Day Four of Bruins’ Development Camp: Thoughts and observations

Here are some thoughts and observations from the fourth and final day of Bruins Development camp at Warrior Ice Arena.

1) It was scrimmage day for the Bruins prospects as they finally got the chance to show what they could do in game action rather than the battle drills, or the skating and conditioning sessions. So what did we learn in the scrimmage? Well, it reinforced a lot of what we’ve seen during the week. Brown University’s Tom Marchin had a couple of goals and to these eyes was the best player among the camp invites from outside the organization. Oskar Steen scored early on a nifty wrist shot, Jakob Lauko scored on a breakaway where he blazed pas the other team’s defense and Martin Bakos finished off a play around the net. Many of the players that stood out during the previous practice sessions again rose to the top when it was prospect vs. prospect head-to-head for bragging rights, and also for that last chance to impress a Bruins brass that was watching them. One player that again looked like he needs to elevate his game is Urho Vaakanainen, who once again looked really challenged in the offensive zone to make plays, or sometimes even keep the puck in the offensive zone while walking the blue line with the puck. He can skate and he’s got pretty decent size, but there appears to be a great deal he needs to improve at before he’s going to be NHL material.

2) One interesting player from this week was 2018 second round pick Axel Andersson, who is expected to head back to Sweden for another season rather than going to the Kitchener Rangers as was rumored yesterday. Andersson showed a smooth skating stride and has some pretty offensive instincts/skills, so that’s the good news. But the youngster was continuously knocked off the puck during battle drills on Thursday, and then again on Friday during the scrimmage action. Granted the guy is 10 years older than Andersson in his first development camp, but at one point Martin Bakos was basically holding off the Swedish D-man in front of the net with just one arm after he’d already been knocked off the puck in the neutral zone leading to a turnover. He also curiously seemed to really be having some issues receiving the puck at times as he couldn’t make a clean exchange, and ended up taking more time breaking pucks out of the zone because of it. The 18-year-old old will undoubtedly get bigger and stronger this summer and the experience will have him better prepared for next season, but Andersson has a long way to go after his first development camp.

3) Curtis Hall was one of the players that scored during the Friday morning scrimmage, and he really made an impression as the week rolled along. The Yale-bound center is a big boy at 6-foot-3, 200-pounds and he roofed a shot under the bar that nailed Jeremy Swayman’s water bottle on its way to the back of the net. So there’s definitely some offensive skill there. But what’s perhaps most promising about Hall is that he can also really motor skating-wise for a big body, and that’s an intriguing combination of size/speed for a player they took in the middle rounds of the draft. The skating speed and the size/strength put Hall in good position to create offense on multiple occasions, and he did the rest by finishing off one play, and having a couple close calls with other possible chances through the scrimmage. Hall was also a very affable kid off the ice with long hockey hair he was cracking jokes about inside the dressing room, so he checks plenty of the prospect boxes off the ice as well. It will be interesting to see how he develops at Yale, but it sure looks like Hall has the tools to be a very good college hockey prospect for the Bruins.

4) Pavel Shen doesn’t speak any English, so he wasn’t really the most popular guy to speak with during the open dressing room moments with the media. But the playmaking Russian forward did score a goal in the scrimmage that was a pretty nice shot, and certainly fared pretty well in his first NHL development camp as a seventh-round draft pick. So the creativity with the puck, the offensive skills and a little bit of speed was all there to see from the youngster. What really impressed this humble hockey writer, though, was the sight of Shen as the last Bruins prospect to leave the ice at Warrior Ice Arena. It wasn’t because he really wanted to cherish the moment and it wasn’t because he was running behind for any reason. Shen simply wanted to hand his hockey stick out over the boards to a youngster that had been sitting and watching the camp practice from the glass level. He had somebody from the Bruins bench help to make sure that the young man was able to receive the expensive stick, and then he finally left the ice after clearly making that kid’s day with the souvenir stick. That’s a classy move from a young kid that has all the reason in the world to get all wrapped up about himself rather than doing something nice for others, but instead seemingly couldn’t wait to hand a lucky fan his stick.

5) Interesting to note that the Bruins have signed defenseman Olivier Galipeau, who apparently spurned the Canadiens to sign an AHL deal with the Bruins and subsequently attend the last three days of this week’s development camp. Galipeau is a 6-foot-1, 210-pound left-shooting defenseman that had 10 goals and 34 points in 30 games for Acadie-Bathurst this season, and then let it up for five goals and 20 points in 20 playoff games en route to a Memorial Cup championship. Don Sweeney confirmed the signing during a Friday afternoon chat with the media, and it remains to be seen exactly what the upside is for Galipeau once he really gets things going. There were a few good moments during his three days in development camp, but the level of offensive flash that made him the QJMHL Defenseman of the Year hasn’t really surfaced yet. One would expect that he hadn’t really skated at all over the last month plus after winning the Memorial Cup, so clearly there is good reason why the French-Canadian defenseman perhaps didn’t look as sharp, or as normal, as he usually did during the junior hockey season.