Nobody would blame Alex Steeves if he felt like he could relax just a little based on carving out an NHL roster spot for himself in Boston last season, getting into some Stanley Cup playoff games and ending it all with a stint as one of the best players on Team USA at the IIHF World Championships last spring.
The 26-year-old Steeves played 43 games with nine goals and 16 points and, in the process, earned himself a two-year contract extension with a cap hit of $1.625 million per season. Unfortunately for the Bedford, New Hampshire native, he was a healthy scratch for most of the rest of the season (just six games played for the B’s following the Olympic Break) after signing the contract extension, though he did end up back in the Black and Gold playoff lineup for the final few games of the first-round playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres.
The Team USA experience certainly put a nice bow on the end of a very eventful, important hockey season for Steeves, but he has his eyes wide open headed into a very competitive training camp situation next month for the entire Bruins forward group.
“To be honest, [the contract] doesn’t really help,” said Steeves, when asked if he felt like he’d made it. “I don’t feel like I’ve made it. I’ll feel like I’ve made it when I’m a guy who never comes out of the lineup and is a real stable NHLer. I am that caliber of player, and I know I’m getting better.
“But the way things ended last year, there’s no complacency in my game or who I am as a person.”
To Steeves’ point, there are a slew of bottom-6 forward candidates for the Bruins headed into training camp with Mark Kastelic, Tanner Jeannot, Sean Kuraly, Mikey Eyssimont, Lukas Reichel, Matt Poitras, the newly acquired Avalanche forward Ivan Ivan and 19-year-old James Hagens all joining Steeves in the crowded field looking for NHL jobs on Boston’s third and fourth line.
Even a higher-end center like Fraser Minten or Elias Lindholm could be in the mix for the third line center spot, as well.
At least a couple of those players probably aren’t going to be on the NHL roster, so it stands to reason they’ll either be displeased to be in Providence, potentially lost on waivers or traded before the season starts given the overwhelming depth of capable players that Boston is enjoying headed into the preseason.
In the past, training camp has always been a stressful time for a guy like Steeves, who came into the pro ranks as an undrafted player who’s had to fight his way to the top of the organizational depth charts in both Toronto and Boston.
”I think sometimes in the past I’ve carried so much stress going into the camp and you wonder about what this is going to be, what’s that going to be. I really just want to go into this camp thinking about how can I make this team better, how can I show that I’m the guy for that job,” said Steeves, who was speaking to reporters at the Bruins Annual Back-to-School event at TD Garden this past week. “I think it’s probably not worthwhile to think about other people too much, just because there’s so much organizationally that’s out of my control. So I’m just trying to go in with confidence and playing my best hockey. That’s all I can really do.”
In replaying last season, Steeves admits he hit a bit of a rookie wall in the second half of his first full NHL campaign and was snared in a numbers game before he caught his second wind down the stretch. Once the Bruins brought in Reichel, however, German-born coach Marco Sturm had a lot of confidence in him, using his speed and skill to help up the tempo in the Boston attack. Steeves spent part of the summer working on speed and conditioning to improve that part of his game, while also working in the local rinks on the shot that helped him nearly reach double digits in goals last season and score a bevy of goals at the AHL level.
“In January, I think I maybe hit a little bit of a rookie wall. But then I felt like I ended pretty well on that Florida trip,” said Steeves. “Then I got back from the Olympic break and there just weren’t as many opportunities. For me, it’s just controlling what I can control. I’m really working on my conditioning for this offseason to be able to stay effective with the hard schedule and then just growing my game.
This is where I want to be. I want to be an important player on this team, so how can I position myself to do that? That’s how I approached the offseason. Obviously, there’s no lack of motivation, given how much time I spent up in the press box. I definitely carried that pain with me to push myself in the offseason.”
For most players, that kind of “pain” and mixed season creates a road that diverges into two pathways, leaving them at a crossroads. This is exactly where the 26-year-old Steeves finds himself in a Bruins organization where he’s proven some things over short bursts of time, but he hasn’t uncovered the kind of consistent play that every regular NHL player must demonstrate in order to stay at that level on a long-term basis.
That’s the order of the day for Steeves headed into the most important training camp of his career, which will either solidify his spot with the Boston Bruins or continue a pro hockey career that’s been about overcoming obstacles for a resilient, talented forward who’s so very close to exactly where he wants to be in hockey.