Goal Line Report
Boston Bruins Look Like Contenders This Season
by Patrick Hoffman on 02/04/11 at 03:17 PM ET
Comments (1)
Heading into the month of February, the Boston Bruins continue to show the National Hockey League that it has what it takes to contend for the Stanley Cup this season.
Coming into the season after blowing a 3-0 series lead to the Philadelphia Flyers last season, not many hockey pundits or Bruins’ fans knew what to think of this hockey club. That is no longer the case as the Bruins have those in and out of the league believing that this could be a very big year for one of the league’s Original Six franchises.
You may ask yourself why that is the case but looking at the team, it is easy to see why they have what it takes: goaltending, depth and experience.
Goaltending
Going into the 2010-11 season, many expected that last year’s best Bruins’ netminder Tuukka Rask would be the starter.
That has not been the case as Tim Thomas has regained his Vezina Trophy form of 2008-09 and has far exceeded everyone’s expectations. Thomas is 25-5-6 with a 1.82 goals against average, a .945 save percentage (you read that right) and seven shutouts. Not bad for a netminder that many were ready to ship out of town, eh?
Depth
The Bruins can roll lines with the best of them.
They can go with skill in guys like Patrice Bergeron (19-25-44), David Krejci (7-28-35), Milan Lucic (21-13-34), and Nathan Horton (13-17-30). They can go with secondary scoring with guys like Mark Recchi (10-26-36), Michael Ryder (14-15-29) and Brad Marchand (14-14-28). Or they can go with a lunchpail gang in Gregory Campbell, Shawn Thornton and Blake Wheeler.
You can’t also forget about guys like rookie Tyler Seguin (8-9-17) and Marc Savard (2-8-10), who could very well be done for a long period time.
Experience
When it comes to experience, this team has a lot of it.
All you have to do is look at guys like Recchi, Thomas, Chara, Bergeron and others. Recchi is a Stanley Cup winner and knows what it takes to win when it matters the most.
Luckily for the Bruins, he can pass down his experience to the rest of the club where it will hopefully play out well on the ice.
With all of that in mind, I believe that this team has a good chance to come out of the Eastern Conference come May to fight for the Stanley Cup. No, I have not forgotten about the Philadelphia Flyers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins or any of the other playoff contenders.
You just have to like what you see in the Bruins this season.
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Patrick has a tremendous passion for hockey. Besides covering the Rangers and the NHL for Kukla’s Korner, you can also find Patrick’s work over at Sportsnet.ca, The Red Light District Hockey Blog, NHL Home Ice, and Liam Maguire’s Ultimate Hockey web site.
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All they need to do is re-unite Chris Phillips and Zdeno Chara.
With all that depth, who needs Toronto’s first rounder anyways?
Posted by Da lil Guy from Ottawa on 02/04/11 at 04:46 PM ET