The Bruins took at least one point out of every game on the trip, and while back-to-back shootout losses in Atlanta and Buffalo made a couple of those points feel a bit empty, Monday’s 2-1 win over the Leafs behind the resurgence of Tuukka Rask was sure to make the trek back to Boston a little more enjoyable.
So as the Bruins get ready to finally return home, here are a half-dozen items about the club that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks in the latest installment of Bruins Shootout.
1. Through the first 36 games of the season, the Bruins had just eight goals from defensemen. After the 37th game, that total stood at 12. For the first time in franchise history, the Bruins got goals from four different defensemen in the same game, as Andrew Ference, Dennis Seidenberg, Zdeno Chara and Steven Kampfer each scored against Buffalo. It was an unlikely group to achieve such a feat, as Ference, Seidenberg and Kampfer each had just one previous goal this season, while Chara’s fifth goal of the season on Saturday was his first in 24 games.
The Bruins need to get their defense more involved in the attack, though it would be better if they could do it without sacrificing their play in their own end as much as they did on Saturday, when the Sabres scored six goals themselves thanks to far too many defensive breakdowns by the Bruins.
2. Tyler Seguin has shown flashes of the skill that made him such an enticing talent entering last year’s draft, but it’s been a slow process for the 18-year-old to adjust to the competition level in the NHL as a rookie. He may have taken his biggest step forward on Saturday, though that will only be gauged by how he builds off his first multi-point performance as a pro. Seguin showed off a range of skills that night, snapping off a quick one-timer in the slot for his first goal in 12 games, then working a nifty give-and-go to set up Kampfer’s score. He then showed off his slick moves in close with a deke to the backhand to score in the shootout.
It was the first sign of life from Seguin since being made a healthy scratch in mid-December, as he had just one assist in seven games upon his return. He also had just 12 shots in those games (none in the two contests prior to the clash with the Sabres) and got his ice time cut to a season-low 6:30 in Atlanta on Thursday. But he responded the right way, putting a season-high six shots on net in Buffalo in 11:30. He skated for more than 14 minutes in Toronto on Saturday night, registering a pair of shots and a minus-1 rating.
3. Putting more shots on net would be a worthy goal for Nathan Horton as well, and it might just help him get back to scoring goals again. Horton’s season totals are still a respectable 12-14-26 through 38 games, and he is third on the team with 91 shots. But he entered Monday in a nine-game goal-scoring drought, with just 20 shots over those nine games. It’s often feast or famine with Horton, who has nine games with four or more shots and 13 with one shot or none. He had 43 totals shots in those nine games with four or more, nearly half of his season total.
Putting more shots on net consistently could help Horton snap out of the extended funk he’s slipped into. After opening the season on fire with 8-10-18 totals in the first 17 games, he had just 3-3-6 in the next 20 before he ended his drought with a goal and an assist on Monday. Not coincidentally, Monday was also his ninth game with four or more shots, hopefully a harbinger of many more shots — and goals — to come.
4. Many of the official stats the NHL keeps are questionable at best due to the subjective nature of the stat-keeping from arena to arena. But while it isn’t an exact science, the numbers do sometimes offer some interesting findings. Milan Lucic‘s team-leading 28 giveaways through 38 games present one such example. While he’s on pace for a career year offensively with a team-high 16 goals, the defensive gaffes are also coming at an alarming rate. Chara is tied with 28 giveaways, but that is expected of a defenseman handling the puck as much as Chara does, as he also leads the team in ice time at 26:38. That’s nearly 10 minutes more a game than Lucic plays at 16:42, the 10th highest total on the team. Lucic has more than twice as many giveaways as any other Bruin forward (with Michael Ryder coming in second with just 13). Lucic has already set a career high in giveaways, as he had just 15 in 77 games as a rookie in 2007-08, 22 in 72 games in 2008-09 and 17 last year in 50 games.
5. Shawn Thornton has a well-earned reputation in Boston as being one of the most affable guys in the Bruins’ locker room, but at least one former teammate and friend questioned that perception of Thornton’s jovial demeanor. Fellow tough guy George Parros, who won a Cup with Thornton in Anaheim in 2007, recalled a Thornton he described as “grumpy” and rather finicky when it came to his meals.
“We always gave Thorty [crap] because he was always sending the steaks back,” Parros said when the Ducks visited Boston just before Christmas. “He was never happy with his steaks. He’s just a grumpy guy. He’s gone from all those AHL games to sending back steaks in the nicest steakhouses in the NHL.”
One would think Thornton would have been happy with anything he got at a nice restaurant after all those years of fast food on long bus trips in the minors, but the Bruins enforcer confirmed the story.
“That bastard, he let it out of the cage,” Thornton said of Parros. “He is correct on that. I did send a few steaks back. I like my steak mooing, and they have a habit of overcooking it. If you’re paying 60 bucks for a piece of meat, it better be cooked right.”
6. So with Parros revealing such dark secrets about him, would Thornton counter with some dirt on the Ducks’ popular pugilist?
“I’ve got some stuff, but he’s a got a pretty loaded gun always,” Thornton said. “I’ll leave him alone. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat. He got me. One-nothing him.”
