The P-Bruins' season gets under way tonight with a tilt against the St. John's Ice Caps, based out of St. John's, Newfoundland. The newly-named affiliates of the Winnipeg Jets will play in front of a raucous Canadian fanbase at home, one that Shawn Thornton knows well.

"They've got a great crowd up there...the travel is rough but it hardens you, builds character," Thornton said Tuesday of the city, which is 24 hours by bus away from Providence's home arena, the Dunkin Donuts Center. Luckily, no buses are required for this trip, as the Ice Caps flew into New England for the weekend, and Providence will do the opposite when they visit St. John's later this season.

According to Mark Divver of the Providence Journal, the P-Bruins will only dress five defensemen tonight, as Nathan McIver is out for four or more weeks with a broken bone in his ankle, Andrew Bodnarchuk is still recovering from a shoulder injury, and Zach McKelvie is still recovering from a concussion.

Zach Hamill and Kirk MacDonald will wear the A's for the month of October.



 

For Yannick Riendeau, it has been a productive preseason so far, between Bruins camp and P-Bruins preseason. The 22 year old forward came into camp this year in better shape than he has been in for the past three years. Riendeau spent the week training in Providence after being sent down from Boston, participated in the AHL club's training camp, and even tallied a goal in the P-Bruins' 4-0 preseason victory over Springfield on Saturday.

Riendeau Participated in Bruins training camp in September.

The former President's Cup winner attributed his good start to working on his conditioning in the offseason.

"The last two years I [came into camp] with bad conditioning. I also didn't have surgery this year, the last two years I had [offseason] surgery (wrist and shoulder), so i think that's going to help me a lot. With my personal training I did a lot of conditioning work, a lot of cardio, weights, all the things that'll help me be a better player."
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As the junior hockey season gets underway, all of the Boston Bruins prospects are officially back on the rosters of their respective teams.

The five players, all under the age of 20, are back to competing against each other in the Ontario Hockey League. Jared Knight went back to the London Knights, Ryan Spooner to the Kingston Frontenacs,
Alexander Khokhlachev to the Windsor Spitfires and Anthony Camara to the Saginaw Spirit. The Bruins’ first round draft pick in 2011 Dougie Hamilton has returned to the blue line for the Niagra Ice Dogs.
Getting a spot on the Stanley Cup Champion Bruins team proved to be even more difficult than it might normally be due to the fact that only three players left in the off season but these young players have a long future ahead of them where they will have plenty of opportunity to play in the NHL.

So as the race for the Mastercard Memorial Cup has already begun, how are these teams going to do?

You ever wonder how excited a hockey player might be when he has a great game? Or maybe you’re wondering some of the stuff they’re leaning in to tell their teammates on the bench. With the advent of Twitter, now fans can know the quirks they never did before.

 One of the Providence Bruins that likes to tweet and chirp his teammates is defenseman Ryan Button.  

 “I love using it and fans love it to so why not?” he says of the social media site.

The Providence Bruins have announced their 25-man training camp roster, a group that will participate in two preseason games this coming weekend before the season kicks off next Friday. Among the roster are 12 returning players, as well as six players on tryout agreements - necessary due to the players still in Boston.

The P-Bruins forwards announced yesterday for preseason are Jamie Arniel, Carter Camper, Stefan Chaput, Craig Cunningham, Kirk MacDonald, Kyle MacKinnon, Adam Presizniuk, Richard Purslow, Tyler Randell, Calle Ridderwall, Yannick Riendeau, Everett Sheen, and Jamie Tardif. They were joined today by Zach Hamill and Trent Whitfield, who had to clear waivers before reassignment. 

The defensemen for preseason are Andrew Bodnarchuk, Ryan Button, Marc Cantin, Colby Cohen, Marvin Degon, Nathan McIver, Zach McKelvie, Kevan Miller, and David Warsofsky. All but Cantin, Degon, and McKelvie saw at least some ice time in Providence last season.

