Always Locked In

The Providence Bruins have watched their parent club lose 178 regular-season games, along with potential playoff action in 2005, to three separate work stoppages in the past quarter-century. Both the 1994-95 and 2012-13 seasons (ironically the two years Providence has hosted the AHL All-Star Classic) saw the players-owners stalemate last through early January. The 2004-05 lockout began in mid-September of the league year, and lasted ten months, thus annihilating the full on-ice campaign.

            But North America’s top minor hockey league has always been ready to slake the starved fans of its parent league. During every lockout, regardless of its length, the Baby B’s have joined their competitors in rostering young would-be NHL players, thus keeping at least some of the locked-out players from resorting to an overseas gig. As an added benefit, the presence of more recognizable names had sweetened the appeal of the top alternative for pro hockey when the big league is out of service.

 *****

            The first NHL lockout of the Gary Bettman era exacerbated a head-spinning summer and fall for major sports. The players’ strike that would cancel the balance of the 1994 Major League Baseball had taken effect on August 12. Within a month, NHL training camps failed to commence on schedule.

            But in Rhode Island, as well as other minor-league markets, there was an air of ambivalence. No one in Southern New England wanted to go without their Boston Red Sox or Bruins for longer than normal. Yet there was something kind of cool about the way the media covering the major leagues resorted to the next-highest level and descended on its territory accordingly.

The PawSox had always seen a smattering of action on the New England Sports Network, but in the final three-plus weeks of the 1994 International League season, the attention grew broader, more diverse and more A-list. Of particular note, the Ted Turner-owned Atlanta Braves had long garnered nationally syndicated telecasts on TBS. But when that team shut down prematurely, the Richmond Braves filled the broadcast gap, and the TBS crew followed them on a visit to McCoy Stadium.

            Similarly, when the 1994-95 AHL season began on the final night of September, regional networks began carrying a heftier load of games. Even ESPN2 started making rounds. For the P-Bruins, NESN cameras and commentators were on hand at the Civic Center for their September 30 opener versus Hershey. With the team already in the middle of an AHL attendance championship dynasty, attention and anticipation only heightened.

Prior to the 5-4 Providence victory, the network carried the special laser show and full-team spotlight-laden introductions. The audience audibly roared for the living-room audience as Providence Bruins, Boston Bruins and AHL logos variously spun and danced with the names of each player on the darkened ice surface. Ditto when public-address announcer Jim Martin used those names to call those players out onto the blue line.

            In the main event, a troika of newcomers to the organization in Brett Harkins, Sandy Moger and Tim Tookey piloted the winning effort. Harkins had a playmaker hat trick while his linemates nabbed two goals and two helper apiece.

            Going into the campaign, organizational veterans Fred Knipscheer, Grigori Panteleev and Sergei Zholtok were all logical candidates to compete for a permanent position in Boston. As long as their tryout was stalled, they could all be found back south of the Bay State border.

And for the first three months of the season, the parent club’s cable partner beamed as many as eleven games to the extended fan base across New England. ESPN2 was on hand for a road game against Springfield and for a home date with Syracuse the night before Thanksgiving.

            Speaking of Thanksgiving, at the outset of the nineties, the Boston Bruins had just started building traction on an annual Black Friday matinee contest. A team that has long played the majority of its home games on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays breaks tradition by way of tradition for that late-November weekend. But early in its run, due to the lockout, that custom had a hitch.

            The logical remedy for that hitch, most naturally, was a Black Friday outing at the Providence Civic Center. And fittingly, the Fredericton Canadiens were in town that day for a 2:05 faceoff. One week after suffering a 6-1 blowout by their hosts, the Baby Habs were back for a NESN-televised game. This meant regional TV audiences would see black and gold clash with bleu, blanc et rouge for the first time since Ray Bourque slugged a dagger past Patrick Roy in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals at the Garden seven months prior. (Knipscheer tallied the lone assist on that goal and had also scored the eventual series clincher.)

