The Boston Bruins need look no further than Tyler Seguin’s statistics in the 2013 NHL playoffs if they want to justify trading him to the Dallas Stars. Seguin scored only one goal and tallied seven assists in 22 postseason games. That brought his total to six goals in 42 career playoff games with the team. And this guy is supposed to be a scorer.
However, the more we hear about Thursday’s blockbuster trade, the more it sounds like the move was as much about off-ice behavior as it was on-ice performance. Joe Haggerty of CSNNE.com reported on Friday that the 21-year-old had been spending way too much time partying. During last weekend’s NHL Draft, Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli said Seguin “needs to become a better professional.” What prompted that?
For starters, Seguin reportedly had too many instances of late-night partying during the regular season after signing a six-year, $34 million extension with Boston. Then there was the first round of the playoffs in Toronto, when Seguin is said to have been out late partying in his home town of Toronto. According to Haggerty, he was confronted by members of the organization when he showed up at the Air Canada Centre wearing the same clothes for three-straight days. Seguin played particularly poorly in Games 3 and 4 of that series.
On Thursday, Chiarelli downplayed the influence of Seguin’s off-ice behavior in the decision to trade him.
“I don’t want to really play [the maturation thing] up too much,” he said. “He’s a 21-year-old that played as an 18-year-old, and I think he was just a 21-year-old kid. He was maturing and growing up. He liked to have fun like the rest of them,” said Chiarelli. “I don’t really think it was such a big deal. But when I said earlier about focus, [it was] just about little things, about preparing to play. It was nothing about extracurricular activities.”
Perhaps this will be the wake-up call Seguin needs to start meeting expectations. He’s a natural center, so it may have hurt his growth that the Bruins used him as a winger. Boston also plays a style of hockey that is more defensive, so it’s no surprise a pure finesse player like Seguin didn’t thrive in Claude Julien’s system. On paper, it looks like a change will be beneficial for both sides.
