Providence Bruins

Providence Bruins goalie and Boston Bruins prospect Malcolm Subban was struck in the throat by a puck during warm-ups before the game against the Portland Pirates on Feb. 7 and has been diagnosed with a fractured larynx, the team announced in a statement. He underwent surgery and it is unknown when he will return to the ice.

Continue for updates. 

---

Bruins Issue Statement on Subban 

Thursday, Feb. 11

The Bruins provided an update on Subban's surgery and timetable to return:

"Malcolm underwent successful surgery on February 8 at Mass Eye & Ear Hospital in Boston to repair his larynx fracture. He is doing well and has been released from the hospital. While there is no definitive timetable for his return at this time, he is expected to be out a minimum of eight weeks."

---

Subban in Stable Condition

Sunday, Feb. 7

According to the Bruins' statement, Subban will be out indefinitely. 

Malcolm, the younger brother of Montreal Canadiens star P.K. Subban, sent a picture to fans after being admitted to the hospital: 

Thanks for all the supportt! pic.twitter.com/rAEY9d6k6x

— Malcolm Subban (@Subbz3r0) February 7, 2016

"He's a Subban," P.K. said Sunday, according to Sportsnet's Chris Johnston. "We're built tough."

A first-round pick by the Bruins in the 2012 draft, Malcolm has made one NHL appearance to date. In the February 2015 tilt against the St. Louis Blues, Subban saved three of six shots while allowing three goals and picking up the loss.

Providence Bruins sophomore forward Carter Camper’s three-game transcript for the past weekend―four assists and 16 shots on goal―might as well have been Chris Bourque’s.

Well, somebody needed to fill the gap while Bourque, the P-Bruins leader with 20 helpers and 116 shots this season, was beginning training camp with the parent club in Boston. A little more from other remainders and a few new faces was likewise needed in the absence of prolific point-getters Ryan Spooner, Jamie Tardif and leaned-on defensemen Matt Bartkowski and David Warsofsky.

Camper indubitably did his part in helping Providence win two of its last three outings. He started by ending a four-game production drought, which tied a November 2011 hex for the longest in his professional career, with a hat trick on Friday.

It was a natural playmaker hat trick that helped swell a 1-0 edge into a 4-0 lead over the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. The Bruins ultimately ran up a 5-0 lead before the second intermission and subsisted through Bridgeport’s valiant rally to preserve a 5-4 win at the Dunkin Donuts Center.

Two days later, at the same site, Camper garnered the secondary assist on newcomer Graham Mink’s power-play strike at 3:49 of the third period. Putting in his second appearance in P-Bruins attire and barely 24 hours removed from his official addition to the roster, the veteran Mink permanently busted a 1-1 tie and settled a 2-1 triumph over the Manchester Monarchs.

With the crucial helper, Camper inflated his season output to 3-15-18 in 27 games played after he had been stuck on a 3-11-14 line for four straight games.

The setup on Mink’s clincher was the third time Camper collaborated with Max Sauve, who joined him in collecting four points on the weekend.

Sauve had entered the weekend on a five-game scoreless skid but rapidly reversed that trend with at least one assist in each of the last three contests. Besides the Mink goal on Sunday, he had the primary assist on Torey Krug’s 1-1 equalizer in Springfield on Saturday and on two unanswered strikes via Craig Cunningham.

Cunningham, the P-Bruins' reigning top goal-getter with 20 last season, has been experiencing a sophomore slump through much of the first half of 2012-13.

As the calendar Zamboni ushered in the New Year, Cunningham had merely two strikes in October and two in December with a 17-game drought in between. He entered Friday’s action stuck on four goals in each of his previous six outings.

He emphatically bucked that trend at Bridgeport’s expense, connecting on two of four registered stabs to double a 2-0 lead to 4-0. He later opened the scoring with an unassisted strike in the first minute of action versus Manchester.

The aforementioned Krug gave Cunningham company in the weekend’s multi-goal club, hitting the back of the mesh from the point both Friday and Saturday. The pint-sized rookie defenseman thus elevated his output from 1-5-8 to 3-5-8 in a matter of two games.