            In this minor-league tilt that stood in for the Boston-Montreal rematch, Panteleev and Daniel Lacroix both logged multi-goal efforts as the P-Bruins blew out Fredericton once more, 8-2. That would tie a 6-0 romp over Rochester (Buffalo’s affiliate) on December 27 as the team’s widest margin of victory all season. The latter game, also at the Civic Center and also before a NESN audience, saw Knipscheer and defenseman Jeff Serowik tune the twine twice apiece. A week later, Knipscheer joined Scott Bailey and player-assistant coach Tim Tookey as the three P-Bruins selected to the nationally televised All-Star game.

            As 1994 gave way to 1995, the lockout finally let up, and Boston would kick off its final season at the Garden with a Sunday, January 22 home bout with Philadelphia (Hershey’s parent club). With the inevitable prospect of losing some of its core to The Show, Providence won its first game that followed the lockout’s conclusion over Springfield, 5-2. Later, on the day of Boston’s season opener, a decent crowd still flocked to the Civic Center and watched Clayton Beddoes snap a late tie to secure a 3-2 win over Worcester.

            It was business as usual from there on in, and a few attention-drawing faces made good on their extra development time. Of note, Knipscheer logged sixteen regular-season appearances with Boston in the winter and spring of 1995. Moger, who had formed an explosive line with Tookey and Harkins, garnered eighteen man games in call-ups. Lacroix played twenty-three NHL games, the most in his five-year career up to that point.

            Zholtok, who died tragically after suffering a cardiac episode during a game in Belarus amidst the next lockout ten seasons later, was among the few top Providence performers who did not earn a call-up in 1994-95. He would not sport the Spoked-B again, as his rights went to the IHL’s Las Vegas Thunder in the summer of 1995. However, he left Providence as the franchise’s all-time leading point-getter, a distinction he retained until Brad Boyes surpassed him on February 4, 2005. To amplify the pride of P-Bruins fans, even though it was not with Boston, Zholtok soon became a regular in The Show. He logged fifty-seven appearances for Ottawa in 1996-97 and played seven full NHL seasons after that.

            But first, as their final respective acts as Bruins at any level, Zholtok and Panteleev helped Providence stave off elimination from the second round of the playoffs. They each turned in three-point performances in a 5-0 victory that averted a sweep by the eventual champion Albany River Rats. Panteleev gave another multi-point effort the next night, helping to keep the eventual sour handshakes from happening on the Civic Center ice.

            A week after Albany eliminated Providence, the same pattern repeated itself for each team’s parent club. Moger was conspicuous by his absence from both Bruins playoff runs. The next year, he had permanently graduated to Boston as well (minus a three-game conditioning stint in 1996-97). A veteran of two previous AHL seasons with the Hamilton Canucks, he was forced to tune out that which he could not control and finish honing his craft through the lockout.

With his chemistry with Harkins and Tookey, he set a tone without fail, and the eighteen-game breakout that winter and his eighty appearances the following year were cut-and-dry dividends. He made history by tallying Boston’s first goal in the team’s 1995 FleetCenter debut, and was later packaged, along with Jozef Stumpel, to Los Angeles in the Byron Dafoe trade.

 *****

            By the time the NHL’s labor relations turned icy again in 2004, Hilbert was in Moger’s old skates. The University of Michigan product had alternated between the AHL and NHL Bruins for three seasons. He led the Baby B’s with fifty-three points as a rookie, then gave them seventy more in 2002-03. Despite subsequent injuries, he was coming off a career-best eighteen regular-season games in Boston, plus his first five Stanley Cup playoff twirls.

Had all of the normal proceedings commenced like clockwork, the twenty-three-year-old center would have surely been itching to prove his time had come to leave Providence behind. But NHL Lockout II would inevitably postpone his audition. The same was true for Brad Boyes and his case for more than a proverbial cup of coffee. In his first two professional seasons, Boyes had made one NHL appearance for the San Jose Sharks, who swapped his rights to the Bruins in the late winter of 2004.

