| 07 July 2011
Mike Hutchinson started his fourth Bruins development camp off with a bump - literally.
About fifteen minutes before camp ended for the day, Jared Knight, the fearless second round draft pick from 2010, plowed straight into Hutchinson, knocking his new mask off and his head back into the crossbar.
He didn't seem any worse for the wear, though, joking that it was "obviously the hardest I've been hit in a while," and mentioning that the training staff "felt it was best I take the rest of practice off, since there was only a few minutes left."
The mask, luckily, is fine as well. Hutchinson, who wore an all-white mask in his first professional season last year, finally got his first Bruins paintjob done a few days ago.
Hutchinson stands tall in nets against Worcester at the end of the 2010-2011 season.
"I never really had enough time off [during the season] to get it painted, it's pretty time consuming," Hutchinson said of why he stuck with the white mask last year. "This is the mask I got right at the end of the season, so as soon as the summer came along I sent it off to get painted...I had a couple little ideas, really minor ideas. I gave the artist the creative freedom to create something, I just told him to make it look cool. I didn't really know what to expect until I got it back a few days ago, it turned out really nice."
That artist is Montreal's own Dave Leroux of Diel Airbrush, whose previous designs have been worn by a number of goaltenders including the NHL's Ray Emery, Robin Lehner, and Timo Pielmier, along with AHL goaltenders like Cam Talbot and Robin Lehner, and NCAA Champion UMD's Kenny Reiter.
According to Leroux, Hutchinson's "minor ideas" were that he wanted both Bruins logos - Boston and Providence - and to go either with a bear theme or a tribute to great Bruins - and since Leroux is "pretty okay" with portrait work, he went the way of the tribute.
The mask features the famous Bobby Orr leap over the Boston logo on one side and Gerry Cheevers' iconic mask on the other over the Providence logo, with jersey stripes running from the back of the mask over the top to the cage, and the word "Bruins" in a stylized font across the chinplate.
Image from Diel Airbrush. Check out more views of Hutchinson's new mask here.
Leroux said that the mask took 20 hours to finish, and that the hardest part of the process is finding ideas and pictures to base his portraits on.
"Mike wanted at least one goalie so we chose Cheevers, one of the most recognized masks in hockey history! And I decided to go with the famous Bobby Orr dive because it's such a historical picture and from what I know, was never painted on a mask. The picture is kind of hard to reproduce because it's so old and not really detailed. So I based my reproduction from a color picture of that famous dive and a picture of the statue of Orr in front of the TD Garden," said Leroux in an email.
Despite the trickiness of the design, the mask came out "amazing," according to Hutchinson. Leroux says he has a ton of ideas for Bruins themed masks and hopes to work with Hutchinson again in the future.
***
By this point in his development, Hutchinson can use development camp as a tool to really focus on what he needs to work on, similar to Adam Courchaine last year. But while the focus of Courchaine's fourth camp was developing a better mental edge to his game, Hutchinson is working on improving a slightly more definable part of his.
"For me, I just want to be consistent throughout the week. I think during the season [last year], consistency was one of the things I lacked. I played well in streaks and bad in streaks, so I just want to be consistent right throughout the camp and use it to sort of launch my summer and get prepared for training camp."
Hutchinson will likely be paired with Anton Khudobin as the Providence goaltending tandem prepares to take on the newly-aligned AHL this season. Together they went 12-6-0-1 last year after the trade deadline, and look to be the most solid pairing Providence has seen in a long while.
"It's great that I know my goalie partner from last year, we're familiar with each other and it'll be good to compete with him for playing time because I think we can really push each other this year and help the team win some games and be successful," Hutchinson said.
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