BRIGHTON – With the trade of Adam McQuaid at the beginning of this week, the likelihood is that the Bruins are done trading defensemen now that the surplus of eight NHL guys has been subtracted by one player.
So it doesn’t seem likely at all that Torey Krug is going to get moved after his name came up in the summer-time for the first time really in his entire career with the Bruins. It wasn’t like the Bruins wanted to move a player whose 110 points over the last two seasons trails only Erik Karlsson, Victor Hedman, Brent Burns and John Klingberg among NHL D-men. But if they were in the market for a top-six goal-scorer to put on David Krejci’s wing then they would have had to give up something quality as well, and Krug would have been a logical choice given A) his cap hit, and B) the emergence of young D-men like Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk.
None of that seemed to shake Krug’s confidence in his job as a premier offensive D-man for the Black and Gold, however.
“I don’t really see anybody doing my job here. I just have to make sure I show up every day and do the job the best that I can,” said Krug, who remained behind in Boston while rehabbing a fractured ankle as the bulk of the team trains in China. “You can’t really worry about too many things that people are saying. You go back to that famous line that it’s the nature of the business. So I’m still here and ready to do my job.”
Instead the Bruins will start the year with seven D-men with McQuaid now in New York, and they’ll attempt to fill any open top-six winger spots with their phalanx of young forwards that includes Danton Heinen, Ryan Donato and Anders Bjork among others. So it looks like Krug will fill his regular role as a top-four guy and power play quarterback, coming off a season where he led all B’s defensemen with 14 goals and 59 points while averaging 20:24 of ice time per game.
Clearly Krug was happy to stay in Boston when the dust had settled on the D-men situation, but the 27-year-old also admitted that it was virtually impossible to ignore trade rumors involving him, so more believable than others.
“You try to ignore it and then you laugh about certain things. You just focus on what you do as an individual and on your job every day, and then whatever happens, happens,” said Krug, who probably had the Edmonton Oilers on his limited no-trade list based on the way he answered the questions about trade rumors. “It’s just funny when you read something and then realize that there’s probably no chance certain things can happen…then others pick up on it and snowballs into a rumor or something.
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“There are things you can’t control as an athlete, and that’s just part of it. Look, if [Wayne] Gretzky can get traded then anybody can get traded, so it doesn’t really matter from that perspective. You’d definitely feel wanted [if others teams inquired about you], but I have a job to do here and I feel that nobody else does the job that I do here.”
With McQuaid gone, that also takes away one of Krug’s longtime ‘D’ partners and he’ll have to get used to skating with either Kevan Miller or Brandon Carlo once the season gets going. Krug has skated with both players before to varying degrees of success, but it’s clear that his role will remain the same: push the puck, create in the offensive end, man a successful and dangerous power play and keep doing the things that nobody seems able to do on the back end for the B’s right now.