How the Bruins have maintained success through multiple cores

The Boston Bruins were a relatively surprising playoff team last year when they earned their way in as a wild card in the Eastern Conference, and many expected them to be either in or around the wild card race again this season.

Through the first month of the year, the Bruins have massively exceeded those expectations. On Tuesday night, they will take on the reigning Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes in a showdown between the teams with the two best records in the league, but it’s the Bruins and not the Hurricanes who own the NHL’s best record by points percentage with a record of 9-2-1.

The previous generation led by Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak is all gone except the latter, who in his first season as the Bruins’ captain is joined by Fraser Minten, James Hagens and J.J. Peterka to form a newer, younger Boston nucleus that still looks primed to contend for years to come.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by former NHL video coach Steve Peters to discuss how the Bruins have continued to maintain their status as an upper-echelon team despite a seemingly ever-changing core.

Carter Hutton: Petey, we just beat up on the [Chicago Blackhawks] pretty good too, and I think about those Hawks runs against the Bruins and, like, you know, those were the two cream of the crop, right? They’ve met in the Finals and they’ve had so many good teams, but the Hawks are on this other rebuild. It feels like the Bruins kind of avoided that. And is it, like, with their younger core, they’ve insulated into this team?Like, how are they able to maintain when we watch the Hawks just really struggling to find their game?

Steve Peters: Yeah, and you know what’s funny? You talk about two different teams and how they approach the future, and you look at Chicago— you talked about the youth at their back end, under 25, so many players— but look at their youth down the middle of the ice in Chicago. Four guys that are playing at max their third year in the league. Dude, you can’t win like that. I’m sorry, you can’t. And if you are going to be young down the middle, you better have some stud guys on the wings that have defended and played and been in the wars and dug in the corners. Unfortunately, you don’t have that. You know who does? The Boston Bruins. So we talked about Pastrnak and Zacha and being that top-heavy guys that can produce, and the addition of Peterka, but those young guys? Man, they’re not asked to carry the heavy load. That’s Pasternak. They have those guys. They have the grit. They’ve got Kastelic, they’ve got Jeannot, they’ve got guys that can be a little bit tougher and grittier, sandpaper guys, that Chicago doesn’t have. Two completely different approaches, and they’re having two completely different results.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…