Bruins' Milan Lucic Talks Off-Season On Toucher & Rich
BOSTON (CBS) - It's been a much different off-season for Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic.
Not only is he recovering from the sting that goes with losing in the Stanley Cup Final, but he's spending his first off-season with his young daughter. Lucic said it has been a quiet summer in his hometown Vancouver, but he is hard at work getting ready for the 2013-14 campaign.
"I only took 10 days off because I had a good feeling – I liked how my body felt. I wanted to keep that going and didn't want to take another step back," Lucic told 98.5 The Sports Hub's Toucher & Rich. "I didn't want to put myself in the same position I was going into last season. Hopefully I'm keeping myself in the best physical shape to play an 82-game season again."
There has been a lot of change to the Bruins this off-season, with Tyler Seguin and Rich Peverley being shipped to Dallas for forward Loui Eriksson. Lucic said he will miss Peverley, as the two live in the same apartment complex and often drove to games and practices together, and downplayed all the off-ice drama surrounding Seguin.
But he is excited at what Eriksson brings to the table, and says his consistency will help the Bruins "win now."
"Just from watching him a couple times on TV he brings the same type of game every single night," he said of Boston's new forward. "The window to win [to win a championship] is definitely getting smaller and smaller year by year, but it's still there. He's a guy that is a little bit older (than Seguin) but he can bring that element to get us back to being a championship team, because we were so close again last year."
Lucic is one of the three Bruins invited to a summer orientation in late August for potential Team Canada players in the 2014 Olympics. This will be his second go at the Olympic camp, as he was invited in 2010 but did not make the team.
Lucic said the first time he went, it was tough being around his usual competition -- especially guys he "hates."
"It's guys you play against and battle against on a night-in night-out basis. It makes it easier when you play against them when you don't like them," said Lucic. "That's why sometimes it's better off not getting to know them."
"There is always going to be a respect factor there, because that's the nature of the game – having that respect factor. But there can still be that dislike between each other with that respect factor in it," he said.
Lucic said at his first camp in 2010, the one player he hated was Mike Komiserik (and you can see part of why here), but that list has grown "from playing more games and being part of a lot more playoff series."
The Bruins forward also touched on B's captain Zdeno Chara posing for a picture with friend Marian Hossa -- with the Stanley Cup in the background. While some took issue with Chara posing with the Cup the Bruins couldn't claim a few months ago, Lucic had no problem with it.
"It's a tough situation only because they've been friends since they were children, they played a lot of years in Ottawa together. Our names are still on that Cup from 2011 and I think it was more for their city, because they're from the same town in Slovakia," he said.
As for touching Lord Stanley's Cup, Lucic said once you've won it, it's fair game.
"You can touch it all you want after you won it, that's the rule."