Another defenseman, new face Wes O’Neill, supplied the P-Bruins’ only other goal in Saturday’s tough 4-2 loss to the mighty Falcons, currently owners of the third-best winning percentage (.657) in the AHL.

One other silver lining Saturday was Trent Whitfield collaborating with Sauve to set up Krug’s goal, giving the seasoned captain two assists in as many nights and three points in four games. This came after he had been out of commission for all of November and December.

With the multi-point outburst from Camper, Cunningham, Krug, Sauve and Whitfield, the P-Bruins now sit a point behind Worcester for fifth in the conference with two games in hand.

At least one or two of Boston’s training campers―with the lowercase “C”―should be back for the coming weekend. But Camper with the capital “C” and his associates can give the Bruins a helpful boost in organizational confidence by sustaining their spirit and doggedness.

Throughout the second half of the AHL season, the belated NHL season will go into an intensive swing. Recurring weekends like Jan. 11-13 will give an impression that Boston is satisfyingly stocked on reinforcements, if need be.

While nothing is ever technically guaranteed, everyone will be better off the sooner hockey fans in the heart of Connecticut come to terms with the Hartford Whalers being gone for good.

It has been 15 years since "the Whale" bolted the congested virtual dividing line between New England and New York sports allegiance. But while the NHL’s Battle of New England is strictly a trove of memories now, there has been a radiant silver lining for both Boston Bruins buffs and the not-so-orphaned Hartford hockey fanbase.

That silver lining, namely the AHL rivalry between the Providence Bruins and Connecticut Whale, may never have shined brighter or in a more prominent view than it is right now.

In the midst of an NHL lockout, the next-best league in North America presses on with one team brandishing Boston’s colors and nickname and another bearing the same colors and affectionate nickname of its predecessor.

Friday night will mark the second of six Bruins-Whale bouts this season and the first at the Dunkin' Donuts Center, Boston’s prospect base and the best-attended AHL facility in the region.

This date is also hovering around the two-year anniversary of Connecticut’s abrupt, midseason switch from the Hartford Wolf Pack, the franchise’s original name from when it first came to fill the void in the fall of 1997.

Those two elements―the fact that this is the best quality of hockey presently available and the contesting clubs’ emblems and uniforms―should logically serve to intensify a feud that was appreciable enough to begin with.

The geographic aspect speaks for itself. It gives the AHL its own Battle of Southern New England to complement the Big East basketball grudge between Providence College and UConn.

One party caters to the capital of Rhode Island, the only New England state not to border any non-New England states or provinces.

The other represents the capital of Connecticut, the misfit New England state that, as implied earlier, blends Boston and New York fanfare.

One team hones the professional prospects for America’s oldest NHL franchise just north of the state border. The other functions as the farm club for the New York Rangers, another Original Six franchise that, like the Bruins, has undergone a recent revival in relevance.

With the lockout dragging on indefinitely, the two Gardens (TD and Madison Square) are as lacking in major league hockey as Hartford’s XL Center has been and most likely will continue to be. At the same time, the lockout means that Providence has the likes of Jordan Caron passing the time, while Connecticut has Chris Kreider.

Furthermore, as of this season, each team has one of legendary Boston blueliner Ray Bourque’s sons―Chris for Providence, Ryan for Connecticut. A host of former friends and foes from Boston College and Boston University, which have the quintessential college rivalry, are scattered around each roster as well.

Granted, this is not exactly the AHL’s most competitive card right now, but the old Bruins-Whalers rivalry did not always boast a pair of heavyweights. Neither was that always the case with the everlasting Original Six feuds of Bruins-Canadiens or Bruins-Rangers, but those matchups spark unconditional fan fervor nonetheless.

In its 15-plus years of existence, the AHL version of Boston-Hartford has sculpted enough of a history to match its NHL predecessor.

Two of Hartford’s eight Stanley Cup playoff appearances ended in seven- and six-game losses to the Bruins in 1990 and 1991, respectively. The P-Bruins have met the team formerly known as the Wolf Pack in four Calder Cup playoff rounds, claiming a sweep in 1999, losing in seven games in 2000 and winning a best-of-five in 2001 and a best-of-seven in 2007.

