HockeyBruins, Leafs heading in different directions

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Bruins centre Marc Savard returned to action against the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday night. (Elsa/Getty Images)

Read up on the latest tidbits and trends as Hockey Night in Canada's play-by-play voice Jim Hughson takes you behind the scenes and into Saturday's featured game.

This week's work: Boston Bruins at Toronto Maple Leafs (CBC, CBCSports.ca, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT).

The script:

The Boston Bruins are close to being healthy again. Good thing, too, because getting there looked like it was making some of them sick.

As Marc Savard neared his return from his concussion problems and Marco Sturm recovered from knee surgery, the Bruins' play slipped. They lost four of five games, perhaps in anticipation of the moves that would be needed to get a pair of top-six players back on the roster.

It's incongruous for a coach to ask players to sacrifice for each other and play as a team, when everyone knows a player, or players, is about to be voted off the island to make room for those returning.

Probably recognizing the disruptive nature of the situation, G.M. Peter Chiarelli acted quickly this week to clear everyone's mind. He dispatched Matt Hunwick to Colorado in an effort to make room for Savard. He then seemed to trade Sturm to Los Angeles, only to have the deal abruptly halted.

Even though that deal is in limbo the players know what direction the Bruins are going. The team is now pretty much set and it showed in an 8-1 drubbing of Tampa Bay on Thursday night.

That Michael Ryder, who was the subject of daily trade or demotion rumours, had a goal and two assists on the day the deals were complete probably wasn't coincidence.

The Bruins should be one of the best in the Eastern Conference, and maybe now they'll really start to show it.

In the spotlight:

The Bruins are seen as Cup contenders because they've built a team with strength up the middle. They have solid goaltending, a star defenceman ( Zdeno Chara) and depth at the centre ice position. Savard, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci and Gregory Campbell give the Bruins 26 years and 1,810 games of experience at centre.

Contrast that to the Leafs, who have two years and 302 games of experience up the middle. The numbers change little when you add Phil Kessel or Tim Brent at centre.

Savard, who is similar in size to the Leafs' top pivots, was in the league for almost eight seasons before he got a shot at being No. 1 in Atlanta.

The position requires strength, savvy and experience - attributes the Leafs just don't have.

On the hot stove:

The NHL's collective bargaining agreement has taken from the fans a favourite pastime - the trade rumour - and from general managers a tool to help their team: the trade.

If it's not dollar-for-dollar, or a cash dump, the trade seldom happens - and the Leafs aren't the only team that might like to shake things up, but teams simply can't get anything done. Ottawa and Calgary are in the same boat, listing badly with few options to right the ship.

Right or wrong that puts coaches on the hot seat.

Guaranteed Leafs GM Brian Burke has considered his options and checked out who's available and who would take the job. If the latest free fall continues and he can't somehow engineer a deal or two to take the heat off, then changing coaches soon becomes the only option.

Outakes:

For those keeping score Tyler Seguin has now outscored Phil Kessel 1-0 in the Boston-Toronto series.

Seguin scored in Boston's 2-0 win earlier this season while Kessel was held off the scoreboard for the seventh straight game against his old team.

Kessel has one assist and is a -5 with 25 shots against the Bruins, but more pressing is that he has but one goal in the last six games on 26 shots for a team that has now been shutout six times.

Savard made his season debut to a standing ovation Thursday against Tampa. He didn't get a point in the 8-1 win while playing on a line with Ryder and Seguin, but went into traffic and looked like his old self in almost 16 minutes on ice.

From the stat pack:

The Leafs have been shutout six times in 24 games, a dubious pace that would see them blanked 20 times this season. The NHL record for being shutout is 20, held firmly since 1929 by the Chicago Blackhawks.

Toronto's scoring pace would see the it get 175 goals this season, which would be only the second time in 45 years the team would score less than 200.

Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas, meanwhile, has shutout opponents five times already. The Bruins' record for shutouts is held by Harry Winkler, who had 15 in the 1927-28 season.

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