Seemingly every summer now, Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney takes a flyer or two on players in their mid-20s who have been very good in the AHL, but have received limited NHL opportunities from their previous organizations for one reason or another.
Some of those players didn’t really catch on in Boston either (Riley Tufte and Anthony Richard come to mind), but others have been able to break through and carve out roles for themselves with the Bruins (A.J. Greer, Parker Wotherspoon and Cole Koepke serve as recent examples).
Sweeney took two such flyers this summer. In fact, he signed the AHL’s top two goal-scorers from last season in Matej Blumel (39 goals in 67 games for the Texas Stars) and Alex Steeves (36 in 59 for the Toronto Marlies), both of whom are 25.
Both will get legitimate shots during training camp and preseason to make a Bruins team that needs offense, and that has forward spots up for grabs. But it’s Blumel who seems to be drawing a little extra interest early on.
For starters, there was where Blumel lined up Thursday for the Bruins’ first official practice of the season: on a line with Pavel Zacha and Tanner Jeannot. And while it can be a fool’s errand to read too much into line combinations on Day 1 of training camp, there were some interesting comments afterwards from new coach Marco Sturm.
Sturm told reporters that he likes to find “pairs” that work well together that can serve as the foundation of his lines. Once he has those pairs, he can figure out who makes sense as the third member of a certain line. And then he seemed to suggest that the Czech duo of Zacha and Blumel is a pair in which he sees some potential.
“It’s a little bit of a combination of everything,” Sturm began while discussing his line-building. “It could be veterans. It could be young guys. It could be a language thing. Like just for example, Zacha and Blumel. That was me thinking, ‘Oh, they already have good chemistry.’ I think Blumel is a scorer. So, maybe he’d be a good guy for Zacha playing up the middle.”
Again, it’s one practice. Sturm has said multiple times that he’s going to try different line combinations, so none of this means Blumel and Zacha are joined at the hip. But it is notable that one of the first things Sturm wanted to try was putting Blumel with Zacha, an established veteran who is seemingly a lock to be one of the Bruins’ top six forwards. It’s also worth mentioning that Blumel stayed with Zacha for a week before the start of camp and Zacha showed him around Boston.
Blumel is generally not considered a lock to even make the team. While it’s possible he does prove to be an NHL talent who just happened to be buried in a very deep Dallas organization, it’s also possible he’s just the kind of tweener who scores a lot in the AHL but never manages to translate it to the NHL. He had two points in 13 NHL games spread across two seasons in Dallas.
Sturm faced Blumel in the AHL while he was coaching the Ontario Reign. He was impressed by what he saw, and seems excited to get a closer look at Blumel now.
“He’s an interesting guy,” Sturm said of Blumel. “He played in Texas, and we played against him two games. I remember those two games, he’s one of those guys we had to make sure, ‘We gotta cover this guy,’ because he’s such a good shooter and scorer. Especially on the power play, where Leon Draisaitl hangs out, he has that spot [in the right circle]. He was so dangerous, so we really had to pre-scout him.
“Having said that, playing in the NHL, he doesn’t have that 20 minutes a night. So, it’s a totally different game. It’s a totally different style sometimes kids like that have to play. It’s a big change playing seven minutes or 20 minutes. You get way more comfortable. It’s not easy. But he was definitely a threat, and hopefully he’s going to get some opportunities here to feel comfortable and be the player I just saw last season with Texas. Because he has some interesting, a lot of good tools to find the back of the net.”
That’s all Blumel wants: Opportunity. Yes, one reason he signed with Boston was that he already knew fellow Czech David Pastrnak, having played with him at the World Championships in 2022. But another was that he and his agent, J.P. Barry (who is also Pastrnak’s agent), identified the Bruins as a team where he would have a better shot at NHL playing time than he had in Dallas.
“I was in Dallas for three years, and I feel like I did everything I could to earn a spot on the team, and it didn’t go my way,” Blumel said Thursday. “That’s sometimes how it goes. Me and my agent were just looking for a team where I could fit in and where I feel like I have the best chance to get into the NHL and earn a spot on the team.”