Meanwhile, the work stoppage made for an intriguing situation surrounding head-turning forward Patrice Bergeron. After being drafted in the second round by Boston in 2003, Bergeron made the team out of training camp and never returned to his junior club in Quebec. He suited up for seventy-one regular-season games and the entire seven-game first-round letdown against Montreal. His first and only NHL playoff goal had clinched Game 2 in overtime.

Bergeron had turned nineteen over the summer, and ordinarily, teenaged NHL prospects from the Canadian major junior system must return to the amateur ranks if they are cut from camp or otherwise demoted during the season. But because Bergeron had logged a full campaign in The Show, Providence would be an option for as long as there was no 2004-05 season for Boston.

Well, there would be no 2004-05 season for Boston at all. In turn, Bergeron, Boyes and Hilbert would be the New England hockey centers of attention down in the Ocean State.

In his weekly notes spread, on the eve of 2004’s AHL training camp, Boston Globe pundit Kevin Paul Dupont assessed that “more playing time in the AHL, where Hilbert would likely gain confidence, could provide him a booster shot when/if NHL camps open their doors.” Through an interview with Bruins assistant general manager Jeff Gorton, he also noted that a default stint in Providence would help Bergeron hone his professional craft in his natural pivot position after playing most of 2003-04 on the flanks.

            As quoted by Dupont, Gorton said, “I’m sure Patrice has plenty of offers from other places, too…But for a 19-year-old kid who already had one cultural overhaul last year, we really think the smartest thing for him would be to be in Providence.” Of both Bergeron and Hilbert, though he could have just as easily said the same about other prospects like Brad Boyes, he said, “If they’re playing in Providence -- as opposed to, say, Europe or wherever -- then their ice time is essentially controlled by the parent club.”

            As a byproduct, the benefit would figure to extend to the marketing department at The Dunk. Amidst the top league’s indefinite shutdown, the AHL was testing a slew of contemplated rule changes, most notably shootouts, for the 2004-05 season. Bruins fans around New England could go to any of eight cities around the region to see those experiments in person. But only Rhode Island would have presumptive Boston players incubating and waiting out the lockout on a nightly basis.

There would be plenty of instances where both the most touted players and the touted change proposals intersected. In an October 16 visit to the Lowell Lock Monsters, the P-Bruins deleted an initial 3-0 deficit and ultimately experienced their first shootout when a 4-4 deadlock held up through the five-minute overtime. Bergeron and Hilbert both converted, though Lowell bagged three one-on-one strikes to take the extra point. The next day, while New England was nervously preparing to watch Game 4 of the ALCS, Hannu Toivonen diverted The Dunk crowd’s minds for a moment by blanking the Springfield Falcons, 4-0.

            Naturally, that night, Dave Roberts’ second-base steal and all of the ensuing events at Fenway Park dominated the sports pages in Providence and beyond. Between the Red Sox’ curse-conquering victory and the Patriots’ road to a repeat Super Bowl crown three months later, there was ample discussion fodder on New England’s professional sports scene. If there was ever a time when people were not going to miss the Boston Bruins much, this year was it.

            With that said, some people in the region did have an empty spot with no NHL. Their angst was exacerbated when, less than two weeks after the Pats raised the Lombardi Trophy, the lockout officially erased the full 2004-05 NHL season. Neither the Bruins nor their twenty-nine rivals were going to give Rhode Island puckheads anything to tune into or make the trip up north to enjoy in person.

            And so, Providence was the black-and-gold hotspot for those who still needed ice in their World Series and Super Bowl champagne glasses. And even with the Sox punctuating their incredible run with banner and ring festivities in April, a little playoff hockey action was in order. A year had passed since the Spoked-Bs ruined what could have been a perfect Patriots Day — one that began with the Marathon and a Red Sox victory over the Yankees — by losing Game 7 of the first round on home ice to the loathed Canadiens, 2-0. That was the closest they had come to advancing to the conference semifinals since 1999.

