Got the gang together this week to discuss the Boston Bruins, return to play and their chances in the 2020 NHL Playoffs.
Unfortunately, we had some glitches in the recording and some good stuff was lost- apologies for that, but you still get nearly an hour of solid hockey talk.
Plus, there’s a brief commentary at the end on the Anders Bjork 3-year extension at $1.6M AAV- which broke after we recorded. Once again, Don Sweeney’s cap maneuvering is serving as an example for the rest of the league to get in line with.
So, away we go with Dom, Reed, Anthony & Kirk- Welcome Back, NHL…
We’re glad to present another original TSP podcast production with special guest Court Lalonde of Bruins Diehards. He does his own tremendous weekly podcast via BD, and he was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to join us.
Court and Kirk cover a lot of ground, from his father’s playing days in the NHL to Court’s own journey to Bruins fandom. He makes a case for Rick Middleton to the HHOF, then discusses the players he’s admired most over the years. The two close with projecting the B’s chances in the 2020 NHL Playoffs.
Enjoy the podcast- here’s the Soundcloud link below.
Happy Independence Day aka Insurrection from the Crown Day!
It’s been a slow couple of weeks here with hockey news, so thought I’d throw up a podcast with some thoughts on prospects, free agency and the NHL draft lottery plus some other things about hockey.
It clocks in at around 45 minutes, so hope you’ll give it a listen.
Have a great holiday and we’ll be back with more content soon!
We got the 3 Amigos together again, but full credit to Anthony Kwetkowski of Bruins Network who suggested a joint venture, so we’re proud to unveil our first edition of the 3 Amigos + 1 podcast…4 Amigos…whatever you feel comfortable calling it.
As for us, we’re calling it a good solid near 3 hours’ worth of talk about various subjects from what the NHL playoff format might look like, to Jack Studnicka, everyone’s most interesting B’s prospect and then we answered reader-submitted questions on a host of topics from more expansion draft stuff to Tuukka Rask extension to Torey Krug’s chances of re-signing to Ondrej Kase and what the lines might look like, plus more. It runs long, but it sure felt like about 40 minutes to us.
But don’t take our word for it- give it a listen here:
As always- thanks for listening and thanks to those who provided questions!
The 3 Amigos will ride again- it’s been nearly 2 months since our last podcast, so we figured we would get together and talk some hockey.
This time, we will be joined by Bruins Network’s Anthony Kwetkowski, so you will all get 4 for the price 1!
As we did before, we are interested in answering your questions, so if you have any for us, please submit those questions in the comments section of this post, or feel free to contact us via Twitter.
We plan to record in the next couple of days, so if you have a question you want us to answer, we’ll need those by Wednesday morning.
This is a guest post by TSP Amigo Dominic Tiano on former OJHL and current Clarkson University defenseman Dustyn McFaul, drafted by the Boston Bruins in 2018. Dom watched McFaul in junior hockey during his draft season and subsequent 2018-19 campaign with the Pickering Panthers before he headed to Potsdam.
Dom also tracked down Clarkson Associate Head Coach Josh Hauge, who runs the defense for the Golden Knights for Head Coach Casey Jones, and we’re pleased to provide you the audio from that interview.
This is a quality deep-dive on a Bruins prospect who is not a household name when it comes to discussing the team’s futures, so thanks for reading/listening, and stay safe and healthy.
Thanks again to Dom for putting this together
Dustin McFaul then:
Looking back prior to the 2018 National Hockey League Draft, there was one player that intrigued me more then any other in the sixth round prior to teams and potential picks departed for the American Airlines Center in Dallas: Dustyn McFaul.
Not many sixth-round picks make a career for themselves in the NHL. In McFaul’s case, it wasn’t the ability to play hockey that saw him being selected with the 181st pick. McFaul still had a year of hockey before he would begin his NCAA career with Clarkson University for the 2019-2020 season. It was going to require a team with a lot of depth and the patience to wait out that one year of junior, along with potentially four years in the NCAA and probably a year in the American Hockey League.
The Boston Bruins had just that, and selected McFaul. (as a Bruins fan, I was all smiles).
Flashback to the 2017-2018 season and my thoughts on McFaul prior to the draft:
What McFaul accomplished as a rookie in the OJHL came as quite a surprise. He quickly became a player who could eat up large minutes, averaging 28 minutes per game when I saw him. As a youngster, he was thrown into every situation, be it penalty killing, powerplay and 5v5 against the top players the opposition could throw out there.
Not only was McFaul a leader on the blue line, but he showed excellent leadership qualities on a young Panthers squad. He is very coachable and seems to absorb what the coaches are telling him. He’s also very humble and puts aside any personal achievements and goals for those of his teammates.
