BOSTON BRUINS CENTER Brian Rolston seemingly has it all. A collegiate national championship when he was a freshman; a spot on the US Olympic hockey team by the time he was all of 20 years old; a representative of his country in six different international competitions; a Stanley Cup championship in his first year in the pros; a beautiful wife and a precocious one-year-old son; talent that has not only brought him to this point in his professional life, but has allowed him to flourish at left wing and center action, penalty-killing, and goal-scoring; and finally, a coach and team that fit him as comfortably as a favorite Pearl Jam T-shirt. All before the age of 30.

Rolston does not need the angel Clarence, as George Bailey did in It’s a Wonderful Life, to take him back in time and persuade him that he indeed has such an existence. He is fully aware of the blessings and good fortune bestowed upon him, yet knows these gifts did not come by accident, nor will they hang around long if he does not continue to take steps to improve.

Still, there’s no getting around it: Brian Rolston has had a rich, full life.

To fully appreciate the man and what it took to get to this stage in his already-charmed life, it helps — as it did in the 1946 Frank Capra classic — to go back to the beginning, and see what shaped the boy who would become one of the cornerstones of the Boston Bruins’ future.

Rolston did not hang around Mr. Gower’s store like the young George Bailey did, but not surprisingly, he was a frequent visitor to the local hockey rink. Growing up with two older brothers and an older sister in Flint, Michigan, Rolston — being seven and nine years younger, respectively, than his hockey-playing brothers — was regularly brought along to his siblings’ practices and games.

While brother Ron ultimately played in college at Michigan Tech, and Greg became a letterman at York University and went on to play junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League, it was the youngest Rolston whose skills were most evident at a young age. Ron, now an assistant hockey coach at BC, remembers, "[Brian] had a lot of potential. Even when he was little he was very skilled, and always one of the best kids on his team. Turns out that he had the most skill out of all of us [brothers], though you couldn’t really see it [blossom] until he reached juniors."

Brian was heavily recruited by some of the major collegiate hockey programs in the region, but he ended up at Lake Superior State, where Ron was then an assistant coach. In his freshman year, Lake Superior State went 30-9-4 and beat Wisconsin 5-3 in the NCAA title game, with Rolston scoring the game-winning goal and being named the tournament’s most outstanding player on the basis of his 4-4-8 totals. The following year, the Lakers reached the championship game again, but lost 5-4 to Shawn Walsh’s Maine juggernaut, a team that went 41-1-2 en route to its first national title.

Lake State would win another NCAA championship the next year, but Rolston had already left school, after having been selected to be part of the US national team that would play in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Rolston scored seven goals for the US team that finished eighth overall in that Olympic tournament, and was ready to move on to the next level. He had been drafted as a 22-year-old in 1991 by New Jersey, and after Lillehammer he joined a team that was already sound and had gone 47-25-12 for 106 points the previous year. Rolston played for the better part of two seasons with the Devils’ minor-league affiliate in Albany, New York, for a coach named Robbie Ftorek.

The 1994-’95 season saw the NHL owners’ lockout implemented, a labor stoppage that wasn’t settled until January 13, 1995. When it was, Rolston was fortunate to be included on the roster of a team that was going places, and like his freshman year at Lake Superior State when he was part of that NCAA champion, the newly promoted winger became a member of the Devils team that a few months later won the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

Rolston’s tenure in New Jersey also had an added benefit, as he ultimately met Jennifer Scott, a designer of men’s suits who worked in New York City. They had been dating for a while when Rolston got the word in October, 1999, that he had been traded to the Colorado Avalanche for Claude Lemieux and a draft pick. Though Jennifer, by this time his fiancée, joined him in Denver, it still was a difficult time for the young winger. "I was disappointed to get traded away from New Jersey because I was so comfortable there. Obviously, it’s your first team, so you don’t know any different. And that’s when you realize that this is a business. Denver was a beautiful place, but it wasn’t the place for me as far as hockey went. I never felt comfortable. I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t necessarily play the best that I could play, unfortunately, and I didn’t feel like I got the shot there."

Even tougher was watching his former team, the Devils, go on to win their second Stanley Cup just eight months later.

Those dark days were relatively short-lived, though, because on March 6, 2000, he got the call to tell him that he had again been traded — this time, to the Boston Bruins. The impact was seismic in New England, since Bruin legend Ray Bourque was the key player to be shipped out in that trade with the Avalanche. Was Rolston upset about being uprooted again? "Oh, no, that was a happy day for me, that’s for sure. I came into a situation where the team was in disarray at the time; half the team was guys that had been called up, or a lot of guys were hurt, and we were just finishing out the season at that point. But I was able to get a lot of playing time, gain a little confidence, and [be] ready for that next year." And the following season — in what has become a familiar refrain for Rolston — the team he left behind in Colorado would win the Stanley Cup to cap Bourque’s magnificent career.

Finally settled in the Boston area, Brian and Jennifer got married later that year, and Rolston had a solid year for the B’s, scoring 19 goals and collecting 39 assists in his fifth full season before breaking out last season under the tutelage of another familiar face, Ftorek.

Rolston used his wheels, versatility, and new-found strength and energy (thanks to a new trainer) to collect career-highs in goals (31), points (62), and games (82), and he set a new club record while leading the NHL in shorthanded goals with nine, and finished third in the league in shots (331). On the home front, Brian and Jennifer welcomed Ryder Scott Rolston, who was born on October 31, 2001.

Rolston has played on some quality teams, to be sure, but there was no better collection of talent than when he was chosen to play for the US National team that won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City last winter. His fine performance there has carried over into this season, where he has collected 11 goals and 20 points in 29 games for the first-place Bruins.

Along with Jennifer and his young son, Rolston’s other primary passion is music. "I always loved music, always wanted to go to concerts," Rolston says. "Loved Pearl Jam. When I was younger, I always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and when I was in Jersey I got one, and started to play, and battled through it for a few years." The aspiring musician had gotten his first hands-on rock ’n’ roll experience through playing the drums, but the guitar has become one of his most fervent infatuations. "I’m not great [at the guitar] by any means, but I can play a few songs, and I know all the basic chords, and things like that. I have a little studio set up downstairs at my house. I’ve got two electric guitars, amplifiers, a drum set, and microphones, the whole nine yards. So we play little mini-concerts. It’s fun, it’s a great hobby to have."

So there you have Brian Rolston, a multi-talented hockey player with a beautiful family and a Stanley Cup ring to go with an NCAA title, and the memories of two Olympic tournaments, along with a shiny silver medal. A man who also has the respect of his coach and teammates, a heart of rock ’n’ roll, homes in Michigan and Massachusetts, and a future so bright that it’s hard to imagine that he’s accomplished so much in this life before his third decade’s even up. And go figure: he’s not a bad-looking dude, either.

So what more could a guy want, anyway? Well, you can probably guess. And while his name is engraved on it already, Brian Rolston certainly wouldn’t mind if the silver chalice made its way to Boston and made his life just a little more wonderful that it already is.

An expanded version of this profile of Rolston can be found in this year’s edition of the Boston Bruins Official Yearbook, which is available on newsstands and at the FleetCenter souvenir stands. Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com