Bruins’ Jakub Lauko Bringing ‘Physicality’ Despite ‘Grapes’ Moniker
BOSTON — If you’ve been following the Bruins on any social media platform over the past few months, you might have noticed an interesting addition to a number of their posts.
The B’s use the “grapes” emoji any chance they get, but it’s for a good reason. They’re celebrating one of the weirder, yet actually sensible nicknames in hockey.
If you walk around any hockey locker room in the world, you’ll hear nicknames, but the majority of them are just shortened versions of someone’s actual name. In Boston, Brad Marchand is also known as “Marchy.” David Pastrnak is called “Pasta.” Morgan Geekie? “Geeks,” of course.
Jakub Lauko, though, is affectionately known as “grapes” and he explained why Tuesday.
“I was playing back home, and we usually had a lot of fruit before the game, whether it’s oranges, peaches, grapes or whatever. I came to Providence and we didn’t have anything, so I just start bringing in fruit for a game,” Lauko explained following Bruins practice. “I was just trying different kinds of fruit: watermelons, oranges, but I was saying — If I have an orange, I have to peel it and then my hands get sticky. It’s the same with peaches, I’d bite it and juices would get everywhere.
“I tried grapes one day and I think I scored like two goals.. so I kept going with grapes and now it’s more like a meme now.”
Boston is quite familiar with the nickname, as former Bruins head coach Don Cherry was called “grapes” throughout his career, which never really matched up with his brazen personality.
Cherry was the type of coach who encouraged his team to play with physicality, so in a way, the nickname fits perfectly for Lauko, who describes himself as a player who has built himself in that mold.
“I was used to scoring goals, but I kind of realized over the years that I wasn’t as talented as the guys around me,” Lauko said. “It was about making a change in how I wanted to play because I realized I can’t take Pasta’s place. I can’t take Marchy’s place. Those are players that are on a different skill level than me. It was just a self-realization that I needed to be more gritty, be more hard, be more physical. It took longer than — it would have benefitted me (if I made the change) sooner. It took longer, but I’m happy with where I’m at now.
“It was after the last season in Providence, it was just like, ‘Hey, I can’t play like this. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not.’ I took a big look at my game. I started at zero again, and just changed it all the way.”
It might have seemed like a long time coming for Lauko, but he’s still just years old. He actually came to that self-realization much quicker than others, and it’s worked out well for him, as the Bruins have gone 44-8-5 with him in the lineup which gives him the highest winning percentage (.772) of any player in NHL history who has skated in at least 50 games.
It doesn’t matter where Boston puts Lauko. He always seems to find ways to produce. He moved up the line order in recent games, and with that came a scoring boost. If they need Lauko to move back down, he’ll probably find himself scrapping like he was early in the season.
Can we say it’s all because of the grapes? No, but it can’t hurt to put some out in the Bruins locker room moving forward.