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A year ago next month,
Milan Lucic’s season ended with a roar.
After openly threatening Montreal’s
Alexei Emelin and
Dale Weise in the post-series handshake line following the Presidents’ Trophy winner’s elimination at the hands of their most hated rival, Lucic stood in front of dozens of microphones and recorders in front of his stall, and unleashed a tirade against the Canadiens that called the Habs ‘babies’ and offered to ‘settle things on the ice’.
It was an ugly look for the 6-foot-4 winger that showed some incredible growth that season under the tutelage of his linemate,
Jarome Iginla. With Iginla in the picture as the voice that forced his linemates to push harder -- no matter if it was the first period of Game 1 or overtime of a second-round playoff series -- Lucic began to show signs of ‘earning’ the oft-criticized $6 million cap hit he’s on Boston’s books for through 2016 with a strong 24-goal, 59-point 2013-14 season. Lucic, then in his seventh season in the National Hockey League, was showing signs of becoming a leader for the B’s.
But this year, with Iginla gone, and with
David Krejci in and out of the lineup as often as he was this season, the 26-year-old Lucic struggled, and ended this year as a humbled disappointment.
With just 18 goals and 44 points in 81 games played -- his worst full-season as a Bruin since a 42-point sophomore campaign alongside Phil Kessel and Marc Savard on the B’s top line in 2008-09 -- the rugged left-winger didn’t hide from admitting his struggles when asked to describe his season.
“Too inconsistent, personally. Especially the way I started, I was very inconsistent and a very poor player in the first 35 games,” Lucic said at the B’s break-up day on Monday. “I think I only had six goals by New Year’s, and that’s not acceptable from a personal note and from a team standpoint as well.
“But then I kind of got my game going in the right direction in the last six, seven weeks of the season, got things going again as far as the way I wanted to play. Obviously I had a lot of fun playing with [Ryan Spooner] and [David Pastrnak] to end of the season there,” Lucic, taken by the B’s with the 50th overall pick back in ‘06, continued. “We had some success together, and for myself, I just want to do the best I can to heal physically and heal mentally here in this long offseason and bounce back as best as I can. I have an opportunity now to get into tip-top shape, with all this time now to head into next season. I’ve got to do the best I can to make the most of that, and bounce back the way I know that I can.”
There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to Lucic’s future with the Black and Gold, though, and it’s coming to a head a lot sooner than most would in the Hub would like to admit.
Entering the final year of a three-year, $18 million extension signed in Sept. 2012, the B’s braintrust have to make a decision as to whether or not No. 17 will remain in the Hub. Of course, they have this summer and all of the 2015-16 season at their disposal before they have to make an official decision on Lucic, but it’s the B’s recent history that tell us that it will be made long before then. Rarely, if ever, have the Bruins let players they view to be part of their core skate with uncertainty to their name in a contract year (Chris Kelly in ‘11-12 and Dougie Hamilton this season are perhaps the lone exceptions). They’ve almost always taken care of their ‘building blocks’ early, and while that’s part of the reason that they’re in this cap mess (they’ve rewarded loyalty to a fault at times), general manager
Peter Chiarelli’s track record speaks for itself in this area. If he’s in their plans, it’ll get done... soon.
“It’s a decision that will require some thought,” Chiarelli, who is operating under the assumption that he will remain the club’s general manager, said on Monday. “He’s a player that’s really helped us over the years; he’s a signature-type player. Certainly, and I lump him in with a bunch of guys that their levels of performance weren’t up to snuff this year. So, he’s a big strong player that we rely on and he’s paid a good salary now and if we extend him he’ll be paid a good salary going forward. So, it’s a difficult decision because he’s a player that creates space by his size and his style of play and you’d want more production in general, from not just him but from other players, and he falls in that category.”
But the Lucic situation is straight-up weird.
When you dissect his game, it’s clear that he benefits when he’s opposite another power-forward winger, preferably one with a powerful shot. In three full seasons with either Iginla or Nathan Horton (2010 to 2013) on the right wing of his line, Lucic put up at least 59 points and averaged 27 goals per year. Their presences allowed Lucic to be a player that did the grunt work, and capitalize on net-front chances as a secondary option for Krejci’s passing game. Without that balancing act of sorts on his off-wing, it’s tough to predict which version of No. 17 you’re going to get from a production standpoint.
(And as I’ve written here before, I believe the Bruins acquired Brett Connolly from Tampa Bay with the hopes that he could be that guy on Lucic’s right wing for the club in the future.)