Providence-turned-Hartford defenseman Terry Virtue won a Cup with the Bruins in 1999, then scored in overtime in Game 7 to knock off his old friends and help Hartford press on to the 2000 title. The AHL’s playoff prize has not been back anywhere in New England since.

Virtue was hardly the first AHL entity to go from pleasing Providence to servicing the sworn enemy in Hartford. The Wolf Pack/Whale franchise originated as the Providence/Rhode Island Reds, who eventually bolted for Binghamton in 1977.

The Reds morphed into the Broome Dusters, then the Binghamton Whalers and ultimately the Binghamton Rangers. When their previous parent club left a hockey void in Hartford, their adoptive affiliate from Manhattan promptly decided to transplant its prospects to the Nutmeg State.

How about that? The two southernmost New England states each know the feeling of losing a pro hockey club. Rhode Islanders can indirectly begrudge Hartford for taking their old team, while Whalers fans can partially blame the Bruins for ushering their NHL franchise out of New England.

In turn, both fanbases can take it out on each other with their respective AHL teams.

If none of this makes the term "minor league" a misnomer, this author yearns to know what does.

The Providence Bruins and Manchester Monarchs exchanged similar sugar rushes of equal value within the first 32-plus minutes of Friday night’s action in the Dunkin Donuts Center. The critical difference in complex carbs broke the surface in the 34th minute of action.

Only 63 seconds after the visiting Monarchs had finished deleting an initial 2-0 Bruins lead, Jamie Tardif polished off a rush with linemates Chris Bourque and Ryan Spooner to renew the advantage to 3-2. That new edge held up for the remaining 26 minutes and 35 seconds of action to give Providence its third triumph in its last five games.

Bourque and Carter Camper had buried each of the evening’s first two registered shots within the first 2:42 of game time. From there, Providence sculpted a 16-5 edge in the shooting gallery over the first 15 minutes.

The Monarchs retorted in the middle frame with an 11-2 run on the shot clock within the first 13 minutes. Brian O’Neill and Marc-Andre Cliche successively beat goaltender Niklas Svedberg to morph a 2-0 Bruins lead into a 2-2 knot in a matter of 38 seconds.

But Tardif’s line promptly and proactively halted and reversed the momentum, after which the winds were less one-sided either way. The rest of the night was defined mostly by fleeting and futile rushes, such as the Tyler Toffoli breakaway that Svedberg stoned in the seventh minute of the third period.

Each team would muster 10 shots, and each goaltender 10 shots apiece between Tardif’s eventual decider and the final horn that made his strike a winner.

A deeper dip into the data from the Dunk reveals the following sample.

1

Power-play conversion at either end, that being Camper’s strike that terminated the first special teams’ segment of the night at the age of 20 seconds. Providence went 1-for-3 with the man-advantage while nullifying each of three Manchester power plays, continuing a steady improvement on each end of the spectrum.

The Bruins had a 70.4 percent success rate on the penalty kill through their first seven games, but have since improved to 81.2 through 12 total contests. Their power play had converted exactly 12 percent of its opportunities through the first five games and has since upped that rate to a precise 20 percent.

3

Assists logged by former P-Bruin Andrew Bodnarchuk over two visits to his old domain in a Manchester uniform. Adding to his two helpers on opening night, Bodnarchuk single-handedly set up Cliche’s equalizer Friday.

5

Career points in four career games against the Monarchs for Spooner, who happened to be out of the lineup with flu-like symptoms last Saturday when the Bruins brooked a 3-0 shutout at Verizon Wireless Arena.

Spooner’s two assists gave him his second multi-point performance in as many outings and upped his output to 1-5-6 in five games this calendar month.

8

Fighting majors in 11 games played for Bobby Robins this season. Robins tangled with Dwight King at 18:27 of the first period, a little less than 10 minutes after linemate Lane MacDermid scrapped with Justin Johnson.

Extraordinarily, after those two tussles inflated a first-period total of 26 penalty minutes, only three minors were assessed thereafter. There was even a 29-minute, 23-second interlude between infractions.

