Does a hockey team have a fatal flaw if its front office brain trust refuses to acknowledge it?
Amid an economy that’s dropping faster than Wily E. Coyote over a desert cliff, that seems to be the question of summer for a Bruins team poised to sweep through a critical period of free agency and roster-building.
The chant has become louder and louder from inside the walls on Causeway Street that things might have been different this spring had both Andrew Ference and Matt Hunwick been available during the postseason.
Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli acknowledges the Black and Gold experienced some trouble breaking the puck out of their own zone and handling fore check pressure. But the newly-extended GM has also understandably mentioned the absence of Ference and Hunwick each time the blueline issue has been broached.
“I think we do have very good depth beyond the NHL roster right now,” Chiarelli said. “There are two levels of depth: going into the American League for a number of players versus the strength of your lineup from top to bottom.
“We still have the depth in the American League that we can build upon. And that’s not to say that we won’t bring back some of the players that you’d call ‘depth players.’ It’s so important and it’s such a grind over the course of the year, especially the playoffs. We did lose two defensemen, but after that if we lost any more we’d be testing our depth.”
Against Carolina, many would say Boston’s defenseman depth was tested past its limit, and it flunked miserably.
Chiarelli’s assessment would seem to indicate the Bruins don’t feel a pressing need to drastically upgrade their group of blueliners going forward, but that doesn’t jibe with what even the most casual hockey observer watched during Boston’s playoff run.
Hunwick and Ference, or no Hunwick and Ference.
Chiarelli said that one more injury would have compromised Boston’s depth along the blueline, but if Steve Montador playing nearly 30 minutes of ice time in a Game 7 situation isn’t an example of compromised D-man depth -- well, you can finish the rest of that sentence yourself.
Quite simply, the Bruins need a significant upgrade at the defenseman position this summer.
“Andrew (Ference) is a great kid and a good player, but he’s also around 5-foot-10 and 180-pounds,” said one NHL scout that watched the Bruins this season. “The same thing with Hunwick. Smaller-sized guys have a really hard time making it through all of the physical punishment that defenseman should expect during a long Stanley Cup playoff run. I think they need a bigger guy back there.
“What you really want is a few mobile 6-foot-2, 6-foot-3 guys that can take (the punishment) and go far. You can go a round or two with the smaller guys, but -- unless they’re in a role like power play or special teams -- they’re going to have a hard time. (You need) big guys that can skate, move the puck and take the punishment without getting injured. This age of the salary cap makes it that much more of a challenge to get enough of those guys. If you’re asking (smaller defenseman) to play more than 14 or 15 minutes a night, then you’re asking for trouble.”
For those wondering, Ference averaged over 21 minutes a game for the Bruins while playing 47 regular season games and three playoff games, and underwent successful hernia/groin surgery last week.
It doesn’t matter if Chiarelli and Co. acquire the services of a Top 3 puck-moving type defenseman through a salary cap-massaging trade (Phil Kessel/Marco Sturm/Patrice Bergeron) or if they simply go hunting for the Big Florida Fish (Jay Bouwmeester, who is "that guy" they need) who will be out on the UFA market this summer.
There’s a clear need for an impact D that can lift some of the puck-moving pressure off Dennis Wideman, who became Boston’s only real threat to break out of the zone and make a play in the seven-game, weakness-revealing series defeat to Carolina.
During their in-season swoon -- and then again during a seven-game slugfest with the Hurricanes -- an overmatched defenseman corps struggled mightily to retrieve and remove the puck from their own zone when pressured by a quick, constant forecheck.
It was a huge issue during their lackluster grouping of games at the RBC Center in Carolina during the middle of the series, and it left a ginormous question mark about how good the defensemen grouping can be as currently comprised.
Just look at the final four teams playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs after the Bruins had been eliminated by Scott Walker’s Game 7 heartbreaker:
The Chicago Blackhawks were whipped pretty handily by the Detroit Red Wings, but had a defenseman corps that included three players with over 40 points last season (5-foot-11 191-pound Brian Campbell, 6-foot, 187-pound Duncan Keith, 6-foot-3, 222-pound Cam Barker), and each of their top four had over 25 points.
The Carolina Hurricanes had a “no-name” corps of four defensemen that scored between 30-38 points (6-foot, 205-pound Joe Corvo, 6-foot-5, 212-pound Anton Babchuk, 6-foot-3, 210-pound Joni Pitkanen, 6-foot, 210-pound Dennis Seidenberg) during the regular season and kept the puck moving swiftly during the postseason.
The Detroit Red Wings had three blueliners (6-foot-1, 190-pound Nik Lidstrom, 5-foot-10, 195-pound Brian Rafalski, 6-foot-1, 185-pound Niklas Kronwall) that all notched over 50 points for the offensive machine out of Motown, and flashed true depth that helped keep the Wings flying when injuries hit in the later rounds of the playoffs.
The lack of real defenseman was also part of the reason that eventual Stanley Cup champ Pittsburgh Penguins sputtered during portions of the regular season, but 6-foot-2, 212-pound Sergei Gonchar, 5-foot-11, 190-pound Kris Letang, 6-foot-2, 204-pound Mark Eaton and 6-foot, 214-pound Rob Scuderi – along with an exceptionally strong group of star-studded forwards that make the Pens a bit of an exception to the rule – all picked up their puck-moving play once the postseason got going.
The B’s had Zdeno Chara and Dennis Wideman, who both notched 50 points in outstanding regular seasons, but they didn’t have a consistent third or fourth “D” partner through the regular season.
The kind of D-Man that could hustle the puck up the ice with creativity, urgency or a quick burst.
Hunwick finished with 27 points in 53 games and impressed at the end of the regular season with his quick-moving, quick-thinking work on the power play, but he was never really ‘that guy’ at the University of Michigan or with the P-Bruins.
He definitely could be “the puck-moving guy.” But nobody knows the answer to question in the summer months.
Is that really something that a team with Stanley Cup wishes should rely on?
Similarly, Andrew Ference is potentially that solid No. 3 defenseman when he’s healthy, but he hasn’t been able to stay in the lineup (missed 23 games in 2007-08 largely with a knee issue and 35 games in 2008-09 with a broken leg and groin problems) during his two full seasons in Boston.
Worse still, he seems to play his best hockey at the beginning of the season and wears down as the regular season pounding takes its toll on his 5-for-10, 189-pound body.
The B’s front office group has been diligent in their desire to continue accumulating grit and a sense of urgency on their roster, and that’s been given high priority on the “must improve” checklist for Chiarelli this summer.
“You have to be careful not to change your plan because of the final two teams (in the Stanley Cup Final) because they’re unique,” said Chiarelli. “You can cherry pick certain things and maybe even utilize them or instill them in your plan.
“What I did see (in the playoffs) is guys that were sacrificing their bodies every shift and we’re not at that point yet. I do recognize that. It makes it more clear where we have to be and we’re getting there. I see that at various stages this year, but certainly it’s more clear now when you see every player on every shift sacrificing their body blocking a shot, taking a check or whatever it is. That became very clear to me.”
Unless the B’s are counting on injury-prone Andrew Ference to remain healthy or a relatively unknown quantity in Hunwick to quickly grow into the role of “puck-moving guy,” a move to improve an undermanned defensemen group could and should be made this summer.
RSS Center
