Ask an old-timer to describe the prototypical Montreal Canadien and he'll quickly paint a visual picture of a player gifted with speed, fury and elegance ... topped off, of course, with the gift of a francophone surname.

It's equally easy to conjure up the ideal Boston Bruin. He's a menacing bruiser in black and gold who's just as capable of beating you with his fists and his broad shoulders as with his lunchpail ethic in front of the net. Fancy's all well and good for those Quebeckers, but the Boston fans have always been more of a ham sandwich kind of crowd.

While imagining that player's no problem, it's been a bit of an issue actually dressing one. With apologies to the great Raymond Bourque, it's been more than a decade since Cam Neely retired and the team hung up the Help Wanted sign, hoping someone would come along and re-establish the identity forged by the team under Harry Sinden and Don Cherry, among others.

Well, it looks like they've finally got their man.

Unless you watch the Bruins regularly, the name Milan Lucic might not stand out when mentioned alongside fellow freshmen Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane or Peter Mueller. But with his first season under his belt, the bruising 19-year-old winger looks set to become just as vital a cog in his team's future as any of those blue-chippers.

The fans in Boston recognized that Thursday night, voting Lucic the winner of the team's Seventh Player Award. The honor goes annually to the Bruin who exceeds expectations. And if you say nothing else about Lucic, you have to admit that.

As the captain of Team Canada for last summer's Super Series against the Russians, Lucic was the ideal leader: hand working, conscientious, and capable of amping up the team's emotion with a big hit or a timely goal. Bruins fans saw the fear in the Russians' eyes and began dreaming of him donning the black and gold and terrorizing the hated Habs.

One problem: he couldn't skate worth a lick. Not such a big deal in junior hockey. But his early twirls around camp prompted one insider to say, "He looks like he's slogging through slush out there."

That should have been enough to earn him a trip to Providence for his first pro campaign. But each night during the preseason, he forced his way into the next game with a fight, a YouTube-worthy hit, or a surprisingly deft offensive play. And when the team broke camp, there he was, unbelievably, a Boston Bruin.

But unlike the bonus babies, he was brought along slowly, grabbing just six or seven minutes a night, really no more than he could chew. And somehow, in that limited time, he continued to find ways to catch someone's eye, to keep a job.

But more important than game night was the time spent at practice, working on his skating. If you went a couple weeks without seeing him, you'd be stunned by the improvements he'd made. Even after making remarkable gains in the skill, no one's going to film his stride as for a how-to tape. But they could use him as the perfect example of what can be accomplished through grim determination to succeed.

Over the season, the kid who no one expected to be there forged himself into a player that coach Claude Julien can use in multiple situations, and now earns upward of 14 minutes a night. He set a career high with 18:38 of ice as he picked up two assists in a critical win over Toronto on Tuesday night. And if the Bruins, currently holding down eighth spot in the East, make the playoffs, he'll be a factor that the opposing coach will have to account for.