Bruce Boudreau - January, 2004

Bruce Boudreau stands at about 5’10, which by today’s NHL standards has to be considered “small.” His playing days ended a dozen years ago, but when he laced them up, he was not “too small” to be a scorer in any league he played in. While his NHL career (Toronto, Chicago) spanned just 150 games, his minor league statistics were impressive at any height. In a professional career that began in 1975 (Johnstown – ECHL), the Toronto native tallied over 100 points in six different seasons. His most productive year came shortly after the majority of his NHL playing was done, in 1982-83, when he tallied 50 goals and added 72 assists for the Maple Leafs AHL affiliate in St. Catherines, ON. Boudreau was rewarded with a four game playoff stint for the Leafs that season, and added another seven NHL games to his credit when he suited up for the Chicago Blackhawks a few years later, but after a lengthy minor league playing career, he began his minor league coaching career in the early 90’s. In 1992, Boudreau was named Head Coach of the Muskegon Fury in the Colonial Hockey League, and after a year there, he moved on to the legendary Fort Wayne Komets of the International League, where he had finished his playing career a couple of years earlier. Two seasons in Fort Wayne led to three seasons in Mississippi, where Boudreau coached the ECHL Sea Wolves, a team that had a minor affiliation with the Los Angeles Kings. In three years, a record of 109-75-26 prepared Bruce for his move up to the American League, and the Kings primary affiliate (then shared with the New York Islanders,) the Lowell Lock Monsters. Bringing Mississippi goaltender Travis Scott with him to Lowell (where he shared time with first year pro, Roberto Luongo), Boudreau’s first season coaching the Monsters was dotted with sporadic success. The team finished a shade under .500, but made the playoffs, and actually staged an upset in the first round before bowing out. Among the players on that team were Kings center Eric Belanger, and long time Monarchs defenseman Richard Seeley. The following season, familiar names like Chartrand, Corvo, Brennan (Kip) and Lilja were in the mix, and set the stage for the Kings purchase of their own AHL franchise in Manchester, NH. The Monarchs are currently in their third season, and Boudreau remains the only coach in team history. With the Kings stockpiling draft picks and prospects, times have changed since the days of the shared franchise, and the dearth of up and coming prospects within the Kings organization. While injuries to the parent club have kept the Monarchs revolving door spinning at an almost dizzying pace, Boudreau goes about his business as the Kings conduit to the future. He states that his number one job is to “make guys ready for the NHL.”

I caught up with Bruce on Tuesday, January 6th, by phone, in his office at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester. A few weeks ago, with the Monarchs playing back-to-back games in Salt Lake City, against Dallas’ Utah Grizzlies AHL team, I took a road trip to get a first hand look at the team, and see a bunch of guys that frankly, I had already been seeing on and off for the better part of the last two injury riddled Kings’ seasons.

In the two games I watched, the Monarchs had some emotional highs and some deadening lows. Game One of the series saw Milan Hnilicka give up two goals on two shots, and within the first 90 seconds of the game, Manchester fell behind 2-0, and did not recover from that point on. Adam Hauser took over, and gave up two more quick goals. Halfway through period one, the team was down 4-0 and I was not sure I had made a wise decision to spend a weekend in cold and snowy Salt Lake City. Dallas took the Friday game 6-0, but the stage was set for the Saturday rematch. Boudreau went back to Hnilicka, and was rewarded with a far more consistent performance. Battling through two virtually concurrent five-minute major penalties called against Monarch players, the team stayed tough on defense, and took the game into overtime tied at 2. While skating four a side, the Grizzlies were called for a rare overtime penalty, and Pavel Rosa netted the power play game winner, sending the handful (literally) of Monarchs fans out of the arena with smiles on their faces, and the team had two hard fought/well earned points in the standings.