13

Individual Providence skaters who tested Manchester netminder Peter Mannino once or twice apiece during their 18-shot, first-period firestorm. Five of the 13 Bruins in question took two stabs in the stanza while another eight issued one apiece, a testament to balanced, consistent droves.

By night’s end, 14 different P-Bruins had pelted Mannino a combined 31 times.

19

Bruins regulars―that is, those who have suited up for at least half of the season’s schedule―who have tallied at least one point on the year. Third-year defenseman Matt Bartkowski is the latest to join in with his first point of the season being the secondary assist on Bourque’s icebreaker at 1:18 of the first period.

Bartkowski went on to tie Spooner and Tardif’s team-leading output of four shots on the night, matching his total in that category from the P-Bruins’ previous game. His last hack at Mannino was particularly head-turning as it dripped over the Monarch goalie’s shoulder, but floated a little too high to tune the mesh for what might have otherwise been a little third-period insurance.

Save for a subsequent Craig Cunningham goal on enemy grounds and an empty-netter on the cusp of the buzzer in their zone Saturday night, it was like Groundhog Day in October for the Providence Bruins after their game Friday.

Accordingly, an assessment of Saturday’s 4-2 road falter to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers will be inevitably fraternal to that of Friday’s 3-1 home drawback against Manchester.

For the second straight night, the offensive unit of Max Sauvé, Ryan Spooner and Jamie Tardif collaborated to spot the Bruins a 1-0 edge. Once again, Providence proceeded to spill that lead on an opposing short-handed goal and then fall behind, 2-1, via an opposing power-play goal before the second intermission.

Bridgeport’s Jon Landry and Matt Watkins sandwiched Cunningham’s comeback strike, which was assisted by Carter Camper and Jordan Caron, with goals to finalize Bridgeport’s 4-2 triumph.

As Providence dips to 0-2 in the young 2012-13 AHL campaign, here is a deeper look at the most jutting highlights and lowlights from Saturday’s scoresheet.

0

Points on the year for winger Chris Bourque, the reigning AHL scoring champion brought into the Bruins organization this past offseason. While it is barely the time to even start simulating the panic-button push, Bourque has not so much as been on the ice for a Providence strike through two games.

Only twice in his 93-point campaign last year did Bourque go through consecutive games without chipping in a goal or an assist. Only once did he go dry for three or more.

Other pointless Providence forwards after two games played apiece include Christian Hanson, Jared Knight, Lane MacDermid and captain Trent Whitfield.

2

Sophomore defenseman Kevan Miller’s rating on the plus side for the weekend.

Unlike Bourque, Miller is wasting no time composing a season akin to his 2011-12 campaign. Last year’s runaway plus/minus leader for Providence at a plus-20, Miller already has a plus-two rating on the season, having been on the ice for two of the three Bruins goals and only one opposing power-play goal.

None of Bridgeport’s four tallies on Saturday―which came in a variety pack of one short-handed, power-play, even-strength and empty-net strike―occurred on Miller’s watch.

Among his teammates, Tardif was Miller’s only company in the plus/minus black on Saturday, retaining an identical plus-one.

3.07

Michael Hutchinson’s goals-against average on the night, coupled with a .857 save percentage and credit for his second straight loss.

Since holding the Monarchs scoreless through nearly the first 40 minutes on Friday, Hutchinson has allowed six goals on 38 shots faced in roughly 80 minutes of action.

Again, this trend is not worth significant consternation, nor is it anything four-plus days of mental retooling and practice and maybe a switch in the rotation could not remedy. At the same time, it is especially not the ideal start, considering slow stumbles early last season and the year prior preceded a non-playoff campaign.

6

Providence power plays, which again eclipsed its cumulative short-handed but was, again, utterly squandered. 

The first two man-up segments, in particular, proved to be an embarrassment of wasted momentum. Landry went to the sin bin for hooking only 38 seconds after Sauvé had drawn first blood.

Despite shaking that off, the Sound Tigers went on the kill again, courtesy of a too-many-men hiccup, a mere seven seconds after Landry’s jailbreak. Yet, the Bruins remained barren on the man advantage and could not enhance their advantage on the scoreboard.

