The message was simple for Mason Lohrei ahead of his NHL debut on Thursday night.
“It was, ‘Enjoy the moment — you belong in the league. Go show everybody why,’” Jim Montgomery said of his pregame preachings for Lohrei.
The task in front of him was anything but.
Pressed into NHL duty after a whopping 15 total games logged with Providence since last spring, Lohrei was slotted into Boston’s top-four grouping on defense — with plenty of defensive-zone starts and taxing minutes on the horizon.
And the personnel matched up against him? Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and a stacked Maple Leafs forward corps that has made many seasoned D-men look foolish over the years.