My first question to the coach was about the decisions that are made to recall a particular player from the Monarchs. Often fans will look at the stats, or the box scores, and come to conclusions that the Kings organization doesn’t always seem to come up with. How do players like Steve Kelly consistently get the nod, over players like Scott Barney, who seems to have found a goal-scoring groove in Manchester this season? “It’s a fine line,” says Boudreau. “When the Kings make the call, they want our best player because they have to win. So, Andy (Murray), Kevin (Gilmore) or Dave (Taylor) will call and ask who the best player is, and honestly, we give them the best player. LA has to be as competitive as they possibly can. When a guy is playing his heart out here, and has earned his shot to go up, he goes up. We have to be very careful not to send a bad message to our team if someone else gets recalled that may not be as deserving. We want a guy to earn his spot in the NHL.”

Specifically on Scott Barney, Boudreau was very positive about the young forward’s development. “His progress has been so much better than anticipated,” he said. “He’s gotten stronger, down low, in the corners… he’s become a force. Last year he got pushed off the puck a lot. You have to remember that he had missed three years of hockey. I just had him in my office a few minutes ago, and we had a great talk. Our goal is for Scott to become a really good AHL player this year, so next year he is pushing for an NHL job. To bring up a guy for two or three games… is that a positive or a negative when he goes back down? We want Scott to maintain a consistent level of play, and at this point we think he should be down here working on that game in and game out. He’s maintained a very positive attitude, and he understands the situation. Everyone here wants to play in the NHL, and they see the guys’ movement between here and LA, but in Scott’s case he has to be realistic. He has come a long way in a short period of time.”

Goaltending has been an issue for the Monarchs from the start of the season to the present. Hnilicka arrived having been dealt from Atlanta to Los Angeles at the beginning of training camp, and was sent down to Manchester to be the number one guy, and to help ease Kings prospect Mathieu Chouinard into a regular role. First Hnilicka got hurt, then Chouinard got hurt. Adam Hauser (playing for Reading of the ECHL) came into the picture and delivered a shutout, and then another one. A couple of one-goal games followed and suddenly Boudreau had a hot goalie. Hnilicka returned, and Chouinard returned, but both went down to injury a second time. Meanwhile, Hauser’s play hit a slight dry patch. “Can adrenaline take you so far?” was what Coach Boudreau was thinking. After a sit-down talk with Hauser, he responded with two excellent one-goal efforts, and appears to be back on track. “The Kings people have seen him. Andy Nowicki (Kings goaltending consultant) has spent time with him. Andy Murray may have seen him back in the collegiate days (Hauser spent four years at the University of Minnesota, and was drafted in the 3rd round of the 1999 draft by Edmonton.) He has a great work ethic.” When asked if this was a goaltender the Kings might be interested in for their organization, Boudreau says, “I think that’s a legitimate question. This is the first time he’s had success at the AHL level, and Adam has to realize he can’t let the ball drop (ed. note: or the puck go in the net…) He’s only played 15 games in the AHL, so to fairly assess his talents, let’s see how he is after 35 games.” As for Chouinard, who is currently in Los Angeles as the backup to Cristobal Huet, Boudreau hasn’t really seen enough of his play to make a proper assessment. “He’s shown really great courage, I will tell you that. We had a game where he was clearly not able to play because of a pulled groin muscle, but because we had no choice we had to dress him as the back up. After the first period, Hnilicka was injured, and Mathieu went in, despite being barely able to move. He allowed just one goal vs. Hartford the rest of the way. Recently he shut out Hartford (who are currently one of the top teams in the AHL), but then the next night he lost to Lowell 5-1. What I am looking for is consistency. Management wants to see consistency.” Knowing that without watching a game, you can often misread a goaltenders statistics, I asked the coach if he had occasion to see the Kings game vs. Phoenix, where Hnilicka got the call, and was perhaps the best player on the ice for either team, despite giving up 4 goals in a loss. Boudreau said he had seen the game, and thought Milan’s play was “super” and had only great things to say about the goaltender, citing his “great attitude” and his being a “super guy around the arena,” and that he makes some “terrific saves.”

