Bruins Get More Experience

With an average roster age of 25 the Boston Bruins are one of the youngest teams in the league. It had become apparent in the past week that inexperience has caught up with the club as they could not close the gap on the Ottawa Senators and lost back to back games to their division rivals the Montreal Canadians.

While maintaining his commitment to the long term success of the organization, GM Valente found an unlikely trading partner in the Montreal Canadians by moving Ilya Kovalchuk for Andrei Kostitsyn, Jaden Schwartz and a 2^nd round pick in 2011.

“Moving an elite goal scorer like Ilya is hard enough - let alone to your divisional rivals, with that said we felt we received fair value for him and a player we know in Andrei along with a player we have been scouting for sometime in Jaden.”

Shortly after Bruins pulled the trigger on another involving Phoenix in a 3 for 2 swap. The deal gave the organization a legitimate 2^nd line center. “We are going to look for Ribeiro to generate some secondary scoring to help take some pressure off the kids.” Boston also picked up Justin Schultz in the deal which saw Theo Peckham, Darren Helm and Kevin Sundher sent to Phoenix.

After working the phones for days GM Valente was able to bring in some much needed experience to help stabilize a young blue line.

With the arrival of Mike Riberio the Bruins acquired truculent defensemen Brooks Orpik for Saku Koivu. David Jones and recently acquired Carl Gunnarsson were sent to Los Angeles for defensemen Mark Streit and prospect Carl Klingburg.

When asked about the flurry of activity and what it meant for the organization, Valente had this to say, “We have a young nucleus of players, if we can continue to enhance the competitiveness of our organization while adding quality prospects we see it as a win-win. We want to create an atmosphere that our young nucleus of players can succeed and develop in”

With the recent additions of veterans Mike Ribeiro, Mark Streit, Brooks Orpik and Andrei Kostitsyn the Bruin hope their leadership and experience can help elevate their game to the next level.

Rumor Mill: Though GM Valente has indicated his is happy with his recent additions to the back end but will continue to look to solidify the starting lineup. There are rumors that GM Valente has been looking to acquire additional forwards and has 22 year old Michael Neuvurith among other forwards on the block.