Could the Boston Bruins actually go another full NHL regular season without formally naming a captain?
Bruins President Cam Neely raised that possibility while speaking about the team this week after it had been assumed it would be a fait accompli that either Charlie McAvoy or David Pastrnak would be named captain ahead of this season. McAvoy, of course, will be serving out a six-game suspension to start the season after his stick-swinging incident with Zach Benson in the final moments of last spring’s B’s/Sabres first-round playoff series.
And Pastrnak spent the waning part of last season admitting that time feels like it’s beginning to run short for him as a player as he turns 30 years old, and the desire to win sooner rather than later is a burgeoning reality for the game-breaking right winger.
“I don’t know if you necessarily need to have a guy unless there is that one guy that really stands out,” said Neely while discussing the Bruins during this week’s WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon. “We’ve been blessed to have great captains here. From [Ray] Bourque, [Zdeno] Chara, [Patrice] Bergeron. We like leaders, not followers. So you can hopefully have 20 leaders. That’s the one thing that we look at: who is going to help lead the team? Maybe it’s more of a tradition in hockey where you have a letter on your sweater. Don [Sweeney], Marco, and I are going to sit down shortly to talk about that.”
It’s a point well-taken that the Bruins are looking for a dressing room full of leaders, as that’s customarily what it takes to be the winning hockey team hoisting the Cup at the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But it’s also interesting, and perhaps a reflection of where the Bruins are in their remolding stage, that they’re holding back slightly in naming a captain given how strong the leadership tradition was from Chara to Bergeron to Brad Marchand over the last 20-plus years.
Interestingly enough, Marco Sturm seemed to think that not having a captain last season added to the overall team ownership that the players collaborated to build last season, and that veterans like Nikita Zadorov, Hampus Lindholm, Sean Kuraly and Morgan Geekie made it a stronger overall leadership group for the Black and Gold.
“I always said I wanted a captain,” Sturm said. “But now, being through it the first time [with] me as a head coach and not having a captain, I thought it went really well. Just maybe because guys were really close, the leadership group.
“I thought they did a good job overall. Everyone had their input. There were no outsiders. We always kept it really tight. So I actually didn’t mind it. But having said that, there will be more conversations to have with Don [Sweeney] on how we are going to move forward. But personally, I liked how we handled it — especially the players and how they handle the situation all year long.”
The obvious leader in the clubhouse to be the next captain of the Bruins is