DeBrusk rewarding Bruins', father's faith entering second round
Rookie forward impresses with five playoff goals
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He was in the sports bar at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, so celebrations of that nature aren't exactly unusual for the surroundings. But normally it's a gambler making good, not a father seeing his faith and his tutelage play out on the screens in front of him.
It was the third period of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference First Round series between the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday, and the score was tied, 4-4. And then there was his son, Bruins rookie forward Jake DeBrusk, already having scored a goal, barreling down the right side of the ice, willing his way past Toronto defenseman Jake Gardiner, and the puck past Frederik Andersen.
The goal proved to be the difference in a 7-4 Bruins win that sent Boston to the Eastern Conference Second Round, where it will face the Tampa Bay Lightning. Game 1 is at Tampa on Saturday (3 p.m. ET; NBC, SN, TVAS).
"That was pretty surreal," said Louie DeBrusk, a former NHL forward who works for Sportsnet and is in Las Vegas covering the Western Conference Second Round between the Vegas Golden Knights and San Jose Sharks. "That was a pretty special moment."
He wasn't the only one who felt that way.
"I tried to make a move and actually tried to raise it and I didn't even see it go in," Jake DeBrusk said. "I just heard the crowd go pretty nuts and it was a very special feeling."
It was something the Bruins had hoped for when they drafted DeBrusk, 21, at No. 14 in the 2015 NHL Draft, a draft that was controversial at the time, and is today. The Bruins had three consecutive first-round picks and took defenseman Jakub Zboril at No. 13, DeBrusk at No. 14 and forward Zach Senyshyn at No. 15.
They left on the board forwards Mathew Barzal, who went No. 16 to the New York Islanders, and Kyle Connor, who went No. 17 to the Winnipeg Jets. Connor had 57 points (31 goals, 26 assists) this season, his second in the NHL. Barzal, who had 85 points this season (22 goals, 63 assists) is the favorite to win the Calder Trophy this season as the NHL's top rookie.
But Barzal is not playing right now. DeBrusk is.
"There's been a lot of conversation about that draft," Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said Thursday. "Our scouts were adamant in the players that we chose in that draft. Jake was identified as the guy that they wanted to draft. The reasons, probably last night [demonstrated] a lot of the same reasons. We got a message from one of his former coaches that he knew that was in Jake."
DeBrusk scored his first goal in Game 7 on the power play at 4:47 of the first period tying the game 1-1, and then the game-winner at 5:25 of the third. He scored five goals in the first round, matching David Pastrnak for the most on the Bruins in the series.
"I think this year has been a real nice step, and you're starting to see the player that hopefully he can continue to become night in and night out on the biggest stage," Sweeney said of DeBrusk, who had 43 points (16 goals, 27 assists) this season.
Keith Gretzky, the assistant general manager of the Edmonton Oilers, was instrumental in that pick as the director of amateur scouting for the Bruins. He and Louie DeBrusk keep in touch, and he has said that he always believed that Jake would be a top NHL player. That was why they took him. They believed in him. They still do.
"He's got a combination -- we call it a little greasiness to get to the hard areas of the ice," Sweeney said. "He's got a deceptive speed about him and he wants to score goals. He has scored in the past. … We just kept encouraging him and understand the process that he'll get there."
He is getting there.
Louie saw this coming, when Jake was 14 or 15. There was one game in particular, a five-overtime thriller that saw Jake score the game-winner. Louie wasn't at the game -- his wife and daughter were -- but he was getting text messages about it, sitting in a hotel in Detroit, preparing for his own work the following day.
Some of the details are fuzzy now, but Louie remembers enough. His son's team was facing elimination in the series, down 2-1, coming in as the favorite and needing to win to stay alive.
"They kept telling me, it's going to another overtime, it's going to another overtime, it's going to another overtime," Louie said.
And then Jake scored a highlight-reel goal, not a messy, off-the-skate mistake of a score, but something pretty. Something sweet.
"I wasn't there, but it still was exciting sitting in Detroit, Michigan, in a hotel room doing my notes before the game," said Louie, who was caught on camera shedding a tear in the stands when Jake scored his first NHL goal Oct. 5 against the Nashville Predators
on opening night
. "I had my own little silent celebration around the room in Detroit when he scored."
He had another celebration Wednesday, though this one wasn't so silent, and he wasn't alone. He was in the bar, with a number of Maple Leafs fans, and a number of Bruins fans, and his son up there on the screen, knocked off his feet, surrounded by teammates, having scored another goal, another game-winner.
"I say he's almost become the player I wanted to be," Louie said. "That was the player I wanted to be, but for me, I got bigger, I got pushed over on the wing, I started to fight and that was my avenue to get to the NHL and I knew that.
"So the dream of me becoming the clutch player and the top-six forward, it faded really fast once I started to play the physical game. But he always showed an aptitude for that. He always showed a mindset of being able to think the game. He was always a cerebral player."
And one that likes to celebrate his big moments. That, it seems, is a family trait.