Michael Hutchinson and invitees Jared DeMichiel and Danny Taylor will be the preseaosn goaltenders.

Also likely to join the team when Boston's preseason is over are forwards Lane MacDermid and Max Sauve - Jordan Caron, who split the season between Boston and Providence last year, has a good chance of graduating full-time to the NHL this year. Defenseman Matt Bartkowski and goaltender Anton Khudobin will find their way south to Rhode Island eventually, as well.

After last year's training camp, the players on tryout contracts primarily found themselves in the ECHL. This year's invitees hail from a slightly more varied background than usual.

Adam Presiniuk, a 24-year-old center from Calgary, Alberta, spent four years at Union College where he most recently played alongside Bruins development camp invitee Josh Jooris. He scored 12-21-33 totals in 34 games for Union of the ECAC last year, and 131 points total in his four-year career. He is a first-year pro. 

Richard Purslow, a 25-year-old forward from Greenlawn, NY, and a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, was that team's third leading scorer last year, with 33 points in 39 games.  Purslow, who was named to the all-academic team at UNO at the conclusion of his senior season, has already agreed to terms with the ECHL's Reading Royals, the P-Bruins' AA affiliate. He is also a first-year pro.

Everett Sheen, another 24-year-old forward from Alberta and first-year pro, signed with the Syracuse Crunch last season after finishing his senior year at Holy Cross College, but did not appear in a game for that team. Sheen set a school record at Holy Cross by appearing in every game they played over the four seasons he was at the school, and is the ninth player in school history to record over 100 points during his career. Last year, he scored 35 points in 38 games.

On defense, the lone invitee is Marvin Degon, a 28-year-old veteran of the AHL and DEL. He played three full seasons in the AHL between 2005 and 2008, after graduating from UMass Amherst. He has spent the last three seasons in Germany's DEL, where he most recently played for Ingostadt.

It's not often that you see a player from Great Britain on a North American roster but that's exactly where Danny Taylor hails from - Plymouth, England. The 25-year-old goaltender was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings in 2004, and spent a number of years bouncing between the ECHL and AHL - with one NHL appearance in the 2007-2008 season. Taylor most recently played for the Hamburg Freezers of the DEL.

It's not often that one finds a native of Sweden in the Bruins' system; it's almost as infrequent as finding a hockey player who's finished college in one fell swoop. Somehow, newcomer Calle Ridderwall manages to embody both of these rareties.

Ridderwall, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Finance. He says that college was never about just hockey; Ridderwall valued his education as well, and it played a big role in choosing where he spent his pre-professional years.

Ridderwall looks on before starting a drill at Bruins Rookie Camp on Thursday, September 15, 2011.

"I've always valued my education a lot," Ridderwall said after rookie camp on Thursday morning. "I was always very interested in the business part, the business world in education so I feel like being able to play hockey on that level while at the same time getting my degree in Finance was a combination I couldn't pass up."

On October 8, 2010, the Providence Bruins took the ice against the Springfield Falcons in their home - and season - opener. With high hopes after missing the playoffs the year previous, the P-Bruins fielded a defense corps that, on paper, looked pretty solid. A KHL standout, Yury Alexandrov; the token veteran leadership, Nathan McIver; the stalwarts from the year before, in Jeff Penner and Andrew Bodnarchuk; and the new kid, soon-to-be-NHLer Steven Kampfer. ECHL floater Alain Goulet rounded out the six, and donning their throwback Providence Reds jerseys, they took the friday night ice at the Dunkin Donuts Center, ready to go.

The P-Bruins were walloped 5-1 at home by the Springfield Falcons.

Ryan Button skates at the Dunkin Donuts Center, April 2011.

It was a loss that characterized the team as a whole for the entire season, a team that struggled to keep above .500, only managing to pull its head above water after the late-season addition of new blood to the lineup. In the last ten games of the season, games in which this year's defensemen Colby Cohen, Ryan Button, and David Warsofsky saw ice time, the P-Bruins went 7-3-0. By that point, Steven Kampfer was primarily with the NHL club (aside from a brief stint the last weekend of the season), Alain Goulet was in Reading, Jeff Penner had been traded, and the defensemen of the moment provided an interesting preview of what ws to come this year. The wild cards, Marc Cantin and Zack McKelvie, had interesting years of their own last year as well. 

