A dash of talent, a pinch of leadership, a little bit of grit and a heaping helping of luck are all needed.
The Bruins are looking to find the recipe for their first Stanley Cup since 1972, and here are 25 ingredients they will need to add to the mix to make that dream a reality in 2010-11.
1. Horton tops the 30-goal plateau.
The Bruins acquired Nathan Horton to punch up the league’s lowest-scoring offense. He’s scored 20 or more goals in each of the last five years, but topped 30 just once, with 31 in 2006-07. But he also never had the quality of centers in Florida that he’ll have setting him up in Boston. He should set a new career high this season, and the Bruins need him to.
2. No sophomore slump for Rask.
Breakout rookie goalies haven’t always fared to well in their second seasons, especially in Boston, the land of Blaine Lacher and Andrew Raycroft. Tuukka Rask has the talent to avoid that pitfall, but he needs to put together another big season to ease any antsy Bruins fans’ fears — and to lead the B’s to a Cup.
3. Thomas turns back the clock.
While Rask will be the main man between the pipes this year, the Bruins will need to give him some breaks to keep him fresh. To do that, they need Tim Thomas to play more like his 2008-09 Vezina-winning self and less like last year’s gimpy version. If his hip is healthy, he’s more than capable of regaining his form, and pushing Rask for playing time.
4. Ference stays in the lineup.
Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference doesn’t do a lot of things that stand out on the stat sheet, but somehow he manages to make a major impact when he’s in the lineup. Last year, the Bruins went 28-16-7 in the games he played and just 11-14-6 without him. The club’s midseason swoon coincided with his absence with a groin injury, as the first game after he was hurt started a 1-9-4 skid, and Boston immediately won four straight upon his return. The problem is that he has played just 51, 47 and 59 games the last three years and underwent groin surgery for the second-straight year this offseason.
5. Keep the captain happy with a new deal.
The Bruins locked up Patrice Bergeron with a three-year extension on Friday. Now they need to do likewise for Zdeno Chara, who is also entering the final year of his current deal. Obviously, this will have a bigger impact on future seasons, but it will also benefit this year’s squad by preventing Chara’s contract situation from becoming a distraction.
6. Power-play production.
The Bruins struggled mightily on the man-advantage last season, finishing 23rd in the league at just 16.6 percent. They were especially impotent when Marc Savard was out of the lineup, converting just 9.7 percent (11-113) without him, compared to a solid 21.7 percent (33-152) with him. They won’t have Savard to start the season, but they’ll still need to find a way to produce some goals on the power play.
7. Hunwick gets back on track.
Defenseman Matt Hunwick regressed significantly in his second season, managing just 14 points and finishing a minus-16 in 76 games after scoring 27 points with a plus-15 in 53 games in 2008-09. With Dennis Wideman gone, the Bruins need Hunwick’s puck-moving skills, so he will have to get back to his rookie form.
8. The penalty kill stays among the league’s best.
After a slow start, the Bruins were among the league leaders on the PK all year, finishing third at 86.4 percent. Steve Begin is gone, but Daniel Paille is back after helping key that turnaround upon his arrival from Buffalo, while newcomer Greg Campbell will also be a mainstay on the short-handed unit.
9. Chiarelli delivers a deadline boost.
The Bruins look good on paper to start the season, but weaknesses will be revealed and injuries are sure to strike. The key to a sustained playoff run often comes from the reinforcements acquired for the stretch run. While he shouldn’t mortgage the future, Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli does have a stockpile of prospects and draft picks to draw upon to give the club a late boost.
10. Seguin lives up to the hype.
The Bruins have tried to downplay the expectations for their prized prospect, but even though he’s just 18, the Bruins will need Tyler Seguin to make an impact in his rookie season. He won’t be asked to carry the offense, but he must contribute to it for Boston to succeed.
11. The Bruins stick up for each other.
A weakness all year exposed most blatantly with the lack of response to Matt Cooke‘s cheap shot on Savard, the Bruins played very un-Bruinlike for most of last season. Their toughness, chemistry and camaraderie keyed their rise to the top of the East in 2008-09, and the Bruins have to get back to that all-for-one mindset this season.
12. Lucic’s ankle holds up all season.
The Bruins invested big money in the young bruiser last year, but Milan Lucic struggled to overcome a high ankle sprain for most of the year. He’s healthy now, but the fear of reinjuring the ankle is something he will have to get past to return to his old self, and the Bruins definitely need the old Lucic who can change games with his physical play.
