Beginning his night to the left of Johnny Beecher and Jakub Lauko, Lucic & Co. started their night with a tremendous bang, as the Lucic-Beecher-Lauko trio jumped out a 4-0 edge in on-ice shots. The line was downright menacing, too, with extended zone time and coming through with shift after shift that clearly winded a Blackhawk team that was in town on the second leg of a back-to-back that started in Pittsburgh.
And by the second period, Lucic found himself promoted up two lines and skating to the left of Pavel Zacha and David Pastrnak. The move came with immediate results for Jim Montgomery’s squad, too, as Lucic came through with the primary helper on the Pastrnak strike that held as the game winner by the night’s end.
Two-line jumps really won’t be the norm for Lucic this season, of course, and he’d be the first one to tell you as much at this point in his career.
But when he’s on, he’s on, and Lucic still possesses that all-important intimidation factor as both a forechecker and when he gains the blue line with the puck on his stick and along the walls. At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, he’s still an absolute mammoth of a man, and his presence alone can be enough to shake defenders and open things up for his linemates.
“Absolutely,” Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo told me when I asked if Lucic is still a guy who strikes fear into defenses from a physical standpoint. “[Lucic is] up there with any of the guys in the league who have that kind of playing style. I can tell you, going back on pucks with that guy coming down your back is not fun at all. So we’ll try and chip him in and let the other defensemen deal with it.”
But for as valuable as Lucic can be when the juices are flowing like it’s still his first run with the franchise, he’s already proven to be a value-add player on the bench and in the locker room for a Boston club that lost a ton of veteran voices this past offseason.
“He’s had a really good camp and he’s carrying it over. He came here in tremendous shape. And not only what you guys see on the ice, but the way he’s talking on the bench,” Montgomery said of Lucic. “He’s taken over a real important leadership role of talking about how to build our team game, about the important details. He was saying, ‘It’s the last two minutes of the first and gotta get pucks and get pucks out.’ It’s just good reminders and it means more to teammates when it comes from a player.”
“Having a guy like [Lucic] come in, you see how much respect he has right away in the league, not only in this room,” Carlo offered. “Off the ice, it’s been amazing because he stepped right in and been vocal, not been shy at all and going about his role. You know, his role can definitely be a little bit more of getting on you at times if your effort isn’t there or something like that. You know, we’re going to respect the heck out of that if he is telling you to do that. So I think he’s done a great job. And he chimed in a couple of times in between periods, and he’s all about keeping the foot on the gas and not stepping back at all.”
Unless it’s stepping back into a time machine with the return of the chants that a grinning Lucic missed being fueled by every time he took the ice at TD Garden.
“It was a lot of fun to to hear the ‘Luu’ chants in Boston again,” said Lucic.
Here are some other thoughts, takeaways, and notes from an Opening Night win at TD Garden…