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Sabourin, Pasta, and the Oilers

November 4, 2019, 4:59 PM ET [1 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Some other quick hitters as the NHL week begins...

- Happy to hear that Scott Sabourin is going to be OK after this terrifying incident at TD Garden.

As someone who's been going to TD Garden first as a fan and then as media for the last 10 years, it's hard to recall a straight-up stranger moment than this one, really. This seemed like the most innocuous of hits, and yet it ended with one guy unconscious and stretchered off the ice and another out with what the team is calling an "upper-body" injury right now.



"We play hard and we battle each other, but you don’t want to see something like that happen to young guy, especially," Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said after the game. "[Sabourin] was in Manchester when I was in Providence — he’s battled his way to get to the National Hockey League. Those are the guys you root for and hopefully he’s okay."

- Pete DeBoer is definitely going to be the first NHL coach fired in 2019, right? Like, we're definitely hitting that point, yeah? Too much talent, too high of expectations for this to go on much longer. They've had some unfortunate scheduling, yeah, but they've looked lifeless.

- Egg on my face with the 2019-20 Islanders so far. Barry Trotz is a wizard.

- There's winning a trade and then there's what the Oilers did in the Lucic-for-Neal swap. Neal is already at 11 goals. Think Lucic hits 11 goals at all in 2019-20?

- Assuming he's healthy, David Pastrnak is going to win the Rocket Richard this year. He is playing like a man possessed right now, and he's a smarter, stronger player out there. He's beginning to have an Ovi-esque, Stamkos-like presence from that elbow on the power play.

But his ability to create plays could and should also make him a Hart candidate.

"He’s underrated a little bit now with his playmaking ability," Cassidy said. "I think it’s really grown over the last – whenever he first came up, he was absolutely a one-on-one guy that could score, win pucks in tight, get around people. I think he’s now showing that he’s got high-end distributing skill as well, and sometimes almost to a fault. I think a couple of times tonight, he had the middle of the ice with good opportunities to shoot the puck, and he’s trying to force something in there, but the power-play play he made was unbelievable.

"He was doing in the right way attacking the net, and we feel that we have guys like Pasta that – [Charlie] Coyle is in that category, [Jake] DeBrusk – if we keep encouraging them to attack the net, they’re going to make their plays because they’re good players and see the ice. I think that’s where Marchy’s [Brad Marchand] turned the corner in the last two, three years, because he does it all the time, and it’s good to see Pasta do it."
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