BOSTON -- The routine for healthy scratches for the Boston Bruins is to skate pregame with the guys, take a quick shower, straighten the tie and retreat to the press box to watch the team do what they are aching to do themselves -- play the game.

That ritual didn't work for Tyler Seguin. The walk to the Garden rafters elevator in street clothes was humbling, humiliating, even though he was only 19 years old, even though the Bruins explained in great detail the grand plans they had for him in the future -- as long as Seguin was willing to be patient and understanding.

It didn't take long for second-year player Tyler Seguin to emerge as a potential franchise player as he leads the league in plus-minus. Brian Babineau/NHLI/Getty Images

The rookie nodded while coach Claude Julien emphasized the need to dig in the corners for the puck, to become a better two-way player, to become bigger, stronger, more experienced.

Seguin tried to do everything his coaches asked -- except when the games started. On the nights Julien left him out of the lineup, Seguin took part in the pregame skate, but when the other healthy scratches hit the showers, the kid veered off to the weight room. There, while the Bruins went about the business of winning hockey games, Seguin pumped iron and released some private frustration, sometimes for as long as the first two periods.

Looking back, he concedes, he wasn't as well equipped for the quantum leap from juniors to the NHL as he had thought.

"Very few are,'' offered veteran Shawn Thornton.

On Seguin's first day of training camp, the players zoomed past him at warp speed, as if someone had turned a switch and put the action on fast forward.

"The quickness and how fast they made decisions wasn't something I was used to,'' Seguin admitted.

His stall in the locker room was next to Patrice Bergeron, across from Zdeno Chara. He fired pucks at the head of Tim Thomas, who played hockey at his dad's alma mater, Vermont, and had reached legendary status among Catamount alums. He was far from home and didn't know anyone, and there were moments when Seguin glanced at his surroundings and thought, "What am I doing here?"

"You feel like you don't belong, but you want so badly to belong,'' Seguin explained. "You have to figure out that fine line between a dream and a goal.''

His tremendous release and his quick stride were on display in the early days of his arrival. He had these incredibly soft hands than enabled him to make top-notch goalies -- even the great Tim Thomas -- look foolish.

Tyler Seguin could score. The teenage center represented the potential antidote to so much that had ailed the underachieving Bruins.

"He does absolutely ridiculous things with the puck,'' Bruins forward Brad Marchand said.

When practices ended, the players lingered on the ice, engaging in shootouts and other contests. They had competitions for accuracy, for the most goals, for end-to-end rushes. Seguin won most of them. Then he'd go home and call his father after another night of tortured watching from on high gnawed at his psyche.

"The Bruins were very communicative with Tyler in terms of what their plan was,'' his father, Paul, said, "but there were definitely times I could tell he was second guessing them in his head. He'd tell me, 'Dad, I'm winning all these competitions in practice, and still they don't put me in.'

"I was trying to get him to understand that he needed to stay ready, that his time would come.''