Bruins attack center position early, often
MONTREAL, QUEBEC – JULY 08: Matthew Poitras is selected by the Boston Bruins during Round Two of the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on July 08, 2022 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
It’s no secret that the Bruins are starved for long-term answers at the center position. I mean, the entire offseason plan of praying Patrice Bergeron wouldn’t retire and begging David Krejci to consider an NHL return sorta confirmed exactly that.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Placing the fate of your franchise on the back of two 36-year-old dudes, even if they are as good (great, even) as Bergeron and Krejci, is not what you should consider a viable plan. It’s more like a Hail Mary play. There’s nothing wrong with that in the present, sure, but it does speak to the downright terrifying future of that position.
“The centers are definitely an area that we needed to target,” Sweeney admitted.
So, the Bruins did what they probably should’ve done four years ago and straight-up attacked the center position, with three straight picks at the center position to kick off this year’s draft.
The Bruins started that pivot parade with Guelph Storm rookie Matthew Poitras at No. 54 overall, and continued it with American forward Cole Spicer at No. 117 and Latvian center Dans Locmelis two picks after Spicer.
“It sort of just happened with the way the board broke, but we got a number of centers into the group,” Ryan Nadeau, the team’s associate director of amateur scouting, said. “We think we got some offensive upside in those centers.”
“Certainly depth in the middle of the ice, and creativity,” Sweeney said of the pipeline’s newest reinforcements down the middle of the ice. “A lot of growth potential in all three of those players.”
What’s interesting is that the Bruins are clearly going for a mix of compete and offensive skill here, with all three players standing under six feet but with a knack for getting to the danger areas of the offensive zone. It’s as if they’ve seen what the Lightning have been able to do down the middle and said, “Yes, that is what we want.” (Honestly, not a bad strategy.)
Beginning with their top pick, the Bruins believe that the best is yet to come with Poitras. That seems pretty easy to believe considering Poitras, who was selected by the Storm with the 12th overall pick in the 2020 priority selection, was basically forced to go from 0-to-60 in 2021-22 after COVID-19 concerns wiped out the entire 2020-21 OHL season.
“You don’t get the cushion of being a rookie and having that first year to get into the league,” Poitras, who was the league’s seventh-highest scoring rookie this past season, acknowledged. “You kind of just had to jump in, do what you could. As the year went on, obviously all of us and myself got more comfortable.”
“We just see a player that’s a driver, someone who has the puck a lot and can make things happen,” Nadeau said of Poitras. “Even when he doesn’t have the puck, the motor is running. He’s getting involved. He’s just someone who keeps getting into dirty ice. We’re expecting some physical growth, along with a little more offensive growth. I think the skating is going to come a little bit. Again, I think from talking to our sports performance group and some of the stuff they looked at at the testing combine, I think we’re just really comfortable with where the player is heading.”
Spicer is a real intriguing pick. Utilized in a bottom-six role for the majority of his 2021-22 with the U.S. National Development Team, the belief is that there’s definitely some offensive pop that will come to the table with time. Spicer, who will join the University of Minnesota-Duluth program later this year, certainly has history on his side there, as he scored a league-best 169 points in 63 games for Honeybaked 15U-AAA in 2019-20. That’s not a typo: 169 points in 63 games.
“[Spicer is] another kid that we think offensively has a bit of an upward trajectory and skillset,” Nadeau said.
The Bruins also like that Spicer will be taking his talents to Duluth, as that’s been one of their preferred NCAA programs in recent years. Undrafted free agent signings Karson Kuhlman and Nick Wolff both played their college hockey at Duluth, and 2019 third-round pick Quinn Olson is currently there, with 16 goals and 51 points in 101 games with the Bulldogs to date.
But when it comes to the three centers added to the mix, there’s a common theme to Sweeney.
‘We like all three players that play that position because of their creativity and offensive abilities and their growth,” Sweeney said. “There’s a development upside to all three of them on that, in the middle of the ice, with the creativity and the offensive production.”
