Bruce Boudreau cracks jokes about structure, talks about Elias Pettersson’s leadership, and more

Though things didn’t end up working out for Bruce Boudreau in Vancouver, we sure loved him for content when he was here.

A true character in the game of hockey, Boudreau is heading back to the OHL as the Niagara IceDogs have hired him as a Senior Advisor. Bruce is joining his son Ben, who is the associate coach with the IceDogs. Bruce hopped on Sportsnet 650’s Halford and Brough on Thursday morning to talk about his new gig with the IceDogs as well as the role of a captain and what he saw from Brock Boeser during a very difficult point in his life.

Boudreau’s delivery of talking about his son’s teams playing with a lot of structure.

Boudreau was later asked if there is a player who sticks out as an obvious pick to be the next captain and Boudreau said that “these guys” know who his pick would be already but it’s not up to him. He mentioned that there are a couple of good guys for the captaincy but Boudreau only talked about one name.

“I think Petey if he stays there, is going to be a great captain,” said Boudreau about Elias Pettersson. “He’s very much like the Sedins. He’s not a loud guy and a quiet guy but he is definitely a leader. He wants to be put in the position to lead and he wants to have all the responsibility on the ice so I think he’d be a good choice.”

Boudreau was then asked about watching Brock Boeser go through some of the struggles that he had with the loss of his father. He spoke about giving Boeser some extra time with family when the team could make it work.

“Well, it was tough because it was weighing on him,” said Boudreau about how difficult it was on Boeser. “All you could do is sit there and support him. That was the biggest thing. If he needed to talk to you, you’d talk to him.  I told him, whenever he wanted at any point in time, that he had to go home and visit his family, then just go home. If we’d go out east, he might leave a day early to get an extra day with his family.”

The full interview is available on all Podcatcher apps but we will leave a Spotify link HERE for the full conversation.