The new-look defense is bigger, tougher, and more experienced, despite still being young - their ages range from 20 to 26 - four of them have a combined 50 games of NHL experience, where last year only one had seen any NHL time to start the season.

The Acadie-Bathurst Titan of the QMJHL are set to retire Patrice Bergeron’s number this upcoming season, making him the first player to receive such an honor since the team moved to Bathurst in 1998 according to an article on RDS.com.

The ceremony will be held on September 25^th in a Sunday afternoon game against the Rouyn-Norand Huskies.

Picture from RDS article featured below. 

A Quebec native, Bergeron was drafted in fifth round of the 2001 QMJHL draft out of AA Bantam hockey where he played for the Riviere-Nord Governeurs. Bergeron spent the 2001-02 season in Midget AAA hockey with the St.Franois Blizzards and played four games with Acadie-Bathurst where he notched one point from an assist.

Bergeron really broke out with Acadie-Bathurst in the 2002-03 season when he played 70 games and amassed 73 points. He had 23 goals and 50 assists, which was second in scoring among rookies.

Following that season the center was drafted 45^th overall in the second round of the 2003 NHL Entry Draft by the Boston Bruins and the rest is nearly history.

Bergeron, who wears one of the “A”s on his jersey, has made comebacks from two concussions and is a Stanley Cup Champion. Aside from the Bruins, Bergeron played for Team Canada in 2010 where the team won gold. He also won gold as a member of Team Canada in the 2004 World Championships and 2005 World Junior Championships. He is only the 25^th player to win in the Olympics, World Championships and Stanley Cup.

Read the article (in French) here.

The P-Bruins announced their 2011-2012 season schedule today, which will kick off at home on October 7th against the new St. John's Ice Caps club. The P-Bruins will play 38 of their 76 games at home, 22 on Fridays and 16 on Sundays - once again, Providence College's Mens Basketball makes Saturday home games an impossibility. Luckily, travel in the AHL in the Northeast is negligible. The second weekend of the season sees the P-Bruins' first 3-in-3 of the season, with Friday and Sunday home games against Manchester and Portland, and a quick 2-hour jaunt to Springfield on Saturday to face off against the Falcons.

Dave Warsofsky and the P-Bruins will be back on October 7th to kick off their next Calder Cup quest.

Due to travel limitations, the P-Bruins' 36-game schedule against their division rivals is a bit wonky. The season series with the Worcester Sharks, AHL affiliate of - you guessed it - the San Jose Sharks, spans a third of these divisional games, with six games at home and six games at Worcester's DCU Center. They will face off against the Portland Pirates (Phoenix's affiliate) and the Manchester Monarchs (Kings' affiliate) 10 times apiece, and St. John's merely four times. St. John's is a 24 hour bus ride or a four-hour plane ride, so it makes sense to spread the AHL travel to their city outside the division.

After the jump, further breakdown of the Baby B's schedule...

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The Providence Bruins made a move today, signing left wing Calle Ridderwall to an amateur contract. As per the P-Bruins' press release, details of the contract have not been disclosed. Ridderwall is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a native of Stockholm, Sweden. He racked up a respectable 57 goals and 34 assists in 156 games over the course of his time with the Fighting Irish.

Ridderwall skates against Bowling Green. Photo by ce.belle

Ridderwall is the only undrafted player in the Irish's top-five in goal scoring last season. As a Junior, he led the Irish in scoring on a team that incuded AHL standouts Ian Cole (Peoria) and Kyle Palmieri (Syracuse). In that season, he scored two hat tricks, the first Irish player to do that since 1988.

After the jump, more on Ridderwall's career accomplishments and what we can expect from him in Providence...