On their third advantage of the opening stanza, they only took 16 seconds to surrender the equalizer through Brandon DeFazio’s shortie.

10

Shots on goal from the Sauvé-Spooner-Tardif line, half of them off the goal scorer Sauvé’s stick, constituting almost exactly one-third of the tests administered to Bridgeport backstop Kevin Poulin.

The other nine Providence forwards combined for 14 registered bids and an identical solitary goal. Other than Sauvé and Tardif, Knight and blueliner Colby Cohen were the only other individuals to pelt Poulin at least three times.

With a little more aggression from the other offensive troikas a la Sauvé and his wingers, the P-Bruins very well could have at least mustered points on Saturday. Maybe then, it would have been easier to absolve Sauvé’s overcommitment early in the second period that warranted a goalie-interference penalty and opened the door to Nino Niederreiter’s go-ahead goal.

15

Shots on Poulin and saves by Poulin in the second period. Not unlike Friday’s opening stanza, Saturday’s second segment was the P-Bruins’ busiest on opposing property but yielded a famine of finish.

In the interim, Niederreiter drew his team’s first lead on one of its eight stabs at Hutchinson in the period.

As it happened, just as Providence would do from the second to the third, Bridgeport went from taking 15 shots on net in the first to eight in the second. The crucial difference was that the Sound Tigers hatched all of Hutchinson’s 20-minute goose eggs.

Indeed, despite the blizzard of biscuits issued by the visitors, the only “zero” in Saturday's period-to-period box score is in the Bruins’ half of the second-period column.

So, the Providence Bruins will meet the yet-to-be-named St. John’s team, their newest divisional rival in the wake of last week’s AHL realignment, four times in the coming season.

Meanwhile, they are to engage their two newly interdivisional rivals from the Nutmeg State eight times apiece. And the Springfield Falcons, another constituent of the newly minted Northeast Division with the Connecticut Whale and Bridgeport Sound Tigers, are to face Providence 10 times just like when they were both in the seven-member Atlantic Division.

Is anybody else lost here? You should be. 

It’s a new alignment, yet the same old kind of slate. Just like in the past two seasons, P-Bruins fans will see their team lock twigs with fellow New England-based teams for more than three-quarters of the schedule.

And just like in both 2009-10 and 2010-11, there will also be two renditions of “O Canada” at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in the coming year. The only difference is that, whereas those previous occasions were for non-conference bouts with the Abbotsford Heat, this year it will be for two and only two divisional games.

In all, the P-Bruins will play 36 of their 76 regular season games against their four Atlantic Division cohabitants. Another 32 games will be against the Northeast Division. The remaining eight will be against three out of the five East Division teams.

Translation: There will be no non-conference action in 2011-12. Nor will Providence face either the defending Calder Cup champion Binghamton Senators or the Syracuse Crunch at any time.

This despite the fact that the B-Sens and Crunch are fellow Eastern Conference rivals. This despite the fact that Binghamton and Syracuse combined are less than half the trip to Providence than St. John’s. The two New York towns in question combine for 488 miles from Providence while the capital of Newfoundland is a 991-mile trek to the capital of Rhode Island.

The AHL might as well have stayed exactly as it was with a pair of eight-team and seven-team divisions. Or better yet, it could have slowed down and tried to make a tad more geographic sense when it made the right choice to emulate its parent league and divide its 30 constituents evenly into six five-member divisions. 

Early last week, this author petitioned for a Southern New England Division consisting of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Providence, Springfield and Worcester. Well, the way the P-Bruins have since detailed their list 2011-12 opponents, that arrangement might as well be the case.

But for some reason, it isn’t. What’s the matter? Is AHL president Dave Andrews worried about going over the sense-making cap that’s never been explained to the fans or the pundits but which clearly exists?

To be fair, divisional and regional rivalries are indispensable and it is a relief to see that every New England AHL fan base will continue to get its fill of one another. That being said, what exactly was the point of placing the Bruins time-honored foes from Hartford and Springfield in another division in the first place?