13. Sturm contributes in the second half.
Marco Sturm has been through a lot with major knee injuries in each of the last two seasons. He won’t be back this year until November at the earliest, but don’t forget that Sturm did lead the Bruins in goals last year and has topped the 20-goal mark seven times in his career. If he can score at that pace when he returns, that will be a big boost to an offense that can use all the help it can get.
14. Ryder finds his scoring touch.
Michael Ryder was one of many Bruins who struggled mightily last year after a solid 2008-09 campaign. He managed just 18 goals last year after scoring 27 the season before. He also had a pair of 30-goal seasons in Montreal, so he’s capable of producing, and the Bruins need him to find that scoring touch — and a more consistent effort — again.
15. Wheeler makes progress.
Blake Wheeler‘s sophomore decline wasn’t as noticeable, but he did regress a bit from a solid rookie campaign. He settled for a one-year deal in arbitration, so the pressure is on to get his game moving in the right direction by chipping in more offensively and making better use of his size.
16. Recchi defies the aging process for another year.
Mark Recchi is a marvel. He’s coming off a season in which he was third on the club in goals and fourth in points, all while turning 42 in February. At some point the future Hall of Famer has to slow down, but the Bruins just hope it won’t be this year.
17. Get off to a fast start.
The Bruins struggled right out of the blocks last year, playing inconsistent hockey in the early going as they didn’t post consecutive wins until November. That was a far cry from 2008-09, when the Bruins earned points in five of their first six games, then went on a monster 27-3-1 run through December to take control of the East.
18. Use playoff collapse as motivation.
Last year ended in catastrophic fashion with an epic playoff collapse, losing to Philadelphia after leading 3-0 in the series and 3-0 in Game 7. That could be a debilitating loss that haunts a club for years. But the Bruins instead need to turn that devastating defeat into a positive and use it as motivation to drive them further in the playoffs this season.
19. Make the Garden an inhospitable place.
Last year the Bruins were barely a .500 team at home, going just 17-17-6 at the Garden (with another home win at Fenway Park) and suffering through a 10-game home winless streak midway through the season. Only Florida had fewer wins at home in the entire NHL. The Bruins need to make better use of their home-ice advantage, similar to what they did in 2008-09 when they went 29-6-6 at home.
20. Chara returns to Norris form.
Chara remained a force last season even as his production and effectiveness was reduced by a hand injury for much of the season, but he was still a notch or two below the elite level of play he displayed the previous year en route to winning the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman. He’s healthy now, and Chara has to return to that level of play to make the Bruins a true Cup contender.
21. Krejci tops 70 points.
After offseason hip surgery, David Krejci had a sluggish start to the season last year. He didn’t hit his stride until a strong performance in the Olympics, but he was Boston’s best player down the stretch and in the playoffs before a wrist injury ended his season and helped doomed the Bruins against the Flyers. He finished tied for the team lead with 52 points, but that was a 21-point drop from the previous year, and the Bruins need him to get back above that 70-point level this year, especially as he’s starting the season on the top line between Horton and Lucic with Savard sidelined indefinitely.
22. The Providence pipeline pumps in more talent.
The Bruins have succeeded in recent years in developing plenty of young talent down on the farm and also finding veteran journeymen to plus into holes as injuries strike. They’ll need to continue that this season, and they should be able to with Providence stacked with a strong crop of prospects as well as experienced pros like Jeremy Reich, Wyatt Smith and Nathan McIver who could fill in at the NHL level in a pinch.
23. Bergeron remains one of the top two-way centers in the league.
The Bruins made a serious investment by signing Bergeron to a three-year, $15-million extension on Friday. Now it’s up to Bergeron to continue to prove his worth as one of the best all-around centers in the league. With Savard out, he’ll be asked to do more offensively, but he’ll also have to remain in his role as a shutdown center against the opposition’s top lines.
24. Boychuk builds off his breakthrough year.
After biding his time as a healthy scratch early last year, Johnny Boychuk emerged as a force on the blue line in the second half of last season and played alongside Chara on the top pairing in the playoffs. The Bruins re-signed him in the summer, now Boychuk has to prove he wasn’t a one-hit wonder and take on even more responsibility with Wideman gone.
25. Savard returns to lineup — and to his old self.
Last but certainly not least, the Bruins have to hope that Savard can return to the lineup at some point this season and reestablish himself as one of the elite playmakers in the league. Given the nature of head injuries, this one may be the toughest element to fulfill. It took Bergeron a full season before he started to look like his old self, so the Bruins won’t know how much they will get out of Savard when — and if — he returns this year, but a significant contribution from him down the stretch could be the final piece to put them over the top and end a Cup drought in Boston that has lasted nearly four decades.
