“All the guys in here, we’re like a family,” Bruins winger Brad Marchand said.
The Bruins family is currently facing a daunting task, down 2-0 in their best of seven opening-round series with the Canadiens, as the series shifts to Montreal. The Bruins won’t get to play another game at home if they don’t find a way to get at least one win at the Bell Centre, and they’ll need to win both games there if they really want to make this a series.
“Having a close family like we do in here, it’s great at playoff time,” Marchand said. “You really need that if you’re going to go deep in the playoffs. Any time you battle through adversity it helps. All great teams have gone through it and overcame it. It’s a lot easier when you have a close team and you really pull together and go through it as a team.”
Defenseman Andrew Ference has been one of the veterans helping to create that atmosphere in the Bruins’ room, but he also understands it takes more than chemistry to win games.
“Adversity can bring you together if you learn your lessons and embrace the challenge,” Ference said. “But it doesn’t do it on its own. You can’t just get along with everybody and expect it to win hockey games. It helps in times like these, but individually everybody’s got to put it on the line. It’s not a cure for everything, but it helps.”
Ference is still confident that the Bruins can turn things around, and he took Marchand’s family metaphor one step further to explain the club’s strong chemistry.
“It’s been good here for years, but it’s like a marriage,” Ference said. “It takes work. You have to make sure that there’s a certain attitude. I think the biggest thing we’ve done in this locker room is just the inclusion of everyone. The rookies, the older guys, the Europeans, the Canadians, everybody goes out together.”
And Ference does mean everybody. Nobody is excluded on this club, which isn’t the case in all locker rooms.
“The benchmark is you can literally see anybody in the room and go out to dinner with them or whatever and it wouldn’t be weird,” Ference said. “That’s not normal. I’ve been on teams where there is a cliqueyness. [With the Bruins,] literally everyone in the room goes out together and hangs out together. And it’s not forced. It’s really good. It’s really nice.”
Ference saw firsthand what it was like when a team wasn’t a tight-knit during some of his earlier NHL stints, and he’s been one of the veterans making sure no divisions have arisen in the Bruins’ room.
“When I first came in, it was like, young guys don’t hang out with the older guys,” said Ference, who made his NHL debut with Pittsburgh in 1999 and also played for Calgary before being traded to Boston in 2007. “It just didn’t happen. And when you’re a young guy, it’s not fun. You don’t like that. You almost feel like you’re on Team B.”
Ference drew upon those experiences to help make it better for the youngsters here in Boston. He also got some insight into what it is like for the players dealing with language and cultural issues when they come over from Europe.
“I know a couple of us went over to Europe during the lockout and got a real appreciation for what the European guys go through when they come over here with the language barrier and just feeling like part of a different culture,” Ference said. “It takes work, but it’s really beneficial.”
Marchand is one of the youngsters who has appreciated how veterans like Ference, Zdeno Chara, Mark Recchi and Shawn Thornton, among others, have eased the transition to NHL life.
“It’s been great,” Marchand said. “Any time you have a team as close as ours, it helps through the year, especially bringing young guys up and making them feel comfortable. Every guy in this room has done a great job at helping each other along. If someone is going through a rough patch or anything like that, there’s always someone there for them.”
The value of that camaraderie is being revealed now with the stakes raised in the postseason, but forging a close bond is needed throughout the grind of an 82-game schedule.
“You’re going to do something crazy if you don’t have fun,” Ference said. “It’s not just this time of year. This time of year is intense, you need a release. But it’s a long year. People talk about camaraderie and a good dressing room. The value of a good dressing room comes at this time of year because you spend a lot of time together and if you don’t have good camaraderie and a good vibe in the room, you get sick of each other. I’ve been on teams where you are kind of sick of each other, and that carries over onto the ice. Chemistry is a very important thing. We actually like each other, and that’s important when you spend so much time together.”
The Bruins hope to spend even more time together this spring, but they’ll have to find a way to win a couple games in Montreal to do that.