Furthermore, the 2011-12 distribution of matchups will only carry on the trend of giving teams and their followers a little too much of a good thing.

Take a look elsewhere and notice the lack of a get-together with Binghamton or Syracuse, only one encounter at each venue apiece with the likes of Hershey and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, not to mention the relatively close Western Conference teams who won’t be stopping by in the near future.

To be precise, 10 of the 15 teams based in the Western circuit are all closer to Providence than St. John’s. That includes Charlotte, Chicago, Hamilton, Rochester and Rockford, all of whom have traded past visits with the P-Bruins.

Knowing that makes it kind of hard to apply the M-word in defense of this format. If the Baby B's can afford one or two nearly thousand-mile ventures to Newfoundland, they could just as easily afford a 330-mile ride to Rochester and a 440-mile trip to Hamilton.

And for those partial season ticket holders waiting to select their games, it’s that much tougher to accept one of the slimmest menus in recent memory; perhaps the slimmest variety of opponents in the team’s soon-to-be 20-year history.

Well, at least there will still be a sufficient number of opportunities to see the Whale and the Falcons. But that still begs the question about the recent realignment and how exactly the unbalanced schedule is supposed to explain it.

When the Providence Bruins last conducted business at the Dunkin Donuts Center on April 10, the pregame refrain from the Spoked-P masses was “Re-sign Whitfield!” as team captain Trent Whitfield accepted one team award after another.

Hours later, as the Baby Bs served up a stick salute upon defeating the Manchester Monarchs, 3-2, the chorus rang “Re-sign Anton!” in appreciation of the game’s No. 1 star, goaltender Anton Khudobin.

It all made sense at the time. Whitfield had returned from an Achilles ailment on Jan. 7 and buoyed the Bruins to a near-miracle return to playoff contention

Likewise, Khudobin had been a member of the organization for merely six weeks, yet already had a sound 9-4-1 transcript with Providence.

It all continues to make sense.

Peter Chiarelli, general manager of the parent Boston Bruins, fulfilled the parting wishes of his Providence buffs by locking in both men for an additional two years Friday afternoon.

And it will continue to make sense if and only if Whitfield and Khudobin can both fulfill the hype. But by all counts, that shouldn’t be a harrowing task.

Nothing but a slew of injuries is likely to warrant either of them a promotion to Boston in the immediate future. Thus, with a multitude of late-season acquisitions from college and major junior figuring to return, it is on Whitfield and Khudobin to team up with new head coach Bruce Cassidy and pilot a carry-over from the 2010-11 homestretch.

Whitfield proved an offensive, minor-league equivalent of Tim Thomas upon his return from injury. In 45 games, he crammed 18 goals and 18 assists en route to repeating team MVP honors while the P-Bruins posted a 24-19-3 record.

By contrast, they were 14-17-3 in their leader’s absence, including a rancid 4-11-2 record at home.

Obtained from the Minnesota Wild organization on March 1 to make everyone forget about Nolan Schaefer, Khudobin consumed 78 percent of the P-Bruins' crease time as the team finished strong at 12-6-1.

By dusk, Providence was only six points shy of a playoff berth, a scenario no one could have realistically placed on their holiday wish list in December.

A healthy Whitfield earlier in the year, and the added dose of leadership that comes with it, might have supplemented the balance in that department. On the other hand, perhaps everyone needed the initial adversity in order for Whitfield to be the spark plug that he was after the New Year.

But Khudobin’s instant impact most indubitably had Bruins fans asking “Where was this 18 months ago?”

After all, the core culprit behind this team’s failure to qualify for each of the last two Calder Cup brackets was a gross failure to fill big pads when Tuukka Rask earned a permanent slot in Boston at the start of the 2009-10 campaign.

That vital endeavor bottomed out this past season when the veteran Schaefer, a would-be feel-good story as a renowned Providence College alum, went 9-16-1 with a .897 save percentage and 3.10 goals-against average.

A save percentage anywhere south of the .900 line and a GAA of 3.00 or beyond are virtually cardinal violations in this game.

Schaefer maintained the dishonorable double crown and was gone after the final weekend of February.

