The Boston Bruins completed a successful week of development camp with the bulk of their prospects honing their skills and getting a chance to interact with participating coaches and staff.
All in attendance were treated to familiar faces in a pair of coaches whose names are on the Stanley Cup as members of the 2011 championship squad: Chris Kelly and Adam McQuaid. Kelly works with Jamie Langenbrunner in a player development role, but if he wants to make the jump to coaching, he makes sense to fill the vacancy left by Jay Pandolfo (Burlington, Mass.) when the latter took the associate head coach position at Boston University.
Kelly, a respected defensive forward for the Ottawa Senators, Bruins and Anaheim Ducks in a career that spanned 845 games from 2004-18, would be the right fit. Intelligent, driven and articulate, he made the NHL the hard way, and his experiences would make him the kind of coach that the Boston players could relate to.
If Kelly makes the jump to the Boston coaching staff, McQuaid would be an obvious choice to slide into the vacant role as a player developer with the B’s. The rugged and tough defensive defenseman almost didn’t make the NHL because of concerns about his skating, but he put in the work down in Providence and willed himself to the highest level, where he developed into a key role player in Boston from 2010-18.