            Meanwhile, the Baby B’s had not won a series since 2001, giving the organization a combined four-year drought going into the 2005 Calder Cup tournament. But despite finishing fourth in the Atlantic Division, they had been hotter in the latter stages of the regular season than in the autumn. In addition, goaltending prospect Hannu Toivonen had been brushing his minor-league ceiling. On January 14, his home shutout of Bridgeport had sweetened the milestone that was the Spoked-P’s thousandth all-time game. A month later, he pushed a shutout streak to 237:12, fewer than thirteen minutes shy of an AHL record.

In all, Toivonen had put in fifty-four appearances, posted seven shutouts and retained a 2.05 goals-against average and .932 save percentage. Sustaining that stinginess would be crucial for the first-round date with the Manchester Monarchs, the top seed in the division and conference and the second highest-scoring squadron in the AHL. The top guns for the L.A. Kings affiliate included Mike Cammalleri, Tom Kostopolous and future two-time Stanley Cup-winning captain Dustin Brown. At the backend, the goaltending rotation of Adam Hauser and Mathieu Garon had put together its own radiant resume to follow up on in the playoffs.

But beyond that top troika up front, plus four assists from defenseman Denis Grebeshkov, the Monarchs could not muster much depth against Providence. Toivonen and his skating mates confined Manchester to fourteen goals in six games. At the other end, Monarchs bench boss Bruce Boudreau was twice compelled to make an in-game goaltending switch.

Two-point efforts by Andrew Alberts, Tomas Kurka, Dan LaCouture and Pat Leahy paced Providence to a 5-1 steal in Game 1 at Verizon Wireless Arena, the home of that year’s AHL attendance leaders. With an eventual 1-1 knot to take back home, they obliterated their five-game home playoff winless streak at by doubling up the Monarchs, 6-3, in Game 3. Manchester retorted in Game 4, but four different goal-getters gave Providence another road triumph and a commanding lead in Game 5.

Back at The Dunk, Toivonen kept the desperate visitors’ lead to a single goal through the second intermission, after which Bergeron and Boyes bagged back-to-back tallies, setting the B’s on the path to a door-slamming 3-1 victory.

The longest wait for a playoff series victory in the history of the Providence Bruins fan base had ended at the four-year mark. That mark has since been matched twice, but never eclipsed.

The Atlantic Division final brought on the Lowell Lock Monsters, then the farm club of Peter Laviolette’s Carolina Hurricanes. The lockout had given Lowell many of the same sorts of special pieces on its 2004-05 roster as it had for Providence. Just like Bergeron, forward Eric Staal had played the entire 2003-04 season in The Show as a rookie. With sufficient NHL experience, he was eligible to spend the lockout in the minors, even with a year of major-junior eligibility remaining. Staal was leading another strong strike force that also boasted Chuck Kobasew and Chad Larose.

In net, Toivonen had another toe-to-toe adversary in Cam Ward. The twenty-year-old rookie had retained a 1.99 GAA and .939 save percentage in fifty regular-season games. Within another year, he would win the Conn Smythe Trophy with the Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes, coached by Laviolette and led in scoring by Staal. In addition, the Canes would not go on another playoff run until 2009, a year in which they upset Bergeron and Boston on an overtime goal in Game 7.

But this year was a different narrative. On the road at Tsongas Arena for Game 1, the Bruins persisted even as the Monsters buried 2-2, 3-3 and 4-4 equalizers. While Toivonen and Ward lost their characteristic stinginess for the night, Bergeron and Boyes joined Keith Aucoin (playmaker hat trick) in Providence’s multi-point club. With sixty-eight seconds to spare in regulation, Boyes set up David Gove for the team’s fourth and permanent go-ahead strike.

As in the opening series, the P-Bruins dropped Game 2, but amidst a scheduling oddity that saw them play a third straight tilt in Lowell, they nabbed a 4-1 decision and a 2-1 series lead to take home for two or, if necessary, three games.