Professional sophomore Matt Dalton had the same problem with a 3.20 GAA and .894 save percentage in 16 appearances. The best the Bruins could do to him, though, was relegate him to the back-up role.

Conversely, Khudobin made 16 starts himself and finished with a .920 save percentage and 2.40 GAA, easily the best numbers in both categories between seven different Providence stoppers in the last two seasons.

Going forward, it’s tempting to hunt for a caveat when you have an arrangement like this. But for the first time since Rask graduated, the P-Bruins have a stopper who has kept his numbers within respectable range.

It’s more than just a case of not fixing what isn’t broken. It’s a refreshing case of the goalie’s guild not being broken for a change. Schaefer’s ineptitude was an anomaly. If anything, Khudobin stands a decent chance of posting better data in 2011-12.

On the offensive and leadership front, there is no cause for concern that Whitfield’s hunger will somehow taper off next season. He knows as well as any member of the Providence faithful that there is something to be built upon.

That is why―along with Khudobin and Cassidy―everyone expressly wanted him to stick around a while longer. And that is why Chiarelli has made that happen.

Mike Loftus, the longtime Boston Bruins beat writer for the Quincy Patriot Ledger, has reported that general manager Peter Chiarelli will settle on his new American League coach whilst wrapping up this weekend’s NHL draft on Saturday.

Assuming Chiarelli follows through on that, he will end a 10-week wait for the word on who replaces Rob Murray, who was discharged after three seasons behind the Providence bench and on the heels of two straight Calder Cup playoff no-shows.

The most logical move would be to simply elevate Murray’s assistant, Bruce Cassidy, to the head coaching position. After all, that was how Murray, predecessor Scott Gordon’s sidekick for five years, claimed the job when Gordon accepted an offer to lead the New York Islanders in August 2008.

Although it is a far less plausible scenario, Craig Ramsay’s recent release from the NHL’s new Winnipeg franchise is bound to have at least a few Bruins Buffs speculating his return to the organization. Ramsay was the topmost assistant during Claude Julien’s first three years in Boston before he was lured to the Atlanta Thrashers last summer, granting him his first head coaching gig since a one-year stint in Philadelphia (2001-02).

On the one hand, in addition to those years in Atlanta and Philadelphia, Ramsay has 16 solid seasons of experience as an NHL assistant. That could make for a viable AHL head-coach candidate.

By the same token, though, such a lengthy run in The Show makes Ramsay an enticing choice to fill a void on another NHL staff, of which there are plenty.

For the P-Bruins, some of whose fans questioned the reasoning behind Murray’s dismissal, Cassidy is a more sensible choice for every reason. He has a sliver of NHL coaching experience with the Washington Capitals, who ultimately fired him in December 2003 after he had only logged 107 games.

But that was not before he guided the Grand Rapids Griffins to the best regular-season record in the final year of the IHL, then won the Louis A.R. Pieri Award in the Griffins’ first AHL campaign in 2001-02.

One could argue that Murray, whose first season as head coach saw Tuukka Rask backstop the P-Bruins to the Calder Cup semifinals, did not deserve the fall guy tag when Providence plummeted.

But in a sense, forking Murray out of the locker room in favor of Cassidy could be akin to benching an overcooked goalie even when the opposing onslaught is due to defensive breakdowns. A slight change in personnel positioning is simply needed to wake up the rest of the squad.

---

For more 2011 NHL draft coverage, stay tuned to Bleacher Report for updated NHL mock drafts, NHL draft rumors, NHL draft results and draft grades.

Odds are no one in the Boston Bruins’ sphere of influence understands droughts quite like those residing in the Rhode Island branch.

Since the Maine Mariners transferred in 1992, the year of their parent club’s previous trip to the NHL’s conference finals, the rechristened Providence Bruins have seen 14 of their alumni reach a Stanley Cup Final. Of those 14, 10 have won a ring.

Yet none have ever done it under the spoked-B banner or under the roof of the Boston Garden or TD Garden.

Not even Peter Laviolette, who captained the Baby Bs in four of their first five seasons, then coached them through a record-setting Calder Cup campaign in 1999. Laviolette’s black and gold legacy was cut off (along with speculation he would replace Mike Keenan) in 2001 and he proceeded to win a cup with Carolina in 2006 and steer Philadelphia to last year’s final.

