Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy trying to incorporate the old with the new

If Boston Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy has his way, a significant change could be coming to the team in the near future.

And, it has nothing to do with the NHL trade deadline.



Prior to the start of each season, the Bruins alumni hold a charity golf tournament with the current team, and it was then Cassidy approached Rick Middleton about the possibility of having more former players around the team.

As a life-long Bruins fan, Cassidy believes bringing the past and present together will help the organization and the product on the ice. Sure, all NHL teams have alumni visits from time to time, but Cassidy wants it to become full-time venture.

Some coaches don’t want distractions, and former players don’t want to interrupt the day-to-day process. Even Bobby Orr once said he stays away because it’s not his team and the focus should be on the current players.

Cassidy believes otherwise.

On Tuesday, the Bruins honored the 40^th anniversary of the organization’s 11, 20-goal scorers from 1977-78. Terry O’Reilly, Jean Ratelle, Peter McNab, Brad Park, Middleton, Gregg Sheppard, Bobby Schmautz, Don Marcotte, Stan Jonathan and Bob Miller spent the entire day around the current team.

“Oh, I love it,” Cassidy told BostonSportsJournal.com after the team’s 5-2 win over the Calgary Flames Tuesday night at TD Garden. “I got a chance to say ‘hello’ and talk hockey Don Marcotte and Jean Ratelle and it was great. The more they’re around and the (current) guys can learn the history and the culture the better off we’ll be. I love that stuff. I think it would help. The more they’re around, the more our guys will ask questions and the more they’ll learn about it, so especially the guys that are going to be here for awhile.”

Recently, Middleton was at the Garden and met with Cassidy, who looked like a kid in a candy store after their conversation. “Nifty” is the president of the Bruins alumni association and he’s been working on a plan, but because many of the former players live in Florida during the winter, it’s tough to connect the past and the present on a consistent basis. The idea is to even have an alum travel on the road with the team when possible.

“It’s a great idea,” Middleton told BSJ. “It’s just the practicality of it that hasn’t seemed to mesh. I’d like to see it happen and I know a lot of the alumni guys would enjoy talking to the current guys and vice versa. I talked with Andrew Raycroft and he said, ‘When I was in Boston I would have loved that.’ Now he plays on the alumni team.”

Current captain Zdeno Chara is also a proponent of the idea.

“It’s a huge honor to have them around,” Chara said.

He believes it can serve as a motivational tool for the players to see how the organization and its fans treat former players. It proves that if a player works hard and wins in this city, then the fans will appreciate that player forever.

“It’s a great example for us as players to see what will happen if you do what you have to do when you play for this team,” Chara said. It shows that this team is really thinking about the players and care about players that play for this team for a long time. It’s an honor, privilege and great recognition for them.”

Team president Cam Neely said it’s important to connect a different generation of players to the current state of the game.

“It’s very important,” he said. “It's an Original Six franchise and a lot of good players have come through here and done a lot of really important things in their career, and also for the organization, so to have them around and get a chance to talk to the current players is pretty special for both sides.”

There’s an alumni suite on the ninth floor at TD Garden. Johnny Bucyk runs the box and it’s always filled with former players and friends. It doesn’t matter if a player played only one game for the Bruins or a 1,000 because all alumni are invited. Instead of keeping the alumni at a distance, Cassidy wants them in the room and around the players on a consistent basis. O’Reilly, a former player and coach, also believes it would help. No. 24 also realizes the potential of this current team and what the end result could be this spring.

“Knock on wood (knocks on wood), it could be a championship,” O’Reilly said. “They’re in the hunt right now for first overall and the way they play, when they play up to their potential, I don’t see anybody beating them in a seven-game series.”

Cassidy’s idea of bridging the past and the present is a wonderful concept. If the organization allows it, and the alumni group figures out a way to make it happen, it could add a little more motivation to an already inspired team.