Every year, people ask whether it will be the year that Patrice Bergeron finally gets the recognition that he deserves. 

What recognition he deserves exactly is up for debate, but given what he brings, one would think there would be no distinction more fitting for Bergeron than the Selke Trophy, which is given to the game's best two-way forward. 

Yet Bergeron has never won the Selke. Even more surprisingly, he has never been an All-Star.

This should have been the year for the latter. Only two Bruins were named Thursday to join Tim Thomas in Ottawa on Jan. 29, and those two were Zdeno Chara and Tyler Seguin. Chara is a no-brainer for the All-Star Game every year, but Seguin's case is far more debatable. The easy argument that could be made there is that Seguin hasn't been the best player on his line. That player, of course, is Bergeron. 

"I think a lot of our players would have been worthy to go there," Claude Julien, who is coaching one of the teams, said after Thursday's game. "Bergie comes to mind, obviously, with the year he’s had, and stuff like that, and there’s other players. But at the same time, there’s 30 teams in the league, and they’ve got to fill some spots, and they’ve got to give players on other teams an opportunity, so you’ve got to kind of, I guess, just share the spotlight with other teams."

This season, Seguin has 17 goals and 21 assists for 38 points to go with a league-best plus-33 rating. Bergeron has 11 goals and 25 assists for 36 points and a plus-27, so while the numbers clearly work in Seguin's favor, he wouldn't have those numbers without Bergeron. 

As anyone can see, Seguin is a star on the rise, and he'll be playing in plenty of All-Star Games over his career. Yet for a player who is overlooked time and time again, Bergeron deserved it this season. 

HABS DITCH CAMMALLERI

I’ll be honest. When Michael Cammalleri did not come out for the third period Thursday, I assumed he had fallen asleep in between periods and thought nothing of it. That’s how brutally boring this Bruins-Canadiens season series has been. 

Yet things got interesting in a hurry when Cammalleri was pulled from the game and traded, a clear reaction to recent comments about the team and a clear admission from the Montreal brass that the Bruins’ biggest rivals won’t be going anywhere this season. 

Cammalleri’s day started with him having to defend some fiery but true things he said this week. The then-Habs forward clarified comments he made about the team that had the city of Montreal riled up. 

"I can't accept that we will display a losing attitude as we're doing this year,” Cammalleri was quoted in La Presse as saying. “We prepare for our games like losers. We play like losers. So it's no wonder why we lose."

All the backpedaling in the world couldn’t help Cammalleri, who suddenly went missing when the third period began Thursday. Word began to emerge that he’d been sent to the team’s hotel, even though the team was set to hop on a plane after the game. Before long, Habs GM Pierre Gauthier was holding a press conference in the hallway at TD Garden to announce the team had traded the forward to the Flames in a multi-player deal that sent Rene Bourque to Montreal.

The Canadiens said after the game that the trade was not made because of Cammalleri’s comments about the team. Two things: 1) It obviously was. 2) What was the big deal about the comments in the first place?

The Canadiens are in last place in the Northeast division, and they’re 12th in the Eastern conference. That makes them losers. They have played 43 games and won just 16 of them. That makes them losers. They fired their coach, and have gone just 3-8 so far with interim head coach Randy Cunneyworth. That makes them losers.

The list goes on and on with the Canadiens, but the long and short of it is that they’re a team that has greatly underachieved. Is a passionate player pointing it out and holding the mirror up to his team really reason to run the guy out of town?

From a financial perspective, losing the overpaid Cammalleri’s $6 million cap hit is a plus (Bourque’s cap number is $3.3 million), but did the Canadiens really, as Gauthier said, improve their team? Time and time again, the team that trades the best player in the deal usually loses the deal. That’s what the Habs did Thursday night, and they may have done it for the wrong reason. 

Now, the good news is the guy the Canadiens got back might inject some life into what has been a lifeless rivalry this season. Bourque plays a far grittier game than Cammalleri and is coming off a five-game suspension for elbowing Nicklas Backstrom in the head. The B’s and Habs will meet only once more this season, but with Bourque in the lineup and Brad Marchand back for the Bruins, maybe Feb. 15 can include a little more recklessness than we’ve seen from the B’s and Canadiens this season. 

CARON GETS A LUCKY BOUNCE

If you ever need directions from Boston to Providence, Jordan Caron might be the guy to ask. The 2009 first-round pick has been sent to the AHL five times by the Bruins this season, but his latest trip to Boston got off to a good start.

With Marchand suspended, Claude Julien said this week that the Bruins would call a forward up from Providence prior to their four-game road trip, which begins Saturday in Carolina. The B’s made their move Friday morning, summoning Caron from the AHL, and in a bit of a surprise move, Julien put him in the lineup over Zach Hamill for Thursday’s tilt against the Habs. 

Now, Carey Price isn’t going to let in too many easy goals. One of the league’s great talents, his numbers in Montreal will never paint an accurate picture of how good he is, but he fell victim to an unlucky bounce Thursday that Caron cashed in on. 

On Caron’s first shift, Johnny Boychuk dumped the puck into the Montreal zone, and Price left his net to tend to the puck. Unfortunately for Price, the puck took a funny bounce and went off the end boards and right to Caron in front, giving him an easy goal with Price nowhere to be seen. 

“I’m not going to judge a guy after one game,” Julien said of what he saw from Caron Thursday. “I’m going to give him a chance to get into it. I mean, he scored a goal, and we’re going to say that was a lucky bounce, but it was going in the right direction, so he gave us the lead. I could see the effort in him in trying to make things happen and being a little bit more aggressive offensively.”