Boston Bruins: Milan Lucic Needs To Show Toughness in Better Manners, Doses

The return of the Milan Lucic who has swiftly endeared himself to the Boston Bruins’ blue-collar, bare-knuckle fan base was the good and the bad news of Tuesday night’s 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.

On the one hand, Lucic had a season-high six body checks, swelling his collection in the young 2011-12 season to 14. On the other hand, that was also his penalty-minute total at night’s end after he had only one minor infraction in the first five games. And his physicality didn’t exactly afford him many looks at the Carolina cage.

In other words, the Lucic who added another layer to his persona with a team-best 30 goals and 62 points last season is still absent. And part of the reason it failed to reemerge last night may have been because it was suppressed by the penalty-prone Lucic.

When they fell behind on Tuesday, the Bruins seemingly tried to brew up the same spicy stimulants from their last two home dates with the Dallas Stars. Instead, they evoked memories of the failed “revenge game” against Pittsburgh back in March 2010.

Lucic’s transcript practically personified it all. The established top-six forward was one of only three Boston skaters who went the whole night without a shot on goal. The others were fourth-liner Shawn Thornton and unripe defenseman Matt Bartkowski.

Before he was flagged for roughing with 9:30 to spare in the third period and later slapped with a 10-minute misconduct, Lucic may have escaped another penalty when Zdeno Chara and Tuukka Rask crossed the line in the second period.

Lucic’s role in both the 14:19 mark of the middle frame and 10:30 of the final stanza were visually fraternal. During the first dustup in the right corner of the Carolina zone and the second scrum along the Hurricanes’ bench, he wound up helmetless as he was trying to mix it up with two white sweaters at once.

Only in the latter case was he sent to the box to serve his own sentence. But he also could have joined Chara, Horton and Rask in the penalty column instead of merely serving Rask’s time late in the second.

Was Lucic’s rough stuff Tuesday night too much, too late? Hardly too late, seeing as there are 76 regular season outings yet to come. But it was certainly too much at a time with too little forethought and probably too much incentive to perk up himself and his team.

Whether it is solely a personal case of Stanley Cup hangover or other factors, Lucic has not dished out much of his defining, energized self on the dasherboards or the scoreboard.

In fact, leading up to Wednesday night, he was off the single slowest start in his five-year NHL career in every key category. He had thrown eight hits and mustered one point over the first five games.

Even at the start of his rookie year, when he was still wearing No. 62 and receiving less than 10 minutes of ice time a night, Lucic made a greater early impact. As the 2007-08 Bruins got off to a surprise 3-2-0 start, he had a goal and an assist in an 8-6 barnburner over Los Angeles along with nine hits over five outings.

The next season, he had three points and 14 hits in the first five outings. He upped his hit count to 17 in the sixth game, dropped a pane of glass at the TD Garden to shards in the seventh and tallied a hat trick in the eighth.

At this time in 2009-10, Lucic had thrown 14 hits and set up three goals. Last year, in a runaway career year, he started with a five-game point-scoring streak and 15 body-checks in the first six games.

And while he still has yet to tune the mesh so far this year, Lucic had taken three shots in each of the previous three games prior to Carolina’s visit. He and his linemates, Horton and Tyler Seguin, made good out of playing nearly one-third of last Saturday’s 3-2 win at Chicago. They had combined for eight shots, four hits, a goal, an assist and a shootout clincher.

Against the Hurricanes, Lucic would have been better off trying to build upon that game by finally hatching the goose-egg in his goal column. Sometime in the wake of Joni Pitkanen spotting Carolina 2-0 lead at the halfway mark of regulation would have been perfect.

Instead, at the sight of a scrum less than five minutes after Pitkanen’s goal, Lucic joined Chara, Horton and Rask in unleashing his ruffian side. In turn, the Bruins effectively delayed their eventual icebreaker from Rich Peverley and may have ultimately spilled their shot at a comeback when there were still 25 minutes and 49 seconds to work with.

But again, there are now still 76 games to work with. Perhaps the more identifiable Lucic needed to make an ugly re-entrance before he can break his season-opening slump. Maybe it was just an Incredible Hulk-type way of breaking the fetters that are holding back his combination of physicality and scoring prowess.

By the same token, Tuesday’s episode does no long-term good if he doesn’t start scoring soon.