Boston Bruins: The 15 Biggest Hitters in Franchise History

It is no accident that the Dropkick Murphys place equal emphasis on scoring as they do on hitting in the chorus of their Boston Bruins-themed song, “Time To Go.”

“Light the lamp, throw a hit, Black and Gold never quit.”

America’s oldest NHL franchise has consistently prided itself on a noticeable element of physicality. Ditto its blue-collar fan base.

And odds are it is just as challenging to whittle down a roster of the Bruins’ top 15 all-time body-checkers as it would be to beat any of them in a scrum for the puck. But here is one author’s best attempt at the former task.

15., 14. and 13. Derek Sanderson, Don Marcotte and Ed Westfall

This whole trinity constituted the go-to checking-line that helped the Bruins to two Stanley Cup championships in 1970 and 1972. And it is just as tough to try to put them in separate slides as it is to have imagined them broken up during that glamorous era of Boston hockey.

12. Milan Lucic

As early as he still is in his career, it is impossible to ignore Lucic’s impact on open ice and all corners and sides of the boards.

Already this season, the power forward trails three defensemen for the team lead with 23 registered body-checks and he led all Bruins with 167 hits last year. The year prior, he placed third on Boston’s belting leaderboard with 141 checks despite missing 32 games.

11. Ray Bourque

Bourque’s unsurpassed sturdiness made his presence all the more devastating for the duration of his 22-year NHL career. Throughout each of his cumulative 1,698 regular-season and playoff appearances with the Bruins and right up to Game 7 of the 2001 Stanley Cup finals with Colorado, Bourque was perilous to puck-carriers.

10. Mike Milbury

Milbury is just as tough and inclined to go over the top in his more protracted career as a commentator as he was during his 12 years of grinding with the Bruins in the 1970s and 1980s. When he wasn’t brawling with opposing players (or fans, in one particular case) he was bringing the hard-nosed traits of “Old Time Hockey” to life just as the movie Slap Shot was hitting the mainstream of the sport’s fan base.

9. Stan Jonathan

Seen as an invaluable additive to Don Cherry’s blue-collar bunch of the late 1970s, Jonathan compensated for his size with toughness and grit that might as well have single-handedly elevated his weight from 175 to 215 pounds.

8. John Wensink

Over 248 career games with the Bruins, Wensick scored a decent 57 goals and 55 assists to balance out his pugilistic tendencies.

Moreover, his cumulative plus/minus in Boston was a plus-55, a telling reward for his physical proficiency on the defensive front.

7. Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg

The towering captain of five-plus seasons turned in a peak performance in June 2011 when he stifled the Vancouver Canucks’ tag team of Daniel and Henrik Sedin in a victorious, seven-game battle for the Stanley Cup.

His partner’s role in that title run should not be overlooked, either. Cumulative hit counts are only readily available from the last two seasons and it is worth noting that in both 2009-10 and 2010-11, Seidenberg’s bushel of bodychecks have actually surpassed Chara’s.

Two seasons ago, between Florida and Boston, the German blueliner landed 166 hits, 15 more than the Slovak captain. Last year, in his first full campaign as a Bruin, Seidenberg outhit Chara by a tally of 161 to 153.

6. Wayne Cashman

Cashman was a productive plumber, battling for the puck in the corners, often winning those scrums and then using the biscuit to add to his goal or assist totals.

Out of 15 full seasons that spanned the full breadth of Bobby Orr’s Boston tenure and Ray Bourque’s first four years, Cashman turned in 12 straight double-digit years in the goal column. He finished five of those years with 20-plus goals and nine with at least 30 helpers.

Translation: He virtually inflicted one bruise on the scoreboard for each one he caused to an adversary’s body.

5. Leo Labine

The late “Lion” spent nearly a full decade in a Boston uniform at a time when the Bruins-Canadiens rivalry cemented its permanent intensity. Labine’s physicality played an unquestionable role in that landmark occurrence as he and his mates stood up to the likes of Maurice Richard.

4. Ted Green

In each of his first five NHL seasons, Green led the Bruins in penalty minutes. The team was a perennial playoff no-show at that time, but by 1970, a near-decade of grunt work finally paid off in the form of a Stanley Cup title.

Regrettably for Green, he was not an active participant in that historic run owing to a horrid preseason injury. But he returned for two more years, capping his Boston tenure with another Cup in 1972 before transferring his rugged services to the World Hockey Association. Ultimately retiring at the same time the WHA folded, Green was an enforcer on three of the short-lived league’s seven playoff championship teams.

3. Cam Neely

Neely was by no means the first NHL player to fit the definition of “power forward,” but it is believed that he was the first to obtain such a label as it found its way into the game’s lexicon.

He earned the title by using any reasonable means to ensure that opposing skaters and goaltenders alike did not maintain a handle on the puck. He would impose his brawn to grab the biscuit from an opponent and then promptly use his deft shooting skills to bury it into the cage.

2. Terry O’Reilly

Although more than capable of imposing his will on the home front to stop opposing goals, Bourque needed a praetorian guard when flexing his offensive muscles. During the better part of the 1980s, O’Reilly filled that role with an energetic physicality that earned him the nickname “Taz.”

O’Reilly’s role as a pioneer for the Lunch Pail AC era fittingly culminated in his Bruins’ captaincy, a position he held for the last two of his 13 NHL seasons.

1. Eddie Shore

Shore set the precedent for the defining characteristics of the Big, Bad Bruins. It’s that simple.

Nicknamed the “Edmonton Express” from his days in the Western Canada League, Shore was living proof of the Newtonian formula of mass and acceleration merging into force. Upon his arrival in the Bruins’ third year of operation, his tirelessness and toughness instantaneously served as the pegs that ensured Boston’s viability as a professional hockey market.

More than two-and-a-half decades after his death, Shore’s legacy lives partially in the American Hockey League’s top defenseman award. Although his post-playing career as an AHL executive played a natural part in the trophy being named in his honor, there is no way that could have happened without his reputation as a peerlessly rugged blueliner.