Two would suffice, as Aucoin struck in overtime for a 3-2 squeaker and Andy Hilbert charged up his third four-point performance of the playoffs in the 5-2 clincher.

Rhode Island puckheads, who had agonized in watching the parent club build up and break down at the hands of the upset-minded Canadiens in 2002 and 2004, could not have asked for a better change of pace. Here they were watching bona fide Boston-caliber talents in Bergeron, Boyes, Hilbert and Toivonen in person, all against equivalent clusters of NHL-ready players. And they were getting extensions on this arrangement with every handshake line on the Dunkin Donuts Center ice.

One more of these, and the year without a parent club would have been the first year with a Calder Cup Final ticket since 1999. The next adversary from Philadelphia boasted such would-be Flyers rookies as R.J. Umberger, Patrick Sharp and Randy Jones. For their playoff run, the Philadelphia Phantoms added two twenty-year-old prodigies in Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, both of whom had just finished their final major-junior seasons. The blue-line brigade also boasted a third-year pro named Dennis Seidenberg while Toivonen’s counterpart, Finnish countryman Antero Niittymaki, constituted yet another formidable fortress in the cage.

The Phantoms, who ordinarily played in the old Spectrum next door, borrowed the temporarily unused Flyers facility, the First Union Center, for their 2005 playoff run. For the first two games of the Eastern Conference final, they fulfilled the notion of home-ice advantage. Niittymaki bested Toivonen on back-to-back nights en route to 4-2 and 3-0 victories. He carried over his shutout streak to the first two-plus periods of Game 3 back in Providence before the P-Bruins perked up via Aucoin with 6:54 to spare in regulation. In the ensuing overtime, the ever-reliable Boyes averted a harrowing pothole and put the B’s back in the series.

Philadelphia retorted with an identical 2-1 victory, rendering Game 5 at The Dunk the first elimination situation of the season for Gordon’s pupils. But on the heels of two favorable handshakes at home, the Bruins were not about to sour the special season in front of their own supporters. They chased Niittymaki with a four-goal outburst from four different strikers, then caught a second win after the Phantoms deleted a 4-1 deficit. Boyes’ go-ahead tally against veteran backup Neil Little with seventy seconds left in the third period help up as the decider in a 6-4 thriller.

But back in his new place of employment, young Carter, who would finish the playoffs with a team-leading twelve goals and twenty-three points, stole the show. He fed Ryan Ready for Game 6’s early icebreaker, buried a power-play conversion in the thirteenth minute of play and then set up Sharp early in the closing frame to finalize a 4-1 knockout.

By silencing Bergeron, Boyes and Hilbert on their second closeout attempt, the Phantoms also ended those three forwards’ respective tenures in Providence. Hilbert’s rights transferred to the Chicago Blackhawks organization that offseason. Bergeron surprised no one by playing another full season in the NHL when it restored normalcy in time for 2005-06. He would lead the big club with thirty-one goals and seventy-three points that season. Boyes likewise graduated and played in all eighty-two games for Boston, finishing second on the team’s production leaderboard.

Toivonen would eventually return to Providence for twenty-seven games in 2006-07, but spent the entire preceding season in Boston. Meanwhile, the two remaining forwards who shined in the Ocean State during the lockout seized their moments when the late-November 2005 trade of Joe Thornton to San Jose necessitated new blood at the franchise’s forefront. Bergeron and Boyes, despite a lack of a playoff-caliber supporting cast, had stepped up without delay. They were able to do so, in no small part, because of the elevated caliber of AHL competition they helped to create and took advantage of for the whole 2004-05 regular season, plus six bonus weeks of playoff action.

As professionals, their stardom had started here, all for the viewing pleasure of puck-starved Providence fans.

 *****

Bergeron was arguably the face of the black-and-gold family by the time the NHL went into sleep mode yet again in 2012. While no prospects with quite as much Boston seasoning (save for the underachieving and underwhelming Jordan Caron) was bound for Providence for this work stoppage, there were plenty of personalities packing intrigue. A pair of Ontario League products, Jared Knight and Ryan Spooner, were finally eligible for full-time AHL action two years after the former came via one of the draft picks Boston obtained in the Phil Kessel blockbuster swap with Toronto.

