Projo Bruins Blog

By MARK DIVVER
Assistant Sports Editor

PROVIDENCE -- It was a slow morning at The Dunk, with the team going through a rare Monday practice after having Sunday off.

The highlight of the day came at the end of practice when Doug Smith, the team's unofficial fight coach, got together with Brett Clouthier, Lane MacDermid, Guillaume Lefebvre and Craig Weller to work on some of the fine points of fighting.

Smith, 45, is a police officer in Hanover, Mass. He was a minor-league enforcer before retiring in 1998.

The four P-Bruins players took turns punching the padded mitts held by Smith, first working on right-left combinations and then punching with one hand while holding Smith's jersey with the other. At times, Smith, who was 6'2'' and 210 pounds in his playing days, grabbed a handful of the player's jersey and tied them up.

After about 15 minutes, all four of the players, as well as Smith, were laughing, dripping with sweat and breathing hard.





One of Smith's former students, ex-Providence heavyweight Steve MacIntyre, now in Edmonton, had an epic bout with Calgary's Brian McGratton on Saturday night.


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The Bruins had seven defensemen and nine forwards on the ice. Drew Larman was given a maintenence day and Jeff LoVecchio was sick.

Kirk MacDonald is still out with a groin injury. He'll skate on his own on Tuesday, said coach Rob Murray. "There's an outside chance he might be ready for the weekend,'' Murray said.


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Boston returned Lefevbre to Providence on Sunday.

Early on Sunday, the P-Bruins released Reading callup Ben Gordon from his PTO and returned Jared Ross to Reading. The two were able to catch a flight to Michigan in time to play in Reading's 4 p.m. game in Kalamazoo.

So far, Reading has a win, two regulation losses, an overtime loss and a shootout loss.

Kevin Regan has played every game in goal for the Royals. He has a 4.10 goals-against average and a .887 save percentage.


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It was a tough weekend offensively for Providence, scoring two goals Friday night and being blanked on Saturday.

"We had trouble generating much sustained offense,'' in the 3-0 loss in Manchester, Murray said. "Our best line was Larman, Weller and MacDermid. They were on the puck, they got it deep, they had some chances. Along with Dany Sabourin, they were probably our best players.

"We've just got to squeeze a little more out of some of the other guys. You've gotta grasp your opportunity. It might come and go real quick. You've got to take advantage of it.''

 Tags  Boston Bruins Providence Bruins

Comments

matt said:

Clouthier has seemed lackluster so far. Wish they would give Fletch a chance.

Link | October 26, 2009 3:23 PM
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