At 9:30 a.m. Monday morning, the Boston Bruins announced that James Hagens and Will Moore, their top two picks in this weekend’s NHL Draft, would not be on the ice for Day 1 of development camp due to travel delays. Twenty minutes later, Hagens and Moore jumped on the ice with 14 other forwards for what turned out to be a nearly 90-minute practice session at Warrior Ice Arena.
The team wasn’t lying, at least not intentionally. Hagens and Moore did have travel delays – plural. They had two flights from Los Angeles, where they were for the draft, to Boston canceled before finally catching a late Sunday night flight. They didn’t get to their hotel room until 4 a.m. Monday morning.
They still reported to Warrior for physical testing at 7 a.m. And then the Bruins gave them permission to skip Monday’s practice and get some much-needed rest. Someone passed along that message to the Bruins’ media relations staff, and out went the announcement.
The only problem was that Hagens and Moore, who could be teammates at Boston College this season, had other ideas.
“When you have a chance to put on the Bruin jersey, you can’t say no,” Hagens told reporters after practice. “It doesn’t matter what flight delay or how much sleep you get. This is a dream come true, and it’s the first time you’re able to put on the jersey. You’d have to cut off my leg to tell me I couldn’t get on that ice.”
“You’d have to cut off my leg.” You want to know how you win over Boston fans after getting drafted by one of their teams? With quotes like that.
Of course, there will ultimately be a lot more to it than that. Hagens has to perform. He has to be a difference-maker – not right away, but ideally in a year or two. There is a lot riding on him as the seventh overall pick, the Bruins’ highest draft pick in 15 years. Boston fans and the Bruins organization are understandably having dreams about him being their first-line center of the future, that prized commodity the team hasn’t been able to find since Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci retired.
It’s pressure that Hagens is embracing.
“It comes as a lot of pride, a lot of honor to be a part of something like this,” Hagens said. “To be able to even get picked and to say you’re picked by the Boston Bruins, it’s something that doesn’t really hit you until you’re up on that stage. It’s going to come with a lot of hard work. I know how hard it’s gonna be. It’s a big step. I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to give everything I possibly have to this team, to the organization, to the fanbase. I’m just excited to get it going.”
Of course, while Bruins fans who didn’t follow BC last year may be meeting Hagens for the first time, the organization was already quite familiar with him prior to this weekend. They saw him a lot while watching fellow Bruins prospects Dean Letourneau, Oskar Jellvik and Andre Gasseau play for the Eagles. As the season went on and it became clearer that the Bruins were going to have a pretty high draft pick, they honed in on getting to know Hagens as a prospect. They talked to him numerous times throughout the pre-draft process.
Nonetheless, they too were impressed by Hagens and Moore’s refusal to stay off the ice Monday.
“It says a lot,” said Adam McQuaid, the Bruins’ player development coordinator. “They were given the option. I came down and told them, and they were like, ‘We want to go on.’ Really tough few days with the travel. … It’s promising. Good sign.”
On the ice, Hagens impressed too. While it can be a fool’s errand to read too much into one day of development camp, Hagens’ skating and skill with the puck on his stick were noticeable, just as they are pretty much any time you watch him play.
“He didn’t seem to miss a beat after going through a busy couple days,” McQuaid said. “You can tell how smooth he is out there, and confident with the puck. Looking forward to getting to know him more as a person. It seems like he’s excited to be out there. He came down one end and got to shoot and it was like, ‘All right, here we go.’ Driven to score some goals. So yeah, it was a great first day and great first impression, on and off the ice.”
They say you only get one chance to make those first impressions. Hagens took advantage of his Monday.