Why Bruins didn’t trade into first round
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 26: General Manager Don Sweeney of the Boston Bruins speaks during Media Day ahead of the 2019 NHL Stanley Cup Final at TD Garden on May 26, 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
I gotta be honest with you guys here, I just never believed that the Bruins were going to trade into the first round.
For one, it’s lying and feed-me-some-retweets season, and it’s funny to see how ant hills become mountains in the blink of an eye around the draft. For all we know, someone said “it would be cool if the Bruins traded into the first round” and then by 3 p.m. it was a real rumor. It also just never seemed to make sense to me because the Bruins had little to offer to make an actual jump into the first round. Even with teams like the Coyotes, who owned three first-round picks, more than happy to bend a team over for such a move, there was just no worthwhile path there to get into that top 32.
It probably didn’t help when Jake DeBrusk’s trade request was formally rescinded (though I have my doubts that DeBrusk alone would’ve been enough to get you into that round), and with the Bruins already looking shorthanded for October.
And speaking after the draft, Sweeney confirmed exactly that.
“It would have required us players off our team right now,” Sweeney said of any attempt to move into Thursday’s first round. “It would have been a bit of a leverage situation for us that we’re not comfortable with the injuries and things that, just for the sake of going into the first round. We traded away our first rounder to improve our club, and we’re happy that [Hampus] Lindholm is with us for a year. So, I really didn’t want to take away anyone from the club at that point in time.”
(That’s not an injury situation that changed between the start of those ‘rumors’ and the end of round one, by the way.)
It’s real easy to root for Reid Dyck
MONTREAL, QC – MARCH 21: A detailed view of the Boston Bruins’ logo is seen during the second period against the Montreal Canadiens at Centre Bell on March 21, 2022 in Montreal, Canada. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
Big Dyck Energy. Dyck Pick. Others that are equally hilarious but completely inappropriate to post on this website without receiving a phone call from management on a sunny Saturday.
There’s a lot of ways to go when it comes to the B’s sixth-round selection of Swift Current Broncos goaltender Reid Dyck.
Let’s start with the obvious: At first glance, it’s a bit of an unusual pick. Dyck finished the year with the 10th-worst save percentage among Western Hockey League goaltenders with at least 20 games played, with an .884 save percentage, while his 4.24 goals against average was the sixth-worst among goalies with at least 20 games played. Dyck’s draft-year numbers are easily the worst of any goaltender selected by this front office, and there’s nobody else that’s particularly close.
But the Bruins also know that there’s more than just the numbers. There’s the context of the Broncos not exactly being the greatest team in the WHL, and this being Dyck’s first real rodeo as a full-time WHLer. Oh, and there’s the whole ‘you’re not a finished product’ after 31 games of WHL experience over two seasons. So, the Bruins will instead focus on what they do like about the 18-year-old netminder, and that’s his 6-foot-3 frame and some raw talent often buried by inconsistencies.
“We just think there’s an upside [with Dyck] that our goaltending group, Bob Essensa and Mike Dunham, can really work with and hope to hone and work through,” Nadeau offered.
And Dyck, a Manitoba-born kid who lives on a farm and lost his dad at eight years old, certainly seems to know how to take everything in stride like only a goalie — and a goalie named Dyck, at that — can.
“People had a good time with my name. I’ve heard a couple neat ones, couple interesting ones, a couple funny ones,” Dyck revealed following his selection. “So you just kind of have to embrace it if that’s your name. If my name’s Reid Dyck, sometimes you just have to embrace it and go with it.”
I mean, if you’re gonna be a Dyck, you might as well be a [REDACTED].
A focus on size on the backend
MONTREAL, QUEBEC – JULY 08: Frederic Brunet is selected by the Boston Bruins during Round Five of the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on July 08, 2022 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
When they weren’t picking centers and Dyck, the Bruins decided to add some more height to the left side of their defensive depth chart with the drafting of Frédéric Brunet at No. 132 overall and Jackson Edward with the No. 200 overall pick.
