TAMPA, Fla. – The Tampa Bay Lightning have first-hand experience developing rookies at the NHL level, which is similar to what the Boston Bruins are doing this season. The Lightning’s blue line has three rookies, including Slater Koekkoek, Jake Dotchin and Mikhail Sergachev.
Lightning associate coach Rick Bowness understands the normal ebbs and flows young players deal with but he doesn’t believe the length of the schedule or fatigue factors into those ruts. Bowness, who served as the head coach of the Bruins during the 1991-92 season, said it’s easy to work with rookies when they have strong attitude, character and work ethic.
“You deal with it as it comes along,” Bowness said. “Everyone, every personality is different and everyone goes into a rut for the wrong reason and a lot of those ruts are self-inflicted because they don’t work as hard when they should. They think it’s going to come easy. It’s a tough league, man, and you’ve got to show up every day and that’s part of the learning curve. You need a couple of hundred games in this league to figure it all out. You don’t get into a rut if you keep working hard and have a positive attitude; you get into ruts when you stop working hard and you think it’s going to come easy – that’s self-inflicted.”
The Bruins have seven rookies in the lineup this season, including Jake DeBrusk, Charlie McAvoy, Danton Heinen, Anders Bjork, Sean Kuraly, Peter Cehlarik and Matt Grzelcyk. At some point this season, all of them have dealt with adversity. The key to their development is how they respond. Heinen is attempting to fight his way out of one of those ruts right now and coach Bruce Cassidy has kept him in the lineup to help the rookie shake it off.
“It’s always on them to recognize what parts of their game needs improvement,” Cassidy said. “We remind them and it’s our job to either give them a pat on the back or a kick in the ass. With Danton, I don’t think he needs a kick in the butt. He recognizes what he needs to be better and I thought he was good (against the Panthers). He was one of our better players, so hopefully this is the start of him coming out of it and getting hot here late.”
The last couple of games Heinen has played well. It helps that he moved up to the second line with David Krejci and Rick Nash, while DeBrusk is sidelined with an upper-body injury.
“Just trying to do anything to help the team,” Heinen said. “That was a great goal (against the Hurricanes) for me and the team, so hopefully it builds confidence going forward.”
Since he scored that goal, and also drew a penalty in that game against Carolina, Cassidy has seen improvement in Heinen’s game.
“Scoring a goal is something every forward wants to do when it’s been awhile,” Cassidy said. “Other parts of his game have been solid away from the puck; other parts of his game where he’s winning battles aren’t as good as they were when he was at the top of his game. Hopefully some of that comes back to him.”
Cassidy understands there are a few reasons why Heinen’s been in a bit of a rut, including the time of the year, fatigue, or other teams’ urgency to earn a postseason berth.
“He just has to internally understand where we’re at and find it,” Cassidy said. “We’re trying to help him do that by keeping him in the lineup, and by moving him up in the lineup, we’ll see how it plays out.”
Heinen’s mindset is to believe in his ability in order to regain that confidence he was playing with earlier this season. He’s trying to limit his mistakes.
“It’s not easy,” Heinen said. “It’s a tough league and there are a lot of great players out there. You’re not going to be great every night. You just try to be as consistent as you can and I’m just trying to stay positive and that’s what I’ll continue to do.”
It helps that he has a strong work ethic and solid character.
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