Some ESPN "insider" Bruins' stuff

[210]

From 12/22

Bad Bruins burn Jacobs
Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs has openly challenged his general manager to fix the team's troubles that have contributed to a 2-6-5-1 slide to the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff race.

"I wouldn't want to be Mike O'Connell right now," Jacobs told The Boston Globe. "It's squarely on his table right now, and I'm looking at him for answers. Last year, we said it couldn't happen again, but here we are, and it is happening again. I'm very frustrated and disappointed. I expect change."

Clearly given an ultimatum to prevent a repeat of last year's December funk, second-half drop and early playoff exit, O'Connell said he still won't make any knee-jerk moves just to save his job.

"I could make a trade any time I want to, just not a good one," O'Connell told the Boston Herald. "There's a lot of things I like about our team, but if we can tweak it, we'll tweak."

Now with his job publicly at stake, O'Connell has been admirably calm and accountable, something Jacobs should try on for size after his penny-pinching forced the Bruins into their demise over the past 10 years.

I always look at it that way anyway," O'Connell told The Globe. "It's really up to me to put the team together and to try to turn it around."

[210]

From 12/18
Thornton not receiving the star treatment
By Jim Wilkie
NHL Insider

We interrupt the regularly scheduled December swoon of the Boston Bruins for something far more troubling, the unexpected decline of Bruins captain Joe Thornton.

Despite their recent inconsistencies, the Bruins (13-6-8-4) are still a respectable fourth in the Eastern Conference with 38 points, although they'd have the fifth seed if the playoffs started today. Middle of the playoff pack is realistically where the Bruins belong because those early-season flirtations with first place were not expected to last.

Mediocrity from Thornton, however, is tougher to accept. The 6-4, 223-pound center has seven goals, 30 points and is a plus-10 through 31 games. He's on pace for a respectable 79 points, but we've come to expect better than respectable from the 24-year-old star. Now in his seventh NHL season and a year after he finished third in scoring with a career-high 101 points (36 goals and 65 assists), a breakout into full-fledged superstardom did not seem unreasonable.

Entering Thursday night's action, Thornton is tied for 12th in scoring with the likes of Ladislav Nagy, Marc Savard, Shane Doan and Sergei Gonchar. All fine players, but none in the class of player we expect Thornton to be.

That class consists of a handful of Hart Trophy candidates, and it's one that Thornton doesn't qualify for so far this season. And that's the disappointment because the sport, not just Boston, needs him to be the special player we saw last season.

Thornton has just two goals and five points in eight games this month, and the Bruins are 2-2-4 in that time. As his line with Mike Knuble and Glen Murray go, so go the Bruins, especially with Sergei Samsonov banged up again.

Rookie coach Mike Sullivan has been looking for Thornton to pull himself and the Bruins out of their respective slides, increasing the big center's ice time from an average of 21 minutes and 32 seconds per game in November to 25:25 in December. So far, Thornton hasn't been able to pull either out.

One of the most puzzling statistics is Thornton's shooting percentage, which is down from 18.4 percent last season to an astonishingly low 9.7 percent entering Thursday night's home game against Calgary. In 2001-02, it was 14.5 percent.

Knowing what he is capable of, yet not producing, leads to speculation that something is wrong physically. Perhaps the nightly beatings, clutching and grabbing are taking a physical toll.

Last month, Sullivan was loudly critical of the nightly hooking, holding and general abuse that Thornton has to endure. Whether on-ice officials take notice or not, somehow Jumbo Joe must fight through the gantlet, dictate the tempo of the game instead of adapting to it and find a way to produce.

As The Boston Globe's Kevin Paul Dupont writes, "This is his team. He wears the C. He makes the big money. He draws the most attention, in every way, including the nagging and oft-untalented checkers who all but begin chewing at his heels in warmups. He is the face of the franchise. If the Bruins are going anywhere, it will have to be on the back of his big body."

Thornton followed his earlier complaints by tossing out the possibility of retirement. In an interview with TSN, Thornton said, "I look back on it with thoughts that this might be my last year. It's not worth the pain. My back is killing me and things like that -- it's just not worth the ordeal."

That's a threat the NHL should be as worried about as the Bruins if one of the league's brightest young talents hasn't been able to showcase his skills and develop while referees swallowed their whistles.

Hopefully Thornton's drop into the pack of scorers is only a momentary blip and not an indicator of his future production. Except for a slight three-point drop in 2001-02 when he played just 66 games, Thornton has improved his scoring in each season.

This also comes at a crucial time in Thornton's career as he is in the final year of a contract that will pay him $5.5 million this season. The notoriously tight-fisted Bruins, who supported him in his complaints to the league, will no doubt use any drop in production against him in negotiations.