At 6’2”, McFaul has good size, but will need to put in some work to add much needed bulk to his frame, something that he is aware of. It can only help him in the defensive zone when it comes to battling in those hard areas. He has an above average wing span for a player of his size and he uses it effectively. His mobility is very good and in combination with his stick skills and size, keeps players from getting to the danger areas.
Offensively, McFaul is very good at joining the rush, making very good first passes and has shown he can quarterback a powerplay. He needs to improve his shot, but it can also come along when he adds some muscle.
Above all else, the thing that stood out to me most, and talking to those around his game, it is his work ethic. It may have been a blessing in disguise for McFaul not to make the Frontenacs and the OHL at the time, and he realized that he needed to put some work in and he did. And his attitude tells him just making it isn’t good enough, he’ll continue to put that work in to improve throughout his career.
McFaul isn’t one of those guys that you draft hoping he can make your squad in a couple of years. He’s a project that you will need to put in some time with and realistically, if he develops into his full potential, you’re looking at 5 or 6 years away. If you are a team with a deep prospect pool, he’s the type of player you look for in the late rounds.
McFaul had to make a decision on where to play for the 2018-2019 season. The Ontario Hockey League wasn’t an option so that he could keep his NCAA eligibility. He could return to the Pickering Panthers of the Ontario Junior Hockey League or join the Cedar Rapids Rough Riders of the United States Hockey League, where he was a third-round pick, 37th overall, at the 2018 USHL Draft.
McFaul chose to return to the Panthers. It was a tough season for them but we were able to see McFaul take on an even bigger role on and off the ice. He took on an expanded leadership role and there were improvements all around on the ice for him personally. But he is so humble that any questions about personal achievements quickly turn to talking about the team.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Clarkson Assistant Coach Josh Hauge who works with Clarkson’s blueliners about the season that was and what we can expect moving forward. Have a listen:
The Scouting Post is pleased to present a 2-hour and change discussion with Anthony Kwetkowski– Bruins Network on his excellent work as a Boston Bruins prospect analyst.
You can follow his work and observations on Twitter at: @BruinsNetwork
In the podcast, we cover a lot of topics, starting out with a look back at the 2010 NHL draft, where Anthony caught the B’s prospects bug with the Tyler Seguin draft. We then take a macro look at the Boston Bruins’ ability to draft (Jake DeBrusk) and sign impact players as undrafted free agents (Torey Krug, Noel Acciari, Karson Kuhlman), following up with an assessment of the 2019-20 AHL Providence Bruins. We then drill down to key AHL prospects, with AK breaking down detailed notes on Providence players Jack Studnicka, Trent Frederic, Jakub Zboril,Jeremy Lauzon and Zach Senyshyn.
We also talk about organizational rankings around the NHL- how they are done and why the Bruins are consistently down near the bottom of rankings from the last two years.
Players also covered/analyzed in the podcast: John Beecher, Nick Wolff, Jack Ahcan, Cooper Zech, Victor Berglund and Quinn Olson.
It was a fun discussion and we’ll have him back again- thanks again to him for coming on and providing such depth of knowledge of these players. Here’s the file:
Dom, Reed and Kirk got together for a 3 Amigos reunion, making sure to practice social distancing in the process.
We’ve got more than 2 hours of (mostly) hockey talk, breaking down questions that readers submitted. A lot of it centers around uncertainty around David Krejci and Torey Krug going forward, Jack Studnicka’s promising early returns, and a look at how expansion might impact the NHL and Boston Bruins in 2021.
We recorded the audio before news of the Jack Ahcan signing broke, so we don’t have anything on the newest free agent signing for the B’s, but you can check out the quick-hitter we posted on him here yesterday on the blog.
So, let’s go- here’s the audio file. We’ve also posted it over at SoundCloud so that you can listen on the go…
We’re getting close to recording the Ask the Amigos podcast, so here is the last call for any questions you have about the season, Bruins, prospects, other hockey topics, pop culture or anything you’d like to ask Dom, Reed & me.
We’ll record in a few hours, so there’s still time to weigh in…
Submit in comments section or use Twitter DM function to any one of us.
With everything that is going on with the Coronavirus and its impacts around the globe, we thought we’d get the band back together for a reunion to take advantage of the extra time many of us now find we have.
Here’s the chance to ask Dom, Reed & myself questions about hockey- the paused 2019-20 NHL season, B’s, prospects (lots to talk about here with recent signings), pretty much anything what you want covered, we’ll try to blow into. We want to do what we can to provide some content and help maybe take the minds off of the larger issues going on. Our minds…and yours.
Just post a comment to this post with your comment and first name/location where you are, and we’ll try to address it in a future audio file. We will also take questions via DM on Twitter if you’d rather go that route by sending your question to the amigo of your choice.
We will close questions at 9 a.m. (Central) time on Thursday, March 26, and the podcast will drop on Friday.
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