DeBrusk shines in camp after traumatic injury last season

Share

A solid week of development camp ended with a nice exclamation point for 2015 first round pick Jake DeBrusk when he fired home the game-winning goal in the Friday afternoon scrimmage.

DeBrusk showed the instincts, positioning and the shot that allowed him to score 42 goals for Swift Current during his draft year. He also appeared to be skating free, easy and fully healthy again after a pretty nasty injury saw him drop to 21 goals for Swift Current and Red Deer last season.

“I think I’ve become more of a two-way player, and more of a complete player,” said DeBrusk. “I was playing 30 minutes a night for Swift Current in all situations, and it’s everything you really want as a player. It might have been a little too much ice time at certain points, but it was awesome. Then I was traded to Red Deer where we were hosting the Memorial Cup, and that whole big pressure to win was a new experience.

“I learned lots this year, and about just focusing a little more on the defensive side of the game. That’s what you have to do in the NHL these days, and that’s something that I really took to heart and got better at.”

The drop in production for DeBrusk last season is a little more understandable when the specifics of the injury are made abundantly clear. The 19-year-old winger missed three weeks during the season after he was hit in the groin with a slap shot he was attempting to block on Nov. 3, and one of his testicles quickly swelled to the size of a tennis ball requiring immediate, emergency surgery.

He was supposed to be out for a couple of months, and instead returned after missing just 11 games over a three-week span.

DeBrusk showed his toughness by returning to the lineup far earlier than he probably should have. He also said exactly what you’d expect about the injury: it was the most excruciating pain he’d ever experienced in his life, and it was a frantic, anxiety-filled few moments immediately afterward on the bench.

“It was scarring to say the least,” said DeBrusk. “It was weird. I thought I’d been hit in that area, but the pain wasn’t there. It had come way up [to his stomach], so I was thinking to myself ‘Wow that hurt, but it must have got me in the midsection.’ But I tried to step up and my body wouldn’t let me.

“My mind was going nuts because [my body] had completely shut down and I had to crawl to the bench. It was a good thing the bench was close by. The guys were telling me 'Get up! Get up!' and I could barely breathe. As soon as my doctor came in he told everything was going to be all right, and we just had to go to the emergency room. He was trying to keep me calm because it was not a good sight, but surgery went well, everything is intact and the reproductive system is all good. The worst part turned out to be the pain. It was my first injury, and it was a freak one.”

That’s good news for a young man that could have been facing some rough, permanent consequences as a result of the traumatic injury sustained. DeBrusk said he was wearing a protective cup at the time of the incident, and the shot merely caught him in the worst spot possible as he was spread out attempting to block the shot.

Understandably, the 6-foot, 181-pound DeBrusk admitted he was a little gun-shy when he first returned from the excruciating injury and faced the exact same situation in a game setting.

“One of my first games back I remember Ryan Rehill, I think he’s a New Jersey draft pick and he’s got one of the hardest shots in the league, he took a slap shot. I remember I didn’t go out of the lane, but I didn’t go into it and he scored on the shift,” recalled DeBrusk. “Normally my coach would have ripped me, but I got back to the bench and he gave me a little tap like ‘it’s okay.’ Your body just doesn’t want to have the same thing happen.

“I was standing up and I just saw the same exact play happen with a one-timer, and I was like [no thanks]. But as the season went on I got better, and I was blocking shots and penalty killing and all that. It was a freak accident, of course, but holy crap did that ever hurt. I know my pain threshold now…that’s for sure.”

DeBrusk  was his normal self again by the time the Memorial Cup playoffs rolled around for Red Deer. The skilled scoring winger had eight goals and 17 points in 17 playoff games, and once again was playing like the guy Boston selected 14th overall in the 2015 draft.

DeBrusk looked just as good at B’s development camp while featuring the shot-and-release that’s accounted for 63 goals over the last two years in the WHL.

“He’s done very well at juniors the last couple of years, and he’s probably proven enough there that it’s time to step up to the next level against bigger, stronger men,” said newly minted P-Bruins head coach Kevin Dean, who may very well have DeBrusk as a player this season in Providence for at least a stretch of AHL games.

Now he’ll focus on his attempts to win an NHL roster spot as a dark horse candidate this fall that will turn 20 years old in mid-October, and seems a lock to be turning pro within the Bruins organization a couple of months from now.

Contact Us