BOSTON — Pace. Speed. Skill. Attack.
During the first eight years of the Claude Julien era, those were not words one would associate with the Boston Bruins’ style of play.
But after last season’s playoff no-show and the front-office reshuffling that followed, one fact has been made clear: Change is coming on Causeway Street.
The 2015-16 Bruins will be a more dynamic, more offensively focused squad than their grind-it-out predecessors, and evidence of that was visible at the very first practice of training camp. Drills simulating breakouts and rushes were frequent as 59 Bruins roster hopefuls took the ice Friday at TD Garden, keeping with the offseason narrative that Julien will look to push the pace much more this season.
Most of the Bruins’ leadership core stressed afterward, however, that the new system is more a series of tweaks than a full-scale overhaul.
“I think, yeah, we make some adjustments, but I don’t think we’ll be making some major changes,” captain Zdeno Chara said. “I think we’re still going to be taking a lot of pride in our defensive side of the (ice). We want to include the pace of the game and having a four-man attack and so on, but I don’t think we’re going into huge, major changes.”
“I don’t know if it’s the biggest change,” Julien added. “It’s an adjustment. I’m not going to say ‘change,’ because again, I mentioned that the other day that you have to evolve with this game. This game changes.”
David Krejci agreed, saying folks in the media are “talking too much about how we’re going to change the game.”
“It’s just little tweaks here and there,” the veteran center said. “There’s not much to it. It’s just a little quicker pace to our game and use our hockey sense. Be smart out there. Don’t just go running up and down the ice.”
Even if the Bruins’ new strategy isn’t revolutionary, it still was enough to fire up winger Loui Eriksson, who played seven seasons in the quicker-paced Dallas Stars system before joining the B’s two summers ago.
“For sure, we’re going to get more speed into our game,” Eriksson said. “Honestly, that’s how I played all my years in Dallas. I think it’s a good system, and hopefully we can figure it out and play good as a team with it. It’s going to be a bit more fun for the forwards to get some more speed, and for the defensemen, if they can join with us, it will be hard to defend us.”
Bruins fans are hoping he’s right.
Thumbnail photo via Brace Hemmelgarn/USA TODAY Sports Images
