ve made the team stronger.”
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