Greg-
Wheeler is at no point a beast. if his point production is coming from someone elses hard work then he can’t be trusted. He has slow feet, doesn’t play with any grit, he tends to be the guy who is always off-sides, weak on the puck, and has no scoring touch. list his pros and we will compare.

Really I mean it’s too early to tell. He may very well turn into an all star player, but we haven’t seen enough. Also, it’s not only you but a large number of people dreaming that way. It’s nice, but leads to our alienation from good players who we expected too much from, and I like this kid and want to continue to see him here, as such, we shouldn’t start thinking that he will be an all star in a few years. I think we need to avoid that mentality for our younger players by and large (players like Seguin and Thorton are what I would consider exceptions to this rule). It’ll give us all a lot fewer headaches at night.

With that said, I would love to see him in an all star game and the HOF, especially in a Bruins uniform.

Tru,
If/when he may be an allstar?
Lots of people get us excited when they’re rookies and then kind of level out, for example: Wheeler. A lot of us thought he would be a top line type of player by now putting up way more points than he does and many of us hate on him now because we don’t feel he is where he should be. You’re starting to set the bar pretty high for a guy with 17 games of experience. Given he makes our team better by adding a puck mover, a decent one, on the blueline who is also defensively responsible. BUT, he does not solve all our problems nor has he seen the sort of ice time that should tell us he is an all star type player. He may never see that. He is a good player and we see a lot of potential. But we are getting ahead of ourselves with statements like that. We should take him for what he is now, a decent puck moving d-man who fills a gaping hole in our blueline. Good? Yes. Allstar? no, not now and maybe not in a few years. Even Wideman in his best year wasn’t an all-star and he had significantly more offensive flair (not as much defense though).
My point is, he is having a good start and is hot right now, this is likely a good period for him and we shouldn’t base our expectation on that. We should expect him to distribute the puck and help us break out and be responsible in his defensive end. leave it at that. Don’t talk of All star status, no HOF careers. Just look at him for what he is.

After all, we already boo enough people in the Garden, no reason to add him to our list if he disappoints our lofty expectations.

exactly agreed on all parts of that post, but would you be surprised in a few years if/when he may be an allstar or in a few decades if/when he may be a hall-of-famer? he surely is impressive.

this article isn’t yet compressed into a continuation link.

“….past goaltender Brian Boucher [inside] the far post.”

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I do not like the style of lines that they go with, where one is a shooting line, another is a grinding line, another is a defensive line… it doesn’t seem to work. Bergeron deserves top billing and would make a great leader for this team that is trying to get it together enough for a legitimate push deep into the playoffs. they have the players, but the organization seems unnecessarily imperfect.they seemed destined to see a couple rounds in the playoffs. they need to get Savard off of the top line. he needs his ice time limited to just a little more than special teams play. I think they’d be strong with many lines other than the ones that’ve been tried as first lines lately and I’m still pushing spreading the grinders around like:

Recchi/Bergeron/Horton
Lucic/Savard/Thornton
Marchand/Krejci/Ryder
Seguin(Paille)/Campbell/Wheeler
Chara/Kampfer
Seidenberg/Boychuk
Ference(Stuart/Bartkowski)/McQuaid
Thomas(Rask)

the defensive lines would likely be mixed about with Stuart returning and Ference out, but I don’t think the back pairings are a really worrisome issue. that looks like quite a team, to me. with forward lines like those I’d worry about matchups and they could just have the most rested line ready to hop over the boards for the next shift. I’m not against bringing Caron back up, at all. his existence makes it easy to agree to a trade of Wheeler. who would y’all like to see the Bruins call up or acquire? who should go?

Savard is overdue at this point, as is Horton. Both players have had significant improvements in the effort department, and they’ve looked like they’re foaming at the mouth because of how many missed chances they have had over the past few games. ONE of them will score soon (probably Horton) and the flood gates will open.

@MCK…you took the words out of my mouth. I love this kid Kampfer and he is super fun to watch. But 17 games does not a career make. Let’s wait a bit on the coronation.

He looks good so far. Let’s not put him in the hall of fame just yet. He needs to keep working. That’s why Hunwick isn’t here anymore. He got complacent. Hopefully Kampfer understands that he has to play harder each night than the one before.

This kid has got “it”. His confidence and puck-moving ability is the kind of contagious display this team needs to get back to (and maybe even outdo) ’08-09 form. So who’s the odd man out? Stuart is a leader and one of the toughest guys on the team… but even McQuaid is upstaging Stuart’s meager offensive numbers while holding down the fort in his own end. If Ference’s injury turns out to be long-term though, we don’t even have to contemplate this. Maybe Ference would be the odd man out anywho.

This team is showing what it can do when its individual pieces have self-confidence. Send Ryder down to Prov and let’s get our hands on one more scoring winger, and this team could go far.