Nobody is sure whether the NHL can resume and complete a 2019-20 season paused since March 12 by the coronavirus pandemic.
If the league can start up, nobody knows when or where it will be safe to play games.
Everyone in the league is in that boat, but Jake DeBrusk has a little space carved out for himself: The Bruins' third-year winger also doesn't know where he'll fit in the lineup if play resumes.
“Wherever I can help the team is [...]
Nobody is sure whether the NHL can resume and complete a 2019-20 season paused since March 12 by the coronavirus pandemic.
If the league can start up, nobody knows when or where it will be safe to play games.
Everyone in the league is in that boat, but Jake DeBrusk has a little space carved out for himself: The Bruins' third-year winger also doesn't know where he'll fit in the lineup if play resumes.
“Wherever I can help the team is wherever I go, I guess,” the 23-year-old winger said from Edmonton on Wednesday in a video conference with local reporters. “I do believe I can kind of shuffle around.”
Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, out of a mix of necessity and curiosity, was in the process of finding out where DeBrusk could play besides where he'd almost always played in his first two NHL seasons — left wing, on a line with veteran center David Krejci.
DeBrusk wasn't on that line or at that position when the B's played their last game, a 2-0 victory over the host Flyers that solidified the Bruins' hold on first place overall in the NHL with 12 games left on their regular-season schedule. He was playing right wing on a line centered by No. 3 center Charlie Coyle, with Sean Kuraly bumped up from the fourth line to play left wing.
Cassidy has tinkered for the sake of tinkering in the past, but not this time: The coach wanted to see if recently-acquired Ducks wingers Ondřej Kaše and Nick Ritchie could bring instant chemistry to a line with Krejci, and it wasn't hard to move DeBrusk, who was in a terrible slump at the time: He scored only one goal with no assists in the last 14 games before the league went on hiatus.
Stretches like that have marked an otherwise positive start to DeBrusk's career. So have hot streaks. He entered the 2019-20 season hoping to exit that roller coaster, and is disappointed that he has not.
“To be honest with you, I don't know if I really had a consistent stretch this year,” said DeBrusk, who sits fourth on the team with 19 goals through 65 games. “That's frustrating to say. I don't think I'll necessarily have the year I did [last] year — production-wise and overall game. It wasn't necessarily where I wanted it to be.”
DeBrusk, who jumped from 16 goals as a rookie in 2017-18 to 27 a year ago, is trying to use the unexpected break in the season to reset himself when, where or if the NHL can return. And he has an in-house adviser: His father, Louie DeBrusk, played 401 NHL games and is currently an analyst on Hockey Night in Canada telecasts.
“I have watched my games — kind of took a step back and looked at my whole year,” DeBrusk said. “Being back home, my Dad has kind of been all over me about it, so I've been kind of thinking about it a little more than usual.
“I think it's almost a blessing to have this time, because I have had to take a step back and understand what kind of player I want to be in this league, and what kind of player I can be.”
Although a Ritchie-Krejci-Kaše line was by no means etched in stone at the time of the pause, DeBrusk thinks there's a chance he can be the player he wants to be if he plays with Coyle, the Weymouth, Mass., native who was playing some of his best hockey of the season when the schedule was suspended: After putting up 7-13—20 numbers over 41 games in the first half, Coyle was already at 9-8—17 through the first 29 games of the second half.
“I played with Charlie to start the year off [Krejci was injured], and he's been on my right wing at times with Krejci, too, so I've played with him a little bit more than I did last year,” DeBrusk said . “I definitely feel more comfortable there than I normally would.
“I went back to the right side, which I hadn't done since last year, but the last game, last couple of games, I felt that was the best we were playing together. We were building that chemistry.”
Whether to develop more chemistry with Coyle or rediscover chemistry with Krejci (“both are good options, obviously,” DeBrusk said), DeBrusk mostly hopes for a chance to return to whatever version of 2019-20 the NHL can come up with.
“I guess the whys and the hows are up in the air,” he said, “but we want to play. We obviously had a good season, with a good group of guys, and we want to continue that.”