Kalman: Tim Schaller Earned Right To Be A Fourth Line Fixture For Bruins
By Matt Kalman, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Every year, the Stanley Cup Playoffs prove how important it is to have strong bottom-six forwards who can do intangible things but also contribute on the scoresheet when the top players are tightly checked or when injuries challenge a team's depth.
Teams acquire those types of players numerous ways, whether it's through free agency or by selecting someone like Nashville center Colton Sissons, the Predators' hat trick hero from Monday, in the second round of the NHL Draft.
Bruins forward Tim Schaller falls into the former category, as he signed with Buffalo in April 2013 after four seasons of his career at Providence College and then signed with the Bruins in the summer of 2016. He exceeded expectations in his first season with Boston and emerged as an important versatile piece of the forward corps. He proved he could be the type of bottom-six forward Boston could build around moving forward.
Schaller had 14 points (seven goals, seven assists) in 59 games, and he earned the trust of both coaches -- Claude Julien and Bruce Cassidy -- as a consistent member of Boston's highly successful penalty kill, as a forward that could play in the top six in emergencies and as both a center and a wing.
"It's tough, yeah. You've got to gain the trust of the coaches and the GMs," Schaller said. "The thing is consistency and I think I found a pretty consistent game in myself this year, which helped a lot. It was tough for me mentally at one point there during this year, I wasn't really playing my strongest hockey, and at the end of the day I was still a call-up. So I potentially could've been sent down at any time but I just tried to stay focused and play my game and luckily it worked out."
That trust that Schaller earned was important in him spending the whole season in the NHL, but it was also important for Cassidy and general manager Don Sweeney, who had one less player to worry about because they knew what they'd get out of Schaller each night. Sometimes Schaller found himself scratched because of his defensive deficiencies, but he improved over the course of the season.
Schaller will be a restricted free agent this summer if the Bruins don't re-sign him before July 1. Assuming he doesn't get scooped up by Vegas in the expansion draft, Schaller should be kept because it's so difficult to find bottom-six forwards that can be trusted to play so many roles and bring a consistent amount of effort every game.
There's no doubt about where the Merrimack, N.H., native wants to play.
"Playing a full year in the NHL is great and playing for my home team was awesome. Getting to share it with my friends and family, who live an hour up the road, it made it pretty special," he said.
Considering what he was able to accomplish in 59 games and 12:16 of ice time a night in his first full NHL season, Schaller might be able to do more now that he has that season of experience under his belt. Ideally, the Bruins will be deep enough that Schaller could become a fixture on a formidable fourth line that will bring back memories of the likes of Daniel Paille and Gregory Campbell, but maybe with more production than those famous fourth-liners brought during the Bruins' glory years 2011-14.
"I look back and I can find a lot of chances on the ice where I could've produced more, whether it was playing with [David] Krejci or anyone out there," Schaller said. "But I think I could've scored a few more goals here, a few more apples here, then been a little bit better defensively here. So I had a good year but there's still a lot of room that I can grow and hopefully they can put some trust in me and maybe I can be back next year."
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @MattKalman.
