Chris Kelly: The Real Seventh Player For Bruins This Season
WILMINGTON, Mass. – Maybe because television is a visual medium and the vote occurred through the website of the Bruins' television home, fans thought they were trying to elect the handsomest Bruins player.
In that case, they got it right – because no one can touch Tyler Seguin for good looks. After all, he's just 20 and hasn't really had to get his nose dirty in the NHL yet, so the Justin-Bieber-loving sect of Bruins fans can fawn over him for now.
Unfortunately, the vote was really to pick the Seventh Player Award, which goes to the Bruins player who exceeded expectations this season. And while Seguin won the vote and received the award Tuesday, that player without a doubt more than any other was Chris Kelly.
When you consider that Seguin was the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2010, the bar is obviously much higher for his production than the 27 goals he has scored to date. Sure, that's a nice breakout year after a rookie season spent mostly learning about the NHL and adapting to life in the public eye. However, there were plenty higher expectations on Seguin when this season started, because of the departures of Mark Recchi and Michael Ryder, and they increased over time with the injury to Nathan Horton. He might've matched those goals, but if he exceeded them he didn't do that by more than what Kelly did.
Chris Kelly has scored 20 goals. He's the same Chris Kelly who had never scored more than 15 goals in one NHL season before now. He's 31 years old, he's rarely been cast in more than a second- or third-line role his whole career and this season he centered the Bruins' third line almost the entire season. And he has produced a career-high goal total on a balanced team that desperately needed at least one player to take his goal-scoring prowess to another level.
Despite his heightened offensive production, Kelly is still the same player he's always been in other departments. He's posted a plus-32 rating and has been a big-time contributor for Boston's 11th-ranked penalty kill. He's won 52 percent of his faceoffs. He's beloved by his teammates, leads by both example and with his mouth, and tends to make the players on his line better. Did I mention he's scored those 20 goals with hardly more than a few seconds of power-play time this season?
Maybe it would help Kelly if he's campaign for more notice. After all, Seguin mentioned in his postgame comments Tuesday that he thought Kelly deserved the award. Kelly still wouldn't take the bait.
"Obviously it's nice to score goals and contribute offensively," said Kelly, who noted that he doesn't set statistical goals for himself at the start of seasons. "And I've been really lucky to play with some great linemates in my time here – last year and this year. Ziggy's a really deserving player of that award. Obviously he's leading our team in goals, points, he's up there in plus-minus. That's a rare thing to see, a young player in the plus-minus [race]. So it's a great choice, and I think it's that much more special when the fans decide on it."
Well, if Kelly won't boast about his season of exceeding everyone's expectations, at least his teammates have publicly acknowledged his contributions time and again. And if one writer or more can do the same, Kelly is well-deserving to be known as the unofficial Seventh Player winner for 2011-12.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com. He operatesTheBruinsBlog.net and also contributes coverage to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