Brunet, who stands at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds, landed with the Bruins after a breakout season with the QMJHL’s Rimouski Oceanic that included 12 goals and 46 points in 63 games played. His 46 points made him 11th-highest scoring defenseman in the Q, while his 18 power-play assists were the sixth-most among all defenders in the league.
“A player that we had been tracking for a little bit, [Brunet] had a big jump production-wise year over year,” Nadeau said. “He’s a kid that we just, we really liked what he was doing this year and his game progressed throughout the season. We think he added some additional defensive layers to his game, as well as really smooth puck-moving kid with a good frame.”
Edward, meanwhile, stands at 6-foot-2 and 194 pounds, and put up six helpers in 54 games for the OHL’s London Knights.
“[Edward] has a little bit of size, little bit of stiffness and bite to his game,” Nadeau said. “In London, especially with young players, they have to really earn their ice and he didn’t necessarily get a ton of ice at the beginning of the year, but we think his game has really rounded out and we’re expecting a big progression for him next year.”
To Nadeau’s point, Edward was indeed the youngest ‘regular’ on the Knights’ backend in 2021-22, and London is still coached by Dale Hunter, who you may remember from stifling you into a first-round exit in 2012.
Edward, by the way, grew up a Bruins fans and his first favorite player was Zdeno Chara.
But, again, the noticeable trait with each defender is that they’re some big boys who have height and an ability to make plays with the puck. This is basically where the NHL is trending (with the exception of that absolute superhuman freak Cale Makar), of course, but the Black and Gold’s emphasis on defensemen with height has been noticeable in recent seasons.
In fact, over the last three drafts, the heights of Boston’s selections on the blue line have been 6-foot-4 (Mason Lohrei), 6-foot-3 (Mason Langenbrunner), 6-foot-5 (Ryan Mast), 6-foot-0 (Ty Gallagher), and now back-to-back 6-foot-2 selections with Brunet and Edward. This is another Lightning-esque play from the Bruins, as Tampa Bay boasted an entire blue line of players who were all over six feet tall during their successful Stanley Cup runs.
What went into B’s trading out of final pick
Jul 8, 2022; Montreal, Quebec, CANADA; General view of the Boston Bruins table during the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft at the Bell Centre. (Eric Bolte/USA TODAY Sports)
The Bruins were slated to end their 2022 NHL Draft with the No. 215 overall pick. But it didn’t take long for the Bruins to flip their ‘on the clock’ status to Los Angeles, as the B’s moved that pick to the Kings for a 2023 seventh-round choice.
It seems like a ‘nothing’ move in the grand scheme of things, and let’s be honest, it probably is given the odds of a seventh-round pick turning into anything close to an NHL regular. But that punt to 2023 actually came as a result of the player that the Bruins had targeted for that pick getting swiped off the board before No. 215, according to Nadeau.
You’re basically looking at the players picked between Edward at No. 200 and through No. 214 to figure out who Nadeau is talking about as a would-have-been Bruin. Part of me wonders if it was that No. 214 pick that the B’s had their eye on, as the Panthers actually swooped in with a trade with Pittsburgh to acquire that No. 214 pick and draft North Bay Battalion (OHL) center Liam Arnsby. That would seem to make sense, as the Bruins traded out of that slot following that selection.
But another name that I think could have been a Boston target before the trade: No. 203 overall pick James Fisher. A Wilmington, Mass. native, the 6-foot-2 forward played in Boston’s backyard this past season, with 17 goals and 28 points in 27 games for Belmont Hill. Fisher was also part of the Jr. Bruins back in 2018-19. Given the B’s interest in players with local ties, you could definitely see how Fisher would’ve been a target of the club at No. 215 before Columbus grabbed him.
