This might go down as the biggest South Shore hockey trade in the history of South Shore hockey trades.
The Boston Bruins made a move which involved two players from the South Shore of Massachusetts. That's right. When they traded Ryan Donato and a fifth round pick to the Minnesota Wild for Charlie Coyle, this wasn't just any old trade for a third line forward. No. It goes much deeper than that.
You see, Coyle is from Weymouth, Massachusetts and Donato is from Scituate, Massachusetts. If you look on a map, you will notice you only need to travel through two other towns to get from one of those locations to the other: either Cohasset and Hingham or Norwell and Hingham (Hingham is the one constant).
That's kind of the bonus, trivia aspect of it. Certainly, it is cool for the Bruins to have someone who grew up in Bruins country as a member of the team--even if it means giving up a prospect who is from the area.
But Coyle is a decent player. He has 28 points (10 goals, 18 assists) in 60 games this season and is still only 26 years old. That gives the Bruins a little help at forward. They could still use some more, but this is progress.
Was it premature to deal Donato? Perhaps, but the Bruins are trying to win now and to do it, that takes sacrifice. His -11 rating this year was not all that impressive, so that might also be part of it. Whatever though. He's not on the Bruins anymore and we the people cannot do anything about it.
So yeah, Coyle is a Bruin. He should be a popular player as long as he isn't a Jimmy Hayes, who is from Dorchester, by the way. But yeah, it should be fun...