It was at that point I thought it right to segue into a question I was dying to ask him, and it related to his playing days, specifically his great 50-goal season in St. Catherines. You see, that was the season the Saints, and professional hockey participated in a rarity. With regular goaltenders Bob Parent and Vincent Tremblay on the squad, and long time Leaf farmhand Bruce Dowie in the wings, the team had pretty solid goaltending. But, on a night in Glens Falls, NY, hockey fans were treated to a most unusual occurrence. Boudreau recalls, “We were playing the Adirondack Red Wings, and for some reason we only brought one goalie on the trip. Late in the first period he goes down, and we are forced into a situation. Normie Aubin ( a forward, who had played for the Leafs the season prior, and part of that season as well) had played some goal for us in practices and he volunteered to take over. He went into the dressing room, grabbed some pads, and came out to finish the game for us. We actually kept it close for a while. I think it was 3-3 at one point, and you know, when he came in; we were all thinking… oh jeez, let’s not lose 20-2 here. I remember Tom Rowe of the Wings rifled a shot about 120 miles an hour from behind his blue line that hit the back of the net and came out before Aubin even moved. They got a couple of quick goals and went on to win 6 or 7 to 3, but it certainly was a game I will never forget.” The records show that Aubin played in 49 games for the Saints that season, and netted 31 goals and 26 assists, but he also played 47 minutes IN goal and having let five get by him. He closed out his professional goaltending career with a GAG of 6.38. He is probably the only player in modern times that can claim he played both center and goaltender in a single professional game.

We closed our conversation touching on some of the Monarchs defensemen. I asked about the progress of Denis Grebeshkov, up to the time of his injury. “He was coming along fine,” said Boudreau. “Of course there is a period of adjustment, both for any rookie, or any player coming to North America for the first time, but you could see the things he does so well, he did SO WELL. His passing, his moving the puck, his intelligence were all excellent. We are hoping to have him back in 4-6 weeks.” When I asked how he took the demotion at the start of the season, Boudreau said, “He was probably a little bit down, because when you are so highly touted, you want to believe you can excel at the highest level, but he had been injured for most of camp, and knew he needed to get plenty of ice time, which he could do here. He’s a very pleasant kid, who is working hard on his English, and is always nice at the arena.” While Grebeshkov is clearly in the Kings plans, there are a couple of AHL veterans who have put in a lot of time within the Kings organization. Richard Seeley (6th round, 1997) and Joe Rullier (5th round, 1998) have been together for the past four seasons, starting in Lowell and moving on to Manchester. Both have appeared in Kings training camps, and both have been shuttled east without a sniff of the action in LA. I asked about their games, and the prospects for the future. “Richard Seeley is our captain this season, and is having a breakout year. Both he and Joe still want a chance at the NHL, and their competitiveness is so great. Seeley’s leadership, and Rullier’s toughness clearly make it so the Monarchs come to play every night.”

Manchester currently sits in 3rd place in the Atlantic Conference of the AHL with a record of 18-14-2-3. They are one point behind Providence, and four points behind conference leading Hartford. The Monarchs will face off against Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday night, and as with all of their games, you can hear them on the internet, by clicking the link provided on the Monarchs website (www.monarchshockey.com) In the lineup for Manchester will be center Esa Pirnes, who was recently activated off Injured Reserve by the Kings, and sent down to get some playing time. Boudreau is happy to have the 26-year-old Finn, and said that he’s just practiced, and is happy to be back on the ice. He will get the time to show what he can do. With the infusion of Pirnes, Cammalleri, Muir and hopefully another healthy body or two over the next couple of weeks, Manchester should be right in the thick of things as the AHL season moves into its second half.

I thank Coach Boudreau for his time, and Monarchs Public Relations Director Mike Kalinowski, for graciously setting up the interview. Many people within the Monarchs organization look at LetsGoKings.com on a regular basis, and we have some great fans from that area that have become regular posters as well. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be able to continue to bring the working relationship between the team(s) and the website together.

One final note: Bruce Boudreau turns 49 on Friday (January 9th) --- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COACH.

Marc Nathan – 1/6/04


Repost from a file found on my hard drive, dated January, 2004