Joe Thornton is only one point shy of tying Jarri Kurri for 20th on the NHL's all-time scoring list. On Thursday night, Thornton will have a chance to do just that, and in the city where he began his professional career.
It's been nearly 12 years since the Boston Bruins traded Thornton to the San Jose Sharks, and his return to Beantown offers a chance to reflect on what is becoming an increasingly distant memory. That memory's also been subject to revisionist history.
In the wake of Boston's Stanley Cup win in 2011, there's been a tendency to credit the Thornton trade as the beginning of the Bruins' Cup-winning roster. Former Bruins general manager Mike O'Connell told ESPN in 2015 that trading Thornton gave the Bruins the necessary flexibility to sign Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard free agents the following summer.
The cap savings undoubtedly helped. But, it's not like Thornton and Chara would have been a bad center/defenseman combo for an extra $1.67 million, which was the difference between Thornton's and Savard's contracts. Savard was a great player, whose career was cut short due to injury, but he's not a surefire Hall-of-Famer like Thornton.
Boston was also able to flip Wayne Primeau, Brad Stuart, and Marco Sturm, the players traded for Thornton, in subsequent deals. Andrew Ferrence, a key defenseman on the Stanley Cup champion Bruins, was acquired in a trade that sent Stuart and Primeau packing. Yet, so was Chuck Kobasew, whose eventual trade to Minnesota netted zero players that played more than five NHL games with Boston. Plus, the "future considerations" Sturm was acquired for weren't exactly given a Stanley Cup ring.
It all goes back to one central thesis: That the Bruins couldn't have won with Thornton. This assumption relies on a narrative implicating Thornton as a perennial postseason underachiever. It's a storyline that began by downplaying the fact that the former number one pick played through torn rib cartilage in the worst postseason of his career in 2004, and one that places far too much blame on an individual in what is otherwise lauded as a "team" sport
No matter what Thornton does, he's still dogged by the perception that drove him out of Boston. When the NHL named its top 100 players earlier this year, Thornton was notably left off of the list. Somehow, his place as the league's second-leading active scorer and a near-certain presence in the top ten all-time assist leaders wasn't enough to warrant inclusion.
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Thornton's used to all of that by now. He's long been an underappreciated superstar, and one whose accomplishments aren't enough to overcome the criticism. It's fitting, then, that he can make history in the city where his career, and the misconceptions surrounding it, began.
