DeBrusk thriving on Bruins top line entering playoffs vs. Hurricanes

Bruce Cassidy pulled aside Jake DeBrusk in a hallway at Climate Pledge Arena on Feb. 24. The Boston Bruins coach wanted to talk with the forward, to gauge his thoughts and interest in moving to the right side on the top line, to taking over a coveted spot alongside Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand.

DeBrusk, whose discomfort and struggles in Boston had come along with a trade request that was made public last fall, grasped onto the idea.
"It was more just if I was comfortable with being in that position on the right side], willing to give it a try," DeBrusk said, noting that he had not played well there last season. "Obviously I said yes."
His father's reaction was a bit more emphatic.
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"It's about time," said Louie DeBrusk, the retired NHL player and current Sportsnet analyst. "How long were they waiting for?
"I think he was overdue for his chance."
The move has helped turn around the fortunes of both the Bruins and DeBrusk, making the forward a crucial piece for Boston as it heads into the Stanley Cup Playoffs, starting with Game 1 against the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena on Monday (ESPN, SN360, TVA Sports, NHL LIVE).
"I had a long conversation with him about, this is the expectation," Cassidy said. "And Jake has [met the expectation]. He's done his part. That was certainly a turning point."
For the Bruins, and perhaps for DeBrusk's career.
The top-line vacancy had come about because Cassidy opted to move David Pastrnak down in early January, teaming him with Taylor Hall and Erik Haula. Once DeBrusk solidified his spot on the top line, it took off, and Boston was armed with two top-echelon lines and the length and depth on offense that it had previously struggled to find.
The Bruins had already started to get hot, even before DeBrusk moved, ripping off a 17-3-1 run beginning on Feb. 19 that transformed them from a borderline playoff team to a formidable opponent in the postseason. DeBrusk's hot streak, before and after he was moved to the top line, coincided with that run, as he scored a team-leading 15 goals in 23 games from Feb. 19 to April 8 and topped 20 goals for the second time in his career, with 42 points (25 goals, 17 assists) in 77 games.
He was named the Bruins nominee for the 2021-22 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to ice hockey.
It marks a decided up in a career that, five years in, has had more than its share of roller-coaster rides.

"It's been kind of wild, to be honest with you," DeBrusk said. "It's been up and down and up."
DeBrusk started out his NHL career with a bang after being selected by the Bruins with the No. 14 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft. He arrived in Boston for the 2017-18 season, put up a respectable 43 points (16 goals, 27 assists) as a rookie and raised expectations with a 27-goal season (along with 15 assists) in 2018-19. He scored 19 more goals in 65 games in 2019-20.
From there, the ups turned down, reaching a nadir with 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in 2020-21, his struggles through the day-to-day life of a living in a pandemic and that trade request from the Bruins in the fall of 2021. He felt lost and discouraged.
"My goal was to hit 20 goals," DeBrusk said. "My goal was to bounce back."
He knew something needed to change.
"He wants to be good," Louie DeBrusk said. "He wants to be the best he can be. He wants to be part of the solution. He wants to be part of success. He understands that this is a very good team and he loves these guys. This is the only team that he's known.
"He wants to be a part of that. He wants to be more than just a little part of it, which is what he felt he was becoming. To me, that's the biggest thing is he's looking around going, 'OK, where do I fit in here? I don't understand this.'"
For now, DeBrusk's position on the team has solidified. He is the top-line right wing. And with the passing of the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline and a two-year $4 million contract extension, signed on March 21, has come a measure of stability. He will not be traded this season, though the possibility remains open that he could be this summer and DeBrusk has declined to say whether he has rescinded his trade request.
"We're going to need Jake," general manager Don Sweeney said after the trade deadline. "We feel that he's an important part of our hockey club. We want him to feel that way."
DeBrusk has, after all, scored the fourth-most goals on the team since he arrived in Boston, his 91 behind Pastrnak (181), Marchand (159) and Bergeron (141).
Two of those players are now his linemates, elevating his position on the team, his importance to the Bruins' fortunes and the pressure on him.
"For me what I see in him is I see excitement in the fact that he's more a part of what's going on with the team," Louie DeBrusk said. "He wants to be part of the fabric of the team. Every player wants that."
But to get there, the younger DeBrusk has had to sort some things out, on the ice and off.
Part of what DeBrusk has had to learn has been to leave his own head, a place he found himself too frequently, especially during some of the darker, more lonely days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has taken effort to get himself out of those spots -- the self-indulgent ones when he's playing well, the self-flagellating ones when he's not.
He turned to his father as his trusted source. Louie DeBrusk's message was simple: Don't be too hard on yourself. Just focus on your game.
"I've always felt that he's believed in himself as a player," Louie DeBrusk said. "I think that that waned a little bit, but I don't think it ever broke."
That underlying confidence, the father says, is why DeBrusk was able to pull himself out, able to find himself again, even as he navigated waters that were not always smooth.
"It's just a matter of not knocking yourself down for no reason," Jake DeBrusk said. "I think that's one of the things I had to learn is don't beat yourself where it gets to the point where you're in a negative mindset no matter what you're doing in life. That's something that this year - especially last year - I think actually taught me how to manage."
It has helped him to get outside of his bubble, to explore the city of Boston, to hang out with friends and teammates, to push aside hockey.
"Not being able to do anything really amplified the fact that I do need to do things," DeBrusk said. "I need to live my life, go outside, go outside for a walk around, see guys on the team, go to dinners. Things like that. … I think it was just the aspect not sitting around and just thinking about hockey. Especially when it's going bad. Or good."
Like it is now.
It's the way that DeBrusk wants to keep it, as the season ends, as the playoffs start, as he determines what his future may hold.
"I'm a Boston Bruin, and I'm very excited to go for a Stanley Cup run with this team," DeBrusk said. "Trying to win a Stanley Cup for this city. We lost in the Final in Game 7 on home ice (against the St. Louis Blues in 2019) and I want to rewrite that ship, just as much as anybody in this room."
If he keeps playing the way he has over the past couple of months, and in this bounce-back season, he might just have something to do with getting them there.