Curtis Lazar and the vile hamburger that changed the Boston Bruins

Curtis Lazar wants to make several things clear. The hamburger that sailed out of the Canadian Tire Centre’s stands on March 19, 2015, and ultimately found its way into Lazar’s mouth never hit the ice. It was fully wrapped. The burger actually struck Lazar as he sat on the bench following the Senators’ 6-4 win.

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“It wasn’t on the ice bare or anything,” said Lazar, the Bruins’ new fourth-line center. “That’s probably where I’d draw the line.”

At the time, Lazar was a fun-loving 20-year-old NHL rookie. The Senators had won for the 13th time in 15 games. They had pulled to within two points of eighth place in the Eastern Conference. Unknown goalie Andrew Hammond, recalled from the AHL following injuries to Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner, was roaring (12-0-1, 1.55 goals-against average, .950 save percentage).

With all those things in mind, Lazar dismissed all notions of sound hygienic practice. He unwrapped the burger and took a bite. He followed up with several more chomps during the on-ice postgame celebration. 

Eventually, common sense told him to stop.

“It was disgusting. I’ll never do anything like that again,” Lazar said. “I love a nice burger. But who knows the backstory behind that one? They didn’t buy it during the game, so it was at least a couple hours old depending on when they got it — the day before, lunch or whatnot. It was a little stale. Adrenaline was running high from that game. I choked it down, I guess you could say. All in good fun.”

It just so happened that Lazar’s new employer was the team that lost to the Senators that night. Twenty-three days later, the Bruins finished 2014-15 in ninth place with 96 points.

Ottawa recorded 99 points and qualified for the postseason. Had the Bruins defeated the Senators on March 19, the four-point swing would have been enough to reverse the teams’ outcomes. 

The underdog Senators gave the Canadiens a six-game dogfight before losing in the first round. The Bruins missed the playoffs for the first time in eight years. General manager Peter Chiarelli was fired. Don Sweeney, Chiarelli’s replacement, traded Milan Lucic and Dougie Hamilton, two critical pieces, to start his on-the-fly rebuild.

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In retrospect, Lazar’s health-defying hamburger changed the Bruins’ franchise.

Coming off a high

The Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011. The 2013 club fell two wins short of a title. 

The 2013-14 team may have been better than both.

David Krejci strutted his stuff between Lucic and Jarome Iginla. Reilly Smith played well with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron. Carl Soderberg and Loui Eriksson locked down a good third line. Hamilton was growing alongside Zdeno Chara. Tuukka Rask and Chad Johnson kept pucks clear of their net.

In the opening round, the Bruins brushed aside Detroit in five games. But then they smacked headfirst into Carey Price and the Canadiens in the second round. Price posted a .936 save percentage in the seven-game series. Rask was at .903.

That was that.

A year later, the aborted run looked like a lost opportunity. Iginla left for Colorado. Johnny Boychuk was traded before the start of the regular season. Krejci played only 47 games because of hip and knee injuries. David Pastrnak looked like an 18-year-old rookie. Rask made a career-high 70 appearances because Niklas Svedberg and Malcolm Subban failed to gain coach Claude Julien’s trust. Brett Connolly, the Bruins’ deadline acquisition, broke his finger in his second practice.

The Senators, meanwhile, had traded Jason Spezza on July 1, 2014. They were building around younger players: Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, Kyle Turris, Mike Hoffman and Mika Zibanejad. Anderson and Lehner were their tandem. Lazar, then a first-year pro, fought his way onto the roster.

The season did not begin well. The Senators started 11-11-5. On Dec. 8, 2014, they fired coach Paul MacLean. Dave Cameron took over.

“It became real pretty fast, knowing that you get judged in this league on your wins and losses,” Lazar recalled. “As a team, you have to be better. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the coaches are the ones to take the fall.”

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The tire-spinning continued. Ottawa lost three straight in early February. The Senators were in 14th place. They trailed the Bruins, then the No. 8 seed, by 14 points. Anderson was out with an injured hand. On Feb. 16, Lehner suffered a concussion. 

Ottawa turned to Hammond. The undrafted 26-year-old was 7-13-2 with a 3.51 GAA and an .898 save percentage for Binghamton, Ottawa’s AHL team. Somehow, Hammond and the Senators ignited. 