A more recent trade with Washington brought in AHL veteran Chris Bourque, the son of the most revered captain in Boston Bruins history, Ray Bourque. Another transaction brought in another seasoned forward with a famous father in Christian Hanson. Christian’s dad, Dave Hanson, had starred as one of the Hanson brothers in Slap Shot and played for the Rhode Island Reds in their final year of operation at the Civic Center.

On the backend, Torey Krug had logged two games with the parent club late in the 2011-12 regular season after giving up his senior season at Michigan State. There was also Swedish goaltending import Niklas Svedberg, a mystery candidate to join Tuukka Rask in the effort to replace Tim Thomas, who months before the lockout had announced he would forego the full 2012-13 season.

With all of the imports, plus a cluster of key returnees, second-year head coach Bruce Cassidy entered the autumn with more Bruins fans and media eyeing his club than normal. Opening night drew a generous audience of 10,665 and the second home game two weeks later notched 9,065 ticket sales. But an erratic start in the win column likely put a dent in fan interest.

As the lockout dragged on, the Baby B’s failed to get to a .500 record until December 1. Even as they built their first substantial win streak over the subsequent two weeks, the reigning Super Bowl runner-up Patriots were largely sufficing as a diversion on the New England sports scene.

Still, those who paid attention got some glimpses of promise. Svedberg was drawing stylistic comparisons to Thomas in the crease. Spooner was producing consistently up front, ultimately finishing with a team-high forty assists and fifty-seven points. By January 6, Bourque had twenty-eight points through thirty-two appearances, making him a credible candidate for promotion as the NHL returned in time for the same four-month, forty-eight-game slate as in 1995.

Before Boston’s regular-season opener, though, it tuned up its hastily assembled roster by hosting the P-Bruins for its lone preseason tilt on Tuesday, January 14 at the TD Garden. For Rhode Island’s multisport enthusiasts, the arrangement evoked fond memories from when the PawSox used to scrimmage the Boston Red Sox in an “alumni game” every spring at McCoy Stadium. It also remains the only time the P-Bruins have played in their parents’ house.

A sellout audience came to the Garden with free tickets while home viewers watched a live stream online. None other than former P-Bruins radio voice Dave Goucher and former Baby B’s blueliner Bob Beers, entering their twelfth season as the big club’s radio tandem, called the action for the stream.

Save for a couple of personnel swaps, including Bourque on Boston and Anton Khudobin’s return to a Providence jersey, Cassidy’s roster was largely unruffled. His nicely gelled team’s midseason form, in contrast to Claude Julien’s team that had either been scattered overseas or not playing at all for three extra months, translated to a strange 7-5 win for the AHL team.

Springfield-based reporter Amanda Bruno summed up the takeaway as follows for Mass Live: “Yes, the Bruins played an AHL team who looked overmatched just days ago in a 4-2 loss against our Springfield Falcons last Saturday at the MassMutal Center, but it doesn’t mean to dive into panic mode. There are 29 other NHL teams who are likely in the same boat.”

Indeed, four nights later, Khudobin took his long-presumptive spot on the Boston bench while Bourque suited up for a 3-1 victory over the New York Rangers, who had not so much as scrimmaged the Connecticut Whale. But even without Bourque for the better part of the second half, the P-Bruins still had the veteran presence of Hanson, defenseman Garnet Exelby and returning forwards Jamie Tardif and Trent Whitfield. They, along with the steadily improving Krug, Spooner, Svedberg and other youth, continued to draw healthy audiences without the circumstantial benefit of being the abandoned Boston fan base’s best recourse.

Cassidy’s capstone class would draw three more single-game audiences of more than 10,000 en route to the AHL’s best regular-season record in 2012-13. And by the end of Boston’s run to the Stanley Cup Final, Krug had graduated to The Show, as would Svedberg the next fall.