Not even John Grahame, who backstopped the aforementioned title run and was notably tearful when Boston dealt him to Tampa Bay in 2003 after nearly six years as a Bruin. Within 17 months, Grahame went from pouring out eye water to pouring champagne with the rest of the triumphant Bolts.

Not even Aaron Downey, a fan favorite from the 1998-99 banner year for his peerless and fearless combativeness. Downey still owns the franchise record with 1,059 career penalty minutes, which he added to with a brief return in 2007, one year before hoisting Lord Stanley with the Detroit Red Wings.

Sure, the P-Bruins have adorned their rafters and invigorated their fans with four divisional championships, two regular season titles, one Calder Cup banner and four return trips to the conference finals.

But conventionally, fostering the future of a given NHL franchise is placed even higher in an AHL team’s job description. For that reason, Providence has been lacking in its legacy as a quintessential farm club. The parents may have been to blame, but from their birth to the tail end of their teenhood, not much came of the Providence Bruins once any of them were in Boston.

That was until Friday night, when a band of Spoked-Bs featuring seven Spoked-P graduates nipped the Tampa Bay Lightning, 1-0, and put the franchise in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 21 years.

There is something about one’s local minor league team, best defined as “accessibility,” that plants a permanent magnet between the eyes of the fans and the individuals who don the laundry, for however long or short that might be.

Seeing a pro athlete perform in person, let alone on a regular basis, let alone with little effect on one’s checking balance or the mileage on one’s car, inevitably makes that athlete more alluring to the fan as he moves to the next echelon of the game.

That goes for David Krejci. The second-round Boston draftee from 2004 broke into the professional ranks with Providence in 2006, logged 94 regular season and 13 postseason games there, and is now Boston’s leading goal-getter through three 2011 playoff rounds. His setup on Nathan Horton’s clincher Friday night kept him tied with Horton for the team lead with 17 postseason points.

That goes for Patrice Bergeron. The alternate captain was already a household name upon finishing his rookie NHL season in 2003-04 when he chose to spend the subsequent lockout year on the farm. All he did that year was post a 21-40-61 transcript in 68 games and add 12 playoff points en route to the third round.

Given that, and all the highs and lows that Boston’s longest-tenured skater has been through since, it is safe to bet that the citizens of the 617 and 401 area codes are smiling the broadest for Bergeron.

That goes for Brad Marchand. Of the seven active Providence alumni, he was the one most recently seen in action at the Dunkin Donuts Center, specifically on Feb. 21, 2010 against the Abbotsford Heat. A mere 15 months later, he trails only his linemate Bergeron and the aforementioned Krejci and Horton atop the Bruins’ playoff scoring charts with 12 points.

That goes for Adam McQuaid, who like Marchand was in Providence during the first half of last season, then thrust into a baptismal NHL fire sooner than planned when the injury bug invaded Claude Julien’s locker room. He has since acclimated and taken no fewer than 17 shifts in any of his 15 full-length playoff appearances.

That goes for Johnny Boychuk and Tuukka Rask, who concomitantly settled into the Hub early last season on the heels of piloting Providence to the 2009 Eastern Conference championship round.

And that goes especially for Tim Thomas, who made the Divine City his last of nine semipro stops before finally earning a permanent spot in The Show in 2006-07. He and Rask are two of only six P-Bruins stoppers with more than 100 career games in Providence.

Translation: Dunk-going puckheads didn’t merely get first dibs on the brisk breed of goaltending that shook off four goal-fests and shut out Tampa Bay in the do-or-die bout at the Garden. They, more than any other fan base, can testify to Thomas’ fairy-tale perseverance.

And they got a protracted, quantitative preview of things to come in the organization. That’s what will happen when a local minor league base nurtures the right talent and the parent club makes efficient use of it afterward.

All around the Hub of Hockey, Mainers were the last legion of fans to have a feeling like this. And after 19 years of waiting, the Bruins buffs of the Ocean State have their turn.