head coach: Pat Burns

roster: C - Anson Carter, Dimitri Khristich, Joe Thornton, Ted Donato, Tim Taylor, Shawn Bates, Robert Lang. LW - Ken Baumgartner, Rob Dimaio, Sergei Samsonov, Jason Allison, Mike Sullivan. RW - Steve Heinze, Landon Wilson, Per Johan Axelsson. D - Ray Bourque, Don Sweeney, Dave Ellett, Kyle McLaren, Dean Chynoweth, Mattias Timander, Dean Malkoc, Hal Gill. G - Byron Dafoe, Jim Carey.

injuries: Joe Thornton, c (fractured forearm, 2 weeks)

transactions: None.

standings:

GP   W   L   T   PTS   GF   GA   HOME      ROAD
 2   1   1   0     2    7    9  1-1-0     0-0-0

game results:

10/02 Los Angeles  W 6-5
10/04 Montreal     L 4-1

team news:

by Matt Brown, Boston Correspondent

Once you get past the black and gold uniforms, the 1997-98 Boston Bruins don't bear much resemblence to the team that finished dead last in the NHL the previous season.

Gone is the unlucky and unpopular Steve Kasper and his coaching cohorts. Kasper never had the horses to make his team a winner, and never had the personality or experience to win with the horses he had.

Back are veterans like Ray Bourque, Don Sweeney, Rob Dimaio, Ted Donato, and thankfully Steve Heinze. But not a lot else from last year's training camp. The team has been totally revamped via trades and the draft, though whether it has been rebuilt yet is a question only the season's play can answer.

Ray Bourque certainly looked like a new man, sporting a longer hairstyle that made him look less like an NHL elder statesman and more like a twenty-something ready to pose with an anemic teenager in a Calvin Klein ad. The guy will still be a hunk at 70. Ray took a decent amount of good natured grief from his teammates, who accused him of trying to look like one of the rookies. In reality, it was nothing radical, no Dennis Rodman-doo, but for Ray Bourque it was positively debonaire. Maybe Ray is trying to look more like his new coach than his old coach.

Pat Burns, who never has a bad hair day, is now the man behind the bench, and once Bruins fans got over the initial shock of seeing the ex-Montreal policeman and former coach of the hated Habs with that Boston Bruins logo behind him at the press conference, people began to say "you know, he always was a Boston kinda guy." Burns immediately reinforced that image by putting a Boston Bruins license plate on his truck, and talking about how great it was to be back in coaching with an original six team.

Some questioned Burns' ability to coach a young team like the Bruins, but that ignores the fact that Pat made his name coaching in junior, not playing, and earned his shot at the Montreal job way back when based exactly on his handling and nurturing of young talent. Burns was the first to admit that the team was very young, saying that he had ties and underwear older than some of his players.

But it was also clear that the new coach connected with both his veterans and his rookies. Time and again players have said that Pat Burns was straight with them about his expectations, and he won the respect and attention of a number of players because he told them straight up when they were not meeting his expectation. Two of the guys he talked to, Jason Allison and Landon Wilson, stepped up their play and made the team in no small part because of Burns' no-nonsense attitude.

Although the team is very young, they don't exactly summon up images of the Hanson brothers playing with slot cars in their hotel room. Then again, put some thick glasses on Joe Thornton, Hal Gill, and Shawn Bates and you never know.

Joe Thornton, of course, is the Bruin's number one draft pick who comes in highly tauted as a goal scorer and playmaker. However, in training camp, he looked like just another big kid out of junior hockey rather than a savior. That isn't bad, really. Better that fans and team expectations are realistic, rather than to expect that one player will instantly turn around the franchise. Look at the disappointment pinned on players like Alexandre Daigle, Alexei Yashin, Radek Bonk, Roman Hamrlik, and others. Heck, it took several years and a couple of quality linemates for Eric Lindros before the Legion of Doom became a dominant line.

There was even some loose talk among the media that Joe would get sent back to junior. We will never know, because of the slash he took in the exhibition season that left him on the injury list. Granted, the Bruins could still play him in ten games and send him back to the Soo, but don't bet any Bruins season tickets on it.

Hal Gill is a long tall defenseman out of Providence College (great school) who has shown remarkable poise and play throughout camp. Gill, scraping the locker room ceiling at six feet seven inches, gives the Bruins a massive bookend to go along with Kyle McLaren, and as a contrast to several compact defensemen like Don Sweeney, who are built tough, but are a little lacking in the reach department. Gill, by contrast, can drape himself around an opposing forward with arm length to spare.

Shawn Bates is this year's local boy who made good. Bates starred at Boston University, and while he suffered a setback in training camp, he came on at the end to earn a spot on the club. Bates kept the Cinderella story alive by scoring a goal in his first game, a 6-5 win over the LA Kings. Gotta love it.

The biggest surprise in camp, once you got past Ray Bourque's new hairstyle, was P. J. Axelsson. Now, PJ is a common nickname around Boston, but it isn't usually short for Per-Johan. Axelsson came to Boston from the Swedish team Frolunda (whatever that means) via the draft, and immediately impressed everyone with his speed, savvy, and toughness. Axelsson is playing with Ken Baumgartner and Rob Dimaio, and though he has not earned an assist yet, his hustle in breaking up plays is one of the reasons Dimaio has scored in each game so far.

Nowhere near as surprising, but certainly more breathtaking, is Russian rookie Sergei Samsonov. You haven't seen quick until you've seen this guy. Samsonov may be small, but he is built like several past Bruin sparkplugs, like Randy Burridge (nicknamed "Stump") and Stan Jonathan. But Samsonov is several gears faster, and his stickhandling is magical. He also has that unexplainable knack for being in the right place at the right time with a very quick wrist shot. There is some question of whether he can weasel his way through NHL style traffic, but his experience last year in the IHL with the Detroit Vipers puts him several steps ahead of other rookies. He could be rookie of the year material if he can stay healthy.

But overall, probably the best sight for Bruins fans was the return, apparently healthy and ready to rock, of Steve Heinze. Steve was the Bruins leading scorer, and fifth in the league in goals when he was felled by a vicious hip check from nefarious Darius (Kasparaitis) last season. Steve seems to be back fully, though he had a scare in the pre-season intrasquad scrimmage when he did an involuntary split in front of the net. Steve put the exclamation point on his return by scoring the Bruins first goal of the regular season against the Kings, much to the joy of the fans at the Fleet.

The Bruins eked out a 6-5 win over the Kings, due in part to goaltender Bryon Dafoe's last minute mask save of a shot dead on in front with less than a minute left. Dafoe looked a little shakey playing against his old mates, as partner Jim Carey looked against the Montreal Canadiens two nights later. The Bruins were handed a 4-1 whupping at the hands of the Habs, and you have to wonder how much of that 4.50 GAA is goaltending and how much is defensive inexperience (which, of course, is better than last year's just plain bad team defense, but probably not improved enough for Pat Burns).

And of course, leave it to Bruins management to raise ticket prices just enough to make the Bruins the second most expensive average ticket in the NHL, ensuring that the opening game set a Fleetcenter record - for fewest fans at a first home game. What will they think of next - charging us to say the name "Boston Bruins?" ("I'm sorry, your call will cost another 50 cents for the next three mentions of the Bruins") It brings back memories from a few years ago and the dispute for "air rights" over the Fleetcenter between Bruin's owners Delaware North and the Boston politicians. You might have thought they were fighting to see who could charge Bruins fans to breathe.

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