So the Bruins acquired Jaromir Jagr on Tuesday afternoon. Now what?
Bruins president Cam Neely made his weekly radio appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub just hours after the deal that brought the future Hall of Famer to Boston became official.
Neely sounded happy with the ability to land a player like Jagr, who at 41, still appears to have something left in the tank. At the very least, Jagr is expected to give the Bruins’ offense — which has struggled mightily at times — a jump upon joining the team.
“Offensively, he’s put up numbers year after year after year,” Neely said on The Felger and Massarotti Show. “He’s still doing it. He’s a big body who protects the puck extremely well especially in our game, our cycle game down low. He can do a great job of protecting the puck. He’ll help us on the power play, so all of those things combined it made it fairly easy for us to try and acquire him.”
It might make sense to slide Jagr onto the Bruins’ “first line,” especially alongside a playmaker like David Krejci. However, it sounds like Jagr may make his Bruins debut Thursday on the lackluster third line.
“It will be interesting to see where it shakes out,” Neely said. I’m sure he’ll be inserted in various lines just to see where the best fit may be. Right now, [Nathan] Horton‘s got it going and Krejci has played fairly well pretty consistent throughout the year so I would assume he may start on a different line than that, but you never know where things will shake out. We’ll have 13 games after [Tuesday’s game] and we’ll see what makes the best fit and gives us the best chance to get production from all three lines.”
The Bruins have tried a handful of different combinations with the third line, none of which have really worked out as the club hasn’t gotten much production out of that line, a line that is shorthanded now in the absence of Chris Kelly.
