Kalman: With One Year Left At Yale, O'Gara Sticking With Bruins' Blueprint
WILMINGTON (CBS) -- Defenseman Rob O'Gara is the type of player Bruins development camp was made to benefit.
Four years ago the Bruins picked O'Gara in the fifth round and he attended his first development camp. Although you could see had some size and skills, his youthful look and shyness prompted me to quip (unfortunately within earshot of future Bruins general manager Don Sweeney) that O'Gara looked like a kid who won a contest to get invited to the camp.
Now in his fifth camp with the Bruins, O'Gara has grown about three inches and gained about 20 pounds of muscle. Instead of a contest-winner, he looks like a prize the Bruins earned with savvy drafting back in 2011.
O'Gara and the Bruins, though, are going to show a little more patience with the defenseman's development because he's going to return to Yale for his senior year this season. There's more to O'Gara's stay-in-school decision, though, than hockey, as he explained Wednesday after the second day of camp at Ristuccia Arena.
"I want that degree. I promised my mom I'd go all four years," said O'Gara, an economics major.
In addition to fulfilling a promise to mom, O'Gara is sticking to the blueprint Boston drew up for him.
"That's been the plan from Day One," O'Gara said. "Sweens [Sweeney], being a four-year Harvard guy, he knows the path. If I wasn't developing or they didn't think I was developing they'd probably push me more to leave. But [Yale] coach [Keith] Allain and all those guys there, every year, just getting me to that next level and making sure that I'm growing. It will put me in a good place next year."
O'Gara has done more than just get older, bigger and stronger over the years since the Bruins drafted him. A lot of players talk about rounding out their game. O'Gara has done it. As a freshman, O'Gara focused mostly on his defensive game and had just seven assists for the national champion Bulldogs. As a sophomore, O'Gara had four goals and seven assists in 33 games.
Last season, O'Gara led the Bulldogs with 15 assists and all Yale defensemen with six goals and 21 points. He blossomed into a two-way defenseman that might give the Bruins more options down the road.
"That's always a focus in the summers. Rounding out my game is what I've wanted to do for years now. I know that I can be a shutdown guy. I know I can be a stay-at-home D-man. But I want to be a guy who can run a power play, who can break the puck out, move the puck and create offense. And that's been a focus. After Christmas break, it kind of clicked and points started coming. It was nice to kind of reap the benefits of the hard work."
Had the Bruins rushed O'Gara, he might never have found the other parts of his game. He could've been typecast as a defensive defenseman the rest of his life. And players that are one-dimensional in college don't typically enjoy long careers in the pros. So the Bruins are overjoyed O'Gara has expanded his skill set.
"I think he tried to work on that last year. He takes a lot of pride in defending and playing against other teams' top players. He talks about that quite a bit," Bruins development coach Jay Pandolfo said. "But last year he added a little more offense to his game. He passes the puck really well, passes it hard. But I think he jumped up in the play a little bit more last year. And nowadays, you watch in the playoffs, so many teams the defensemen, no matter who it is, they get involved in the offense. You know they're getting down toward the net, they're jumping into the play. Guys need to do that now and I think he's realized that and he's added that to his game."
O'Gara said he was always "better with numbers than history and stuff," so he chose to major in economics. Now he has offensive numbers to flaunt and by this time next year, he should be making the Bruins crunch just where he'll fit in on their defensemen depth chart.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
