Countdown to Bruins camp: Zane McIntyre

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From now until the beginning of training camp, Bruins Insider Joe Haggerty is profiling players who will be on, or have a chance to be on, the 2015-16 Bruins. Today's player: Zane McIntyre.

The 23-year-old goaltender hasn’t played a professional hockey game yet, but there will be many curious eyes trained on Zane McIntyre at Bruins camp. McIntyre dominated college hockey and carried his North Dakota team to the Frozen Four on the strength of a 29-10-3 season that earned him Hobey Baker Award finalist honors. McIntyre was an unheralded sixth-round pick for the Bruins way back in 2010, and he could have signed with anybody this summer as a free agent.

Instead, he chose to stick with the Bruins team that drafted him despite the presence of Tuukka Rask and Malcolm Subban, and that tells you quite a bit about the confidence that McIntyre has in his own abilities. While he has zero games of AHL experience, I think there’s a fair chance he could be Tuukka Rask’s backup this season should be put together a good camp.

What Happened Last Year: McIntyre, 23, had a dominant season backstopping a solid North Dakota team, and was the best NCAA goaltender across North America last season while winning the Mike Richter Award. The 6-foot-2, 206-pounder was 29-10-3 with a .929 save percentage and a 2.05 goals-against average while pushing his team all the way to the Frozen Four before falling to Jack Eichel and Boston University. McIntyre earned every goaltending honor you could possibly shoot for in college hockey a junior, and only fell short in being named a Hobey Baker finalist rather than the overall winner. But the big goaltender has turned into a blue chip prospect over the past couple of years while shining for North Dakota. He deserves plenty of credit for turning himself from unknown sixth-rounder into a goalie that looks earmarked for the NHL.

Questions To Be Answered This Season: Like any young goaltender entering the pro ranks for the first time, McIntyre is going to have to prove he’s good enough to stop pucks at the higher level of pro hockey. Given his extremely high level of play at the NCAA level, there’s a very good chance his success could translate well at the AHL/NHL level given his ideal size, mental toughness and obvious athletic ability. The success of college hockey goalies such as Ben Bishop, Jonathan Quick, Cory Schneider and Jimmy Howard has certainly made it a believable trajectory for McIntyre to be an NHL goalie, but he’ll need to do the work. As far as next season goes, it’s rare for an inexperienced goaltender to be able to skip the AHL step in his development. The desired development track for goaltenders tends to be slow and deliberate with each advance up the leader, and it may be the same with McIntyre if he shows any cracks in his game in training camp. The biggest questions are whether he could be ready for the NHL this season, and if he could potentially get comfortable in a backup role to Rask, where playing time would be sporadic at best. That’s a lot to ask of a young goalie. It would be no slight against his abilities/long term future if he wasn’t quite ready for it yet.

In Their Words: “Somebody has to step up and grab that role, and Zane is confident that he wants to . . . and I’m sure Malcolm [Subban] is, and Jeremy [Smith] is as well. That’s healthy. It’s a bit of an unknown for us, so that’s an area that I’m going to continue to look at. Whether it’s a little more experience or you do allow a [younger] person to emerge in that regard. Zane is confident in his abilities, but that’s a big leap, and I think Zane would be the first to tell you that it’s a big leap. But the bottom line is that when you stop pucks people notice, so we’ll see where that goes.” –Bruins general manager Don Sweeney, on the backup goaltending situation with the Bruins.

Overall Outlook: McIntyre has the size, resume, ability and technical mastery to be an NHL goaltender, and he’ll get an extremely long look this fall in camp. Ideally, the Bruins would love for him to have a little more experience were he going to compete for the backup role behind Rask, but this hasn’t exactly been an ideal situation behind Rask recently after last season's failure with Niklas Svedberg. The most likely scenario would have Jeremy Smith winning the backup role to start the season with McIntyre and Subban both continuing to develop as a tandem in Providence. But that can all obviously change based upon how each of the goalies play in camp. If McIntyre dominates from the start and enjoys a top camp, there’s no reason to think he won’t start the season at the NHL level. Stranger things have happened with far less talented players, and you can never really tell with goaltenders. The Bruins are just looking for McIntyre to stop pucks and he clearly did that better than anybody else in college last season.

 

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