Chemistry inside the locker room just as important as on ice

It’s called The Room.

It’s hockey jargon for the locker room, or dressing room for you Canadians. Each NHL team has its own unique room. Most, especially the Original Six teams, honor the history of the organization with photos or Stanley Cup replicas. Some have inspirational quotes on the walls.

The Boston Bruins have a little bit of everything.



Above each stall there are action shots of every former Bruin who’s in the Hall of Fame. The walls are black and gold and there’s a hockey rink rug on the floor with the spoked-B in the middle. It’s a hockey tradition to respect each team’s logo and not step on it. In fact, some teams cover the logo when the room is open to the media, so no one accidently steps on it.

There’s more to the room than stalls, photos and logos. Having a well-designed room can actually help the on-ice product. The seating plan is not developed in a blender. Keith Robinson is in his 30^th season with the Bruins and seventh as the team’s head equipment manager and he recently explained the Bruins’ blueprint.

“We’ve always tried to integrate some of the old guys and some of the young guys every other (stall) if there’s enough young guys to do that,” Robinson said. “If there’s a veteran, and an empty seat next to him, to help the mentor role, we put a young guy in there.”

Having a perfectly designed locker room is especially important this season with all the young players in the room. There’s a reason why Anders Bjork is sitting next to David Pastrnak and two stalls away from Patrice Bergeron. There’s a reason for every stall placement: It helps the younger players adapt quickly to the new environment.

“At the very beginning it was very eye-opening sitting next to these guys, but they’ve been so nice and friendly and positive,” Bjork said. “I definitely feel comfortable now. I feel comfortable talking to them, just as they do now talking to me, especially when we talk about things on the ice. I feel comfortable adding my opinion and they encourage that. It’s really cool how they respect opinions of younger guys.”

Captain Zdeno Chara’s throne is in the corner and everyone can see him.

“I got here after Brian Leech was here and that was the open stall, so I got that and it just worked out that way,” Chara said.

There is a difference between the Bruins’ room at TD Garden and the practice facility at Warrior Ice Arena. At the Garden, all the defensemen are one side, with the forwards at the other end. That set up allows for interactions and strategy discussions during intermissions on game days. Defensive partners are usually next to each other.

“It does work that we’re very close. It’s neat to have because we can talk about what’s going on during the game,” Chara said.

The goalies have their own sidewall, because, well, they’re goalies.

“A lot of guys have been sitting in their same spot for quite awhile and we leave that alone, unless someone says otherwise,” Robinson said. “Zee, Bergy, Krejci all have their same stalls and we leave them alone.”

History doesn’t always determine who sits where. When Mark Recchi played for the Bruins, he was given Ray Bourque’s stall. In most cases, it doesn’t matter the history of the stall, at least not in Boston.

“Not really,” admitted Robinson. “We might joke about it, the equipment guys, we might say, ‘Hey, let’s put him in Joe Thornton’s old stall’ but there’s nothing really to it.”

At Warrior, everyone is mixed up. On the road, the room is set up similar to the Garden. However, since the visitors’ room is a lot smaller in most NHL buildings, the veterans will get the prime spots.

“On the road it’s seniority as long as Ds are with Ds and forwards are with forwards,” Robinson said.

Historically, the Bruins don’t play that well at the Bell Centre in Montreal with a 23-29-2-3 record in 57 games. It was getting frustrating, so last season the Bruins’ equipment staff completely changed the seating chart.

“We flipped the whole room around,” said assistant equipment manager Matt Falconer. “We ended up winning that game.”

The staff has a diagram of all the road locker rooms and it normally remains the same every trip into visiting cities, unless it’s a situation like Montreal.

“Something that extreme, I might bounce it off Zee first,” Robinson said. “Guys are very habitual. They want to sit in the same spot, have the same sight lines, same routines, but Zee would be like, ‘Whatever you think.’ So, we do it.”

Then there’s the rug on the floor at TD Garden. It’s an important piece that could go unnoticed if you didn’t know it was there. The rink rug was installed during Claude Julien’s tenure in Boston.

“Claude insisted on it,” Robinson said. “He made it the norm in both places.”

Instead of explaining something on the white board, the rink rug allows coaches to visual the ice surface and diagram plays and positions with the players.

“At times we use that as a drawing board,” Chara said. “It’s actually nice to have that visual of the rink in the locker room and it helps you to focus too.”

The room at TD Garden was transformed prior to Game 7 of the 2011 Eastern Conference finals. At the time, veterans Shawn Thornton and Shane Hnidy, both of whom were healthy scratches against the Tampa Bay Lightning, wanted to provide an emotional and inspirational boost for their teammates.

While the players were taking their normal game-day naps, Thornton and Hnidy transformed the locker room. They had five black and white and autographed pictures of former Bruins teams celebrating their Stanley Cup victories in the locker room.

The motivation helped and the Bruins won Game 7 1-0 and advanced to the Stanley Cup final before winning the championship over the Vancouver Canucks.

“When you can see a picture of Bobby (Orr) in the player’s lounge with a bottle of champagne in his lap, and he looks exhausted after they won, we thought bringing in a few pictures like that would help the boys see the bigger picture,” Thornton said at the time.

There’s something mysterious hanging on the wall in the room, just to the right of the door when the players are walking out. It’s a horseshoe that Chara had installed. I asked him about it years ago and he said he would only tell the story behind it once the team won the Stanley Cup again. He promises it’s a good story.