BOSTON — Had Tyler Seguin scored three goals in a game at TD Garden in, say, 2012, dozens of hats would have rained down onto the ice from every corner of the arena. The 2015 version of the All-Star winger, however, isn’t too well-liked around these parts.
So, when Seguin completed a hat trick Tuesday night — the seventh of his career and his first ever in Boston — just one single baseball cap found its way onto the Garden ice. And where hats were scarce, boos were plentiful, as the Garden faithful let the 23-year-old ex-Bruins phenom have it each of the several times his name was announced.
“You don’t know how they’re going to be,” Seguin told reporters after the game, which his Dallas Stars won 5-3. “I find sometimes when you’re getting booed it makes you play better. I mean, I get booed in Winnipeg, where I have no idea why, but it gives you a little more jump in your step.”
The game was Seguin’s third back in Boston since the 2013 blockbuster deal that sent him to Dallas, cutting short what had been a promising but tumultuous tenure with the team that drafted him. Seguin was the target of plenty of criticism before and after the trade, but he said his interactions with Bostonians in his few trips back have been nothing but positive.
“It’s funny,” he said. “I’ve been here a few times since I got traded away, but it’s like I still play here. Especially on the streets, people are just friendly, and I think the great thing about this city is, no one’s really talking bad, especially when I’m walking around. It’s always ‘Thank you for that Stanley Cup,’ and that makes this city really special.”
Seguin still keeps in touch with a number of his former teammates. He attended ex-linemate Brad Marchand’s wedding this past summer and is in a group text thread with several members of the 2011 Stanley Cup squad.
“I don’t know if it’s been talked about before,” he said, “but all those guys, Rex (Mark Recchi), Rydes (Michael Ryder), everyone’s in it. So, it’s cool to always have them.”
But Seguin isn’t focused on the past, and he has little reason to be. His three goals Tuesday brought him into a tie with linemate Jamie Benn for the NHL lead in scoring, and his team owns the best record in the Western Conference.
A lot, he says, has changed in two-and-a-half years.
“Look at my beard,” Seguin joked. “I think it’s just about becoming a pro even more. I’ve been asked to mature on the ice and mature as a leader. It’s a young team in here, and right when I stepped in, I had the opportunity to be a leader and first-line center. And I’ve tried to grasp that and run with it since Day 1.”
Thumbnail photo via Michael Dwyer/Associated Press
