Note from Bedard: Will have more to say on Wednesday about the direction of BSJ, including the results from the members' survey on Wednesday, but wanted to take a moment to welcome Joe Haggerty to the BSJ family. Have known Joe for many years and I know he'll bring the kind of insider knowledge you desire here on the Black & Gold.
Patrick Donnelly did a great job for us and we wish him the best of luck in his next opportunity.
You can welcome Joe by signing up for a new annual membership. You can get 20 percent off the first year of an annual membership by using code HAGGS.
____________________
As if things couldn’t get any better during a Centennial season for the Boston Bruins that’s off to an undefeated start, this humble hockey writer is extremely blessed to be joining the Boston Sports Journal to cover the Black and Gold.
Don’t fret as I will still be writing about hockey at my Pucks with Haggs Substack account and hosting the Pucks with Haggs hockey podcast twice a week now that we’re into the NHL regular season, and I will continue to appear on the NHL network and sports radio stations all across the US and Canada.
But I will also now get to bring my hockey takes and postgame analysis to Boston Sports Journal with colleagues I have long admired and respected like Mike Giardi and Greg Bedard crushing it on the New England Patriots beat, and John Karalis on Celtics.
So what should you expect from yours truly if you’re not familiar with my work covering the Boston Bruins in print, online, on television and on the radio for the last two decades?
The plan is to bring you the best postgame breakdowns of what we all just watched go down on the ice and take you behind the scenes in the dressing room with somebody that’s been on the B’s scene longer than any of the actual players.
Social media has brought an interactive element to sports media coverage that’s valued and essential in this new age media world, and your questions will get answered honestly in real time or in our weekly Q&A session with subscribers.
What you won’t get is a lot of tired cliches, dull-as-dishwater fancy stats or analytics talk to make your eyes glaze over or happy, shiny hockey nonsense that barely approaches a surface understanding of the game and its wonderfully colorful personalities. What you will get is an insider’s look at trade news, NHL trends and exactly what the players, personnel and movers/shakers are thinking and doing at any given moment along with game analysis from somebody that lives, eats and breathes the game of hockey.
That’s a lot more interesting than posting a bar graph to show when a forward line is dominating during any given NHL game, correct?
A little bit about me if you aren’t familiar with my hockey work.
I began covering the NHL on the Boston Bruins beat (and the Red Sox beat for about a 10-year run) back in 2003-04 for the Woburn Daily Times, and have covered the league every year since while constantly adapting to a changing sports journalism landscape where I’ve traveled from the Daily Times to the Boston Metro, WEEI.com, NBC Sports Boston and Boston Hockey Now before starting my own thriving Pucks with Haggs Substack account.
I also have a 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter who both play hockey and have been coaching this great sport for the last five years while gaining a fresh perspective on everything I’m watching. So you will hear me talk about things going on in other corners of the hockey world quite a bit, whether it’s the youth, high school or collegiate level along with international play.
My first season covering the NHL was also then-18-year-old Patrice Bergeron’s first season in the NHL when he was still a shy, reserved kid from Quebec with peach fuzz and not much confidence in his English skills. He was the youngest player in the NHL during that 2003-04 season where his limitless potential was on display, so, needless to say, his retirement from the NHL this season as a 38-year-old future Hall of Famer is making me feel more than a little long in the hockey tooth.
I’ve covered four Stanley Cup Finals, countless NHL All-Star games, close to twenty NHL Drafts including Connor Bedard’s coronation in Nashville last summer, four Winter Classics and have even whisked away to Europe to cover NHL games played on a different continent.
I’ve watched Czech Hockey league games in Pardubice where David Krejci was given a hero’s welcome and sat in the stands with Shawn Thornton’s mom in her native Belfast getting ready to watch her son play hockey in Northern Ireland. I was there to watch Milan Lucic get his number retired by the Vancouver Giants prior to a rock ‘em, sock ‘em WHL game at the old Pacific Coliseum home of the Canucks, and later that year I got the last shuttle out of the Canucks’ home rink after Game 7 while the city of Vancouver was on fire in street riots that followed the 2011 Stanley Cup Final.
And I’ve been to every rink on the NHL circuit at least a couple of times while having seen, heard and experienced enough hockey to freely admit TimBits are better than Dunkin’s munchkins.
It’s really not even an argument at this point.
I’ll always tell you the unvarnished truth about the Boston Bruins, whether you want to hear it or not. I’m not going to pull punches when it comes to criticizing coaches, players or management when its warranted, but I’ll also always ladle out credit where it’s due for a sport that doesn’t ever seek out glory or self-importance.
As far as I’m concerned, the Bruins can never truly live down how much they botched the 2015 NHL Draft with three first-round picks, but Don Sweeney also deserves credit when players like Matt Poitras and Johnny Beecher pan out to be legit NHL prospects.
My thoughts on this season’s team to date:
- Poitras has given exactly what the Boston Bruins needed at exactly the right time. He looks like he will eventually be able to handle a top-6 center role that could allow Charlie Coyle to return to his rightful place as a third-line pivot on a deeper forward roster.
- Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark look ready to once again be the best goalie duo in the NHL with their trademark victory hug, and (hot take alert!) Swayman might even be ready to seize the majority of starts from the reigning Vezina Trophy winner.
- James van Riemsdyk is going to help the new-look Boston Bruins power play with his net-front work but Charlie McAvoy is not the permanent answer as a point man on a top PP unit.
- David Pastrnak might just score 70 goals this season as he becomes Mr. Everything to the Boston Bruins offense. If the NHL was truly interesting in putting fans in seats, they would award him a penalty shot per game after that wicked snip in Saturday’s win over the Predators.
- The Milan Lucic-Johnny Beecher-Jakub Lauko fourth line has run hot and cold in the first two games of the season, but that trio has the potential to be one of the best fourth lines in the NHL this season. Lauko is a guy who has some potential for upward mobility in the Boston Bruins lineup just as Brad Marchand did while first starting out on the bottom forward trio.
I’m an unabashed believer that dropping the gloves and fighting still very much has a place in the NHL, and that spontaneous on-ice violence will always be a part of an intense contact sport where there’s nowhere to hide on the ice. The return of Milan Lucic to Boston and the migration of Ryan Reaves to the Maple Leafs is a very good thing for the Atlantic Division, and for the entertainment value of hockey in general.
Some might call that a Neanderthal viewpoint of the modern NHL game, but so be it. Hockey fights are something that viscerally separates the NHL from the other major pro sports, and that isn’t something the league should ever truly run away from when it’s done in an organic, professional way.
If you don’t like any of this, then go watch soccer or read what some of the hockey pacifist media types have to say.
Welcome to my coverage of the Boston Bruins for the Boston Sports Journal, we hope you stick around with me and enjoy the ride this season for what I think is going to be a playoff-caliber team with a bit of a blank canvas ready to surprise us all.
See you at the rink!