On Feb. 18, Hammond made his first NHL start. He stopped 42 shots in Ottawa’s 4-2 win over Montreal. A month later, the surging Senators were riding the Hamburglar, as Hammond was known.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, the first hamburger flew on March 15 after the Senators’ 2-1 shootout win over Philadelphia. Three nights later, when the Bruins were in town, Hamburglar masks were distributed to the first 10,000 fans at Canadian Tire Centre.

The score was tied 3-3 in the second period. Jean-Gabriel Pageau gave Ottawa life with a shorthanded goal. Torey Krug answered. But Bobby Ryan scored the winning goal in the third period. Turris added an empty-netter. 

Then it started raining burgers.

“It just seemed that for that last month and a half or whatever it was that season, we couldn’t be beat,” Lazar said. “It was pretty cool to be a part of. Talking to former teammates from that year, it’s something we’ll always have in common. I actually didn’t even know that it was Boston we pushed out at the time. We were just so focused on ourselves. Pretty much every single game was do or die.”

On April 11, the final day of the regular season, Ottawa clinched seventh place with a 3-1 win over Philadelphia. The Bruins needed a win over Tampa Bay that night and have Buffalo beat Pittsburgh to clinch the No. 8 seed.

Neither circumstance happened. Pittsburgh beat Buffalo 2-0. The Bruins lost to the Lightning in the shootout 3-2. 

After the loss, Chiarelli shared a hushed elevator ride with president Cam Neely. Four days later, Chiarelli was sacked.

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Change was coming

Lucic was entering the last year of his deal. Hamilton wanted out. The Bruins needed a proven backup, even if Martin Jones, originally acquired in the Lucic deal, was flipped four days later to San Jose. Sweeney wanted to swing for Noah Hanifin, Ivan Provorov or Zach Werenski, the three top defensemen eligible for the 2015 draft.

Ultimately, the Bruins settled on Jonas Gustavsson as Rask’s No. 2. Following the picks gained via the Lucic and Hamilton deals, the Bruins drafted six players in the first two rounds: Jakub Zboril, Jake DeBrusk, Zach Senyshyn, Brandon Carlo, Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson and Jeremy Lauzon.

After the draft, Sweeney swapped Jones for Sean Kuraly and a 2016 first-rounder that became Trent Frederic. The GM traded Smith and Marc Savard’s contract to Florida for Jimmy Hayes. He signed Matt Beleskey to a five-year, $19 million deal. 

Six years later, Marchand understands why franchise churn started then.

“Whenever you miss the playoffs, especially in an organization like ours, where we are expected to be a good competitive team every year — we have that expectation for ourselves — obviously things had to be done,” said the alternate captain. “There were some players in our group that moved on. There’s always a transition period. Guys get to the end of their careers or the end of their contracts and move on. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a gap there where you’re trying to find guys to fit those holes. It can take players a couple years to feel comfortable in the league enough to make a big difference. I think we were just in a little bit of a transition period that year. We were kind of coming to the end from the ’11 team. There was guys moving on from then and transitioning into the next phase with the next core group. We were just in that time period. We needed time for guys to grow. The last few years, we’ve been a very competitive team again. We just had to allow that next group to come in.”

Lazar, Taylor Hall and Mike Reilly are the latest additions to the current group. The 26-year-old Lazar has found instant traction between fellow puck hunters Sean Kuraly and Chris Wagner. 

“For us new guys, including Hallsy and Reills, it can be a little nerve-wracking,” Lazar said. “You want to find your place. But the transition was so easy, so smooth. You see that chemistry starting to build. I became familiar playing with Kurls and Wags on the ice. We all play similar styles. That was something that allowed us to have that foundation right from the get-go. From there, we’ve been able to build off each other. With more reps, it’s going to get even better. I’m excited about our potential.”

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Even with COVID-19 restrictions, Lazar has found comfort in bonding with his new teammates over postgame meals. He will leave the hamburger consumption for such settings.

(Photo of a burger thrown on the ice on March 15, 2019: Andre Ringuette / NHLI via Getty Images)

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