The Boston Bruins Alumni Association has assembled a stacked lineup for their marquee matchup with the Warrior For Life Fund at Warrior Ice Arena on Dec. 7.
Bruins Alumni president Frank Simonetti, Warrior For Life Fund president and founder Capt. Ryan Crowley and Mowers joined Adam Pellerin on NESN’s “The Hockey Hub” podcasts on Monday to discuss the upcoming event.
“From our standpoint, I’m showing up with a group of active duty and retired SEALs that are going to come up and play the Boston Bruins,” Crowley said. “In what initially was a friendly game, where we’d come up and everybody would get out there, but recently, Frank Simonetti and the Boston Bruins have really elevated this to a much more competitive game. So, we’ll bring the best that we can but it’s going to be tough against this lineup that they’re getting against us.”
The Bruins Alumni lineup includes 2011 Stanley Cup champions Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Mark Recchi, Dennis Seidenberg, Johnny Boychuk, Shawn Thornton, Gregory Campbell, Adam McQuaid, Tuukka Rask, Andrew Ference and Tim Thomas, along with Kevan Miller, Andrew Alberts, PJ Stock, Mark Mowers, Bryan Smolinski and Tim Schaller.
Simonetti’s reason for bringing the stacked lineup was pretty simple — they are playing to win.
“It was a friendly game until the Warrior For Life All-Stars beat us a couple of years ago,” Simonetti explained. “And they beat us quite handily, so we take no chances now. We stacked the lineup last year by adding Patrice Bergeron, it was a 2-1 game.
“But this year’s game has turned out to be a mini-reunion of the 2011 Stanley Cup team captained by Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara.”
You can hear more of Simonetti’s and Crowley’s thoughts on the matchup on “The Hockey Hub” on YouTube or Spotify.
