Boston Globe 11.5.03
Boston Globe 11.5.03
This is reunion week at the Fleece. Old buddies, Kyle McLaren & Don Sweeney come back tonight (Sharks) & Saturday when the Stars show up.
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Stepping over the welcome mat
McLaren's return doesn't faze Bruins
Pardon him if he appears anything but warm and sensitive, but Hal Gill isn't caught up in reunions or homecomings.
"It's tough sometimes, but basically, you look at every team we play now and there's an old Bruin we're playing," said the 6-foot-7-inch, 250-pound defenseman. "It's part of the game now."
Gill was referring to the Bruins' next game, tomorrow night at the FleetCenter against the struggling San Jose Sharks, which will mark the return of Kyle McLaren, a fixture on the Boston defense for seven years before being dealt midway through last season. The 26-year-old McLaren earned his exit from Boston the old-fashioned way -- by holding out -- and while you can imagine that some feelings may linger, be they bad or good, players by and large said those things are overrated.
"Guys get moved all the time," said Brian Rolston, who was a Boston teammate of McLaren's for 16 games in 1999-2000, then for the next two seasons. "It's part of the business."
McLaren's disenchantment with Boston's financial offer after the 2001-02 season may have signaled the end of his stay here -- he never reported to the team and sat idle until Jan. 22, 2003 -- but it created a seemingly perfect scenario for Rhode Island-born Jeff Jillson. The 23-year-old blue liner had been shuttled between the Sharks and Cleveland in the AHL when he was told to pack his bags and head to Boston along with goaltender Jeff Hackett, both of them dealt for McLaren.
Though McLaren got what he wanted -- more money -- Jillson thinks he got the better of the deal, and the Bruins wouldn't argue because the 23-year-old from Mount St. Charles and the University of Michigan has been one of the year's pleasant surprises.
"[The trade] was a little bit of a surprise to me at the time," said Jillson, "but it's good to be back East and near family."
McLaren played in 33 games for the Sharks last year, but the club finished last in the Pacific Division. This year, it's been more of the same, as San Jose will take a 2-5-5-0 record into tonight's game at New Jersey. There was a 6-2 win in Florida Saturday and a 2-2 tie in Atlanta the following night, and McLaren (1-2--3) did notch his 100th career assist in the win over the Panthers, but mostly it's been tough going for the Sharks.
Then again, it seems to be irrelevant as far as the players are concerned.
"I didn't really know too much about the situation, being on the other side of the country," said Jillson. "But it's one of those things. It just happens."
Said Gill, a Boston teammate of McLaren's for five seasons, "He's a good kid. It's a short time when it's all said and done, when we were on the same team. It seems like a long time ago now. He's a good guy and a great player and I'm sure he's going to be fired up when he comes back." . . .
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The men in black (that would be defensemen) had a new face among them for practice, 23-year-old Zdenek Kutlak of the Czech Republic. His call-up from Providence was simple to explain, said head coach Mike Sullivan. "We need an extra defenseman and he's played extremely well down there and certainly we wanted to reward him for his efforts," said Sullivan, who coached Kutlak at Providence last season . . . Former Red Sox manager Joe Morgan was an interested observer at the FleetCenter. He sat with a group of students from Franklin Pierce College and Northeastern, all of whom were there as part of journalism classes. The Northeastern group was led by Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione, who teaches a journalism class . . . Don't tell goaltender Andrew Raycroft that it was a playful, easy practice. Trying to hold tight to the near post, he got slammed to the ice after a collision with Mike Knuble . . . McLaren isn't the only San Jose defenseman who'll be making a homecoming. Jim Fahey of Milton, a former standout with Northeastern, is in his second year with the Sharks. On his trip to the FleetCenter last winter, he scored his first NHL goal. He was a healthy scratch in the first two games of San Jose's current seven-game road trip. . . .
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Wayne Gretzky, named yesterday as Team Canada's general manager for next September's World Cup, hinted that Bruins captain Joe Thornton would be a prime candidate for the squad. "I think we'll see some new faces," said Gretzky. "How many, I'm not sure." Gretzky was general manager of Canada's gold medal-winning team at the 2002 Olympics at Salt Lake City. "It's safe to say a guy like [Todd] Bertuzzi is pretty solid to be on the club," he said. "A guy like Thornton is right in the mix, too." The World Cup, played only once before in 1996 (when it was won by Team USA), will begin Sept. 14, the day before the NHL's collective bargaining agreement is set to expire.
