Wednesday night, the Minnesota Wild took on the Winnipeg Jets during Game One of their First Round matchup. It marked the tenth time in 11 years that a Bruce Boudreau led team was in the playoffs.
While there was a whiteout in Winnipeg, there was a red out on Bruce Boudreau’s face during the Wild’s 3-2 loss to the Jets.
On Saturday at the Xcel Energy Center, former Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau quietly hit a huge career milestone. With the Minnesota Wild’s 4-1 victory in regulation over the Nashville Predators, Boudreau recorded his 500th NHL win.
With the win, Boudreau became the second fastest coach in NHL history to reach the milestone. He finished just behind Scotty Bowman, taking 837 games to achieve the number to Bowman’s 825.
Out of active coaches, Boudreau is now the quickest to 500 wins, beating out the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Mike Babcock. Babcock took 895 to hit the same milestone.
Tuesday afternoon, Alex Ovechkin received a lot of attention when he “thanked” Gary Bettman for banning NHL players from participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The Olympic decision still stings Ovechkin. With that in mind, this is how former Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau greeted his former player this morning at XCEL Center.
A year after Barry Trotz was bloodied after getting hit in the head with a puck, former Caps coach Bruce Boudreau experienced the same bad luck during the Minnesota Wild’s 4-2 win over the Nashville Predators.
With 5:44 left in the third period, a puck deflected onto the Wild’s bench and struck Boudreau on the left side of his temple. Boudreau would bleed and get helped to the locker room by the team’s trainer.
This Wednesday, it will be 10 years to the day since the Washington Capitals named Bruce Boudreau, then helming their AHL team, interim head coach on November 22, 2007.
Despite being a decade removed from coaching the Hershey Bears, former bench boss Bruce Boudreau is still enamored with the team and the area that helped make him a star.
Tuesday night at Giant Center, Boudreau was shown on the jumbotron during Game Six of the Hershey Bears’ second-round series against the Providence Bruins. Boudreau, wearing a Bears home jersey, had a special message for his old team.
“We were just unsuccessful,” Minnesota Wild defenseman Ryan Suter said to 1500 ESPN’s Judd Zulgad after their team’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Capitals. “We designed our PK to defend that.”
The that Suter is referring to is Caps superstar Alex Ovechkin who dogged the Wild for three power-play goals. Former Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau specifically tailored the team’s penalty kill to take away Ovechkin. Instead, the team left Ovechkin alone on Ovechkin Island, sipping on piña coladas.
The Russian tallied his 17th career hat trick, but it was Ovechkin’s first ever all-power-play goal hatty. But what went so wrong?
After the mumps overtook nearly a quarter of the Vancouver Canucks roster, the Minnesota Wild announced on Monday that forwards Jason Pominville and Zach Parise were diagnosed with the virus.
Bruce Boudreau met with the Minnesota media on Tuesday to discuss his teams status while Pominville and Parise are in isolation. The presser turned into a quote factory from Boudreau.
Former Capitals Head Coach Bruce Boudreau was a second-round draft pick by the Leafs, a Calder Cup-winning head coach in the AHL, and a successful bench boss in the NHL. Yet he might be best known for a 15-second cameo he made in the cult-classic movie Slap Shot.
Next Wednesday, the NHL will debut a documentary entitled Slap Shot at 40, which features interviews on the film’s enduring popularity. Boudreau will be a big part of that special along with the Hanson Brothers, Bob Costas, Ned Dowd, Adam Oates, Mike Gartner, and many others.
Wherever Bruce Boudreau goes, talk of winning the Stanley Cup follows. Since the portly bench boss oversaw the Washington Capitals’ transformation from a sad franchise to a thrilling team that is of the league’s perennial threats, Boudreau has been a coveted head coach for teams looking to turn things around. He has never been out of a job long.
On Sunday night, Boudreau returned to Anaheim for the first time after spending parts of six seasons coaching the Ducks. He took the Ducks to the playoffs five times, once within one win of the Stanley Cup Final. But after his fourth straight Game 7 loss on April 28 of last year, he was fired for the second time in his career, only to be replaced Randy Carlyle, the man whose job he took over years earlier. One week later, Boudreau was scooped up by the Minnesota Wild.