He’s also one mean S.O.B., but it’s finding the line that’s often left Lucic in an awfully frustrating predicament. He knows that he can’t be a loose cannon hothead that racks up penalties, but at the same time, he realizes that he can’t back away from the game and style that’s made him a legitimately frightening player to see barreling down at you as a defender with the puck in your own end.
“It’s a balance that is a challenge, and getting to that balance – that’s something that we talk about with Marchand too and some of the other players – to have their balance with level of grit versus skill, and Lucic is in that boat,” said Chiarelli. “One of the things he said to me that I’ll share is he wasn’t in the right frame of mind, and it might have been kind of a follow up from what he said to you, following the Montreal series. He didn’t have the right frame of mind going into the year, whether it was kind of a defensive frame of mind – meaning he didn’t want to be as aggressive as he normally is, who knows.”
Despite the peaks and valleys, Chiarelli and the B’s still like what he brings to their club, too.
“He brings the intangible stuff to the playoffs – the size, the strength, leaning on guys, the timely scoring, the clutch play in general,” Chiarelli said of Lucic. “So, it’s part of the equation and certainly you expect production. Again, I don’t want to pick on Looch here because I think a lot of the players didn’t perform to the level where we expect them to be, and he’s one of them.”
But again, this ‘equation’ as Chiarelli put it, is a bit of a mess.
At $6 million per season, you could say that Lucic has been underwhelming in two of his last three seasons. Questions and potential red flags have started to spring up, such as Lucic’s shape (although that seems like a concern he definitely put in the rearview mirror following the lockout-delayed 2013 season) and a wrist injury that took quite an extremely time to fully heal this year that undoubtedly affected his shot in the early going. And the negotiating table could be one long battle. In essence, things have a chance to get pretty ugly if/when the Bruins try to explain that Lucic hasn’t earned a raise, or that his annual salary should come down. (The latter simply won’t happen, by the way.)
So maybe, just maybe, the Black and Gold look at this situation as a chance to maximize the return for one of the league’s more unique talents, and simply get something while they still can rather than let him walk as an unrestricted free agent next summer. It’s not that simple, though, as moving Lucic would represent an undeniable identity shift for the Bruins. Do they want to go through with that move? Perhaps. That of course comes back to the front office’s long term vision of this team, but the general vibe you’ve always picked up from Chiarelli’s braintrust is that Lucic is not going anywhere as long as he’s in charge. They view him as a one of a kind talent that other teams have been left to search for in the draft or trade market since he arrived on the NHL scene in 2007. (Think of Tom Wilson going to the Washington Capitals at No. 16 overall in ‘12, or Zack Kassian’s trade to Vancouver.)
And if he had his say, Lucic would remain a fixture on the ice in the Hub of Hockey.
“I hope to be here, and my plan moving forward is to always remain a Bruin, but like I said, the management group is going to do what’s best for this team and this organization,” Lucic said on Monday. “I hope that it’s me on the team moving forward, and I hope that I’m in their vision for the future, but I can only control so much. Like I said, I’m just going to do whatever I can with the time that I have here in this offseason to better myself so that I have a bounce back year.
“When you don’t make the playoffs, changes usually are made. As a player, those are the things that are out of your control, and you just hope that a group can stay together as long as it can,” Lucic, who has 26 goals and 61 points in 96 playoff games, continued. “But I mean, you trust that the GM and the whole management group are going to do the best they can to put the best team on the ice.”
In a summer loaded with questions, the future of Lucic in Boston is obviously high on the list. Like most of the club, Lucic had an undeniable off-year, and it’d be tough to sell a piece like No. 17 off after one hiccup, and would most of all put the Bruins in another Seguin-esque situation where fans could be calling for the front office’s head if Lucic goes on to return to form with a new, better team. Given the PR nightmare that the aforementioned Seguin trade has turned into for disgruntled fans, moving a player of Lucic’s popularity simply cannot come without a bona fide impactful return for the B’s.
Although you could see the other side of the coin for a Boston club that’s expected to make a significant -- perhaps even major -- effort to become a quicker and more skilled group up front, too.
But whether that’s alongside David Krejci as the Bruins’ one-two punch on line one, or as the ‘father figure’ on a line with Spooner and Pastrnak, Lucic knows that it’s on him to show the Bruins his worth.
“My plans are to remain a Bruin and the best way to get an extension is by my play and my actions on the ice,” said Lucic. “I need to prove to the team and the organization and the fans, with my play on the ice, that I deserve an extension. So I definitely have to use that as motivation.”
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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