TAMPA, Fla. – In a very short manner of time, Claude Julien has gained the ultimate trust in the defensemen pairing of 19-year-old Brandon Carlo and 39-year-old Zdeno Chara.
It’s really no surprise for Chara as he’s been a defensive tower of power playing at the end of tight Bruins games for the past decade. He continued to do so in the past couple of season even as he began to show his age a bit on the ice. But this is all new for the rookie D-man Carlo, who has acted as eager student paired with Chara while also undoubtedly helping the Bruins captain off to his best start in the past three years with the Black and Gold.
Carlo and Chara played the final three plus minutes to close out a one-goal win over the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, and that included a furious 6-on-4 blitz by the Panthers in the closing minutes as they tried to send things to overtime.
It was the Chara/Carlo shutdown pair again on the ice at crunch time with the Bruins hanging on for overtime in the third period Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning. With a vacant net behind him, Carlo actually blocked a Nikita Kucherov fluttering shot - that would have been a sure goal - with his jaw in the closing minutes of the third. Without that fearless, clutch defense play from the young D-man, the Bruins don’t even gain a single point, never mind the two points they picked up in the 4-3 shootout win.
“Luckily, [Kucherov] flubbed on it and it didn’t hit me that hard, but I got in the shot lane and glad I didn’t let that puck get past me. There was that guy on the backdoor with [Steven] Stamkos walking in from the slot, so that backdoor guy was my responsibility. I‘m glad I got it,” said Carlo, who also scored the game’s first goal and has two goals and three points along with a plus-9 in the first 10 games of his NHL career. “I just try to stay composed and do my job, and take away as many sticks as I can. Tuukka [Rask] has been phenomenal for us, and he makes me a little calmer out there because I know he’s going to make the big save.”
Playing with a talented young partner who has shown plenty of willingness to learn and absorb lessons from each new situation on the ice, it’s clearly energized Chara, a player who didn’t need any motivation to protect leads.
“I love it. The more I’m out there, I feel better. I’ve always been a big fan of playing whatever the team needs: sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less. But that’s always what I train for, and I always enjoy and take a lot of pride in my fitness. I have a lot of passion for that. So, those are the times and minutes I enjoy being on the ice and battling, and you have such a good feeling after the game. Those are the moments you’ll never forget when you leave it all out there, and then you see the smiles [after a win],” said Chara, who has a goal and three points along with a plus-9 in 10 games while averaging a team-high 23:50 of ice time. “You hear a lot of good things [about Carlo] prior to the beginning of the season from last year with him finishing the season in Providence. I think everybody can be really pleased with the way [Carlo] is playing. He’s handling a lot of new situations and challenging situations extremely well. We just have to keep working on things and keep getting better.”
Boston Bruins
Chara said one of Carlo’s underrated skills has been the willingness to ask questions and pick the veteran’s brain about opponents and their tendencies. That sharing of knowledge has created a strong bond veteran grizzled veteran and fresh-faced rookie. The results certainly can’t be argued as they’ve been Boston’s most effective D-pair thus far this season, and it isn’t even close for second place.
The challenge now becomes for the B’s other defensemen pairings to start warranting those clutch shifts at the end of close games and perhaps give the two blue-line workhorses a rest as Chara and Carlo go about doing much of the heavy lifting for the Black and Gold.