Kampfer/By S. Bradley
The Bruins will play their next-to-last preseason game against Ottawa tonight at TD Garden, and one of the position battles we expected to unfold during training camp is going down to the wire.
We all expected that when it came to a seventh defensemen, the Bruins were going to be picking between second-year pros Steven Kampfer and Matt Bartkowski. That competition has not disappointed.
Bartkowski/By S. Bradley
Reduced to spectator status for the second half of the Bruins’ 4-2 loss on Long Island last night, defenseman Matt Bartkowski will now get a chance to log some decent ice time over the rest of this weekend.
Bartkowski/By S. Bradley
As expected, the Bruins this afternoon recalled defenseman Matt Bartkowski from the Providence (AHL) farm club on an emergency basis.
Bartkowski
As if the Bruins weren’t having enough problems, now they might add yet another rookie to their defense corps for their match-up with Pittsburgh Monday night.
Bartkowski/Courtesy P-Bruins
PROVIDENCE – If you were to gauge the progress of first-year professional defensemen Steve Kampfer and Matt Bartkowski just on points, you’d be forced to say that Kampfer is the winner so far in the race to be the Boston Bruins’ next defenseman with an offensive flair.
Bartkowski/By S. Bradley
The Bruins officially announced the assigning of Matt Bartkowski to Providence (AHL) this afternoon. He’ll stay with the team in Prague, but cannot practice.
The team’s roster now stands at the league maximum of 23, including third string goaltender Nolan Schaefer but not counting tryout forward Brian McGrattan.
The deadline to have an opening-night roster set is 3 p.m. EST. I’ll have more on the Bruins’ roster later today.
Kampfer/By S. Bradley
Up until recently, I wasn’t sold on the idea of undersized rookie defensemen Steve Kampfer or Matt Bartkowski being legitimately in the Bruins’ mix for the opening day roster.
While I still think it’s a little longer shot than the Bruins’ brass is willing to admit at this point that either beats out one of the six blueliners on one-way contracts — and to stay in the NHL, Kampfer or Bartkowski would have to play every night — both general manager Peter Chiarelli and head coach Claude Julien continue to sing the praises of their two upstarts on the back end.
