If you’ve ever been to a Boston Bruins game or watched one on TV, you’re familiar with them coming onto the ice before puck drop.
But maybe you didn’t notice that they come out in the same order each and every game.
Players like Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci and Brad Marchand — who have been with the team for several seasons — lead the pack out of the tunnel behind Tuukka Rask. As for the rest of the team? Charlie Coyle chalks it up to just being “routine.”
“It’s just routine. So then it’s just smooth,” Coyle told The Athletic’s Fluto Shinzawa. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, are you the first one out?’ That’s kind of awkward. Everyone’s got their thing. Everyone’s cool with it. So you just do it. It just becomes a routine. Everyone knows where everyone’s going. That’s how you do it.”
Torey Krug likes the idea of having people like Chara and Bergeron at the front.
“I’ve always thought it was important to have your leaders lead you out onto the ice,” Krug said. “Obviously I’m not jumping (Chara) or Bergy anytime soon, so I try to get as close as I can. (David Backes) is in front of me when he’s in the lineup, so I’m fourth. I just think it’s important that your leaders lead you out to battle, and you want to be part of that group. I don’t know if that says anything, but that’s my thought process behind it. I want to be part of the group that leads guys out there fearlessly and can go to work.”
Boston won’t be trotting down the tunnel onto TD Garden ice until Monday when it welcomes the St. Louis Blues for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. But when they do, you can bet the Bruins will be led by the veterans, just as they have all season.
