Cam Neely played the team president’s role to a T Wednesday night when he was the first in the front office to acknowledge the Bruins are at a crossroads — whether to be buyers or sellers at the NHL trade deadline.
Step No. 1 in recovery is admitting there’s a problem. The crossroads or “two paths’’ depiction is as close as Neely, general manager Don Sweeney, or Executive Son Charlie Jacobs will tread in telling it like it is these days for the struggling, sagging Spoked-B brand.
In fact, on the same night Neely noted where things are at the moment, Jacobs was still frolicking in the vernal land of unicorns and Black and Gold rainbows, basically reminding one and all — can ya give me an Amen, brothers and sisters?! — the Stanley Cup remains Job 1.
Jacobs leans on that theme a lot. Unless I’ve lost count, the franchise has won the Cup exactly one time (2011) since his dad Jeremy Jacobs bought the franchise, dusty Garden barn and all, in 1975. The theme is getting old, transparent, and annoyingly embarrassing after a half-century, especially now. This is a smart hockey town. We know our pucks. We know what’s puffery.
The franchise’s playoff fortunes have been on a steady decline since the spring of 2019, its last appearance in the Cup Final. In the five postseasons since, the Bruins three times failed to make it beyond Round 2 and twice rolled over in Round 1. Overall: a sub-Forever-.500 mark of 23-25. It’s never good to be sub-Forever .500.
In the midst of it all, Sweeney and Neely also inexplicably canned their coach, Bruce Cassidy, who then hoisted the Cup over his head the following spring with the Vegas Golden Knights. Can you make that up? You can, but it’s reality. The move makes less sense today than it did then. Reminder: by Cassidy’s telling, Sweeney came to his front door in the ’burbs to deliver the bad news, just days after assuring him not to worry, he’d be back on the job in September.
So something changed, and quickly, leading to today, a club now on its second coach since Cassidy got cashed out, a franchise perhaps poised to be a seller at the March 7 trade deadline.
Not where any of us (including here) could have predicted less than 24 months earlier when Tyler Bertuzzi, Dmitry Orlov, and Garnet Hathaway were prized deadline catches brought aboard what would be a record-setting 65-12-5 regular season.
Then came the smack across the kisser, the stunning Round 1 loss to the Panthers, with then-coach Jim Montgomery helplessly flailing for answers. A pattern to be repeated the following spring and ultimately leading to his dismissal 20 games into this season.
Again, things can change so quickly around here.
Overall, the Bruins are teetering at the edge of their first DNQ since 2016, a franchise in decline, for three major reasons:
1. Poor drafting.
Personified by the historic three big boo-boos, pick Nos. 13, 14, and 15 in Round 1 of the 2015 entry draft. Instead of selecting, say, Thomas Chabot, Mathew Barzal, and Brock Boeser, they opted for Jakub Zboril, Jake DeBrusk, and Zach Senyshyn. It could have been the underpinnings of a youth movement, a reset of cornerstone talent. But for DeBrusk (now in Vancouver), it was a bust of historic proportions.
To their credit, the Bruins during the Sweeney-Neely era have mined a sprinkling of draft gems in Brandon Carlo (2015), Charlie McAvoy (2016), and Jeremy Swayman (2017), and a couple of decent prospects in Mason Lohrei (2020) and Matthew Poitras (2022).
However, overall, the pickings have been painfully slim and few.
2. Big swings and misses in the free agent market.
Before this past July, the worst of the lot were David Backes (five years/$30 million) and Matt Beleskey (five years/$19 million), with an honorable mention to John Moore (five years/$13.75 million). None of them came close to fulfilling the expected return on that $62.75 million investment. All eventually were shooed out in trades, which included having to surrender a first-round pick to the Ducks in order to unload Backes.
Then came the deep-pocket rollouts for Elias Lindholm (seven years/$47.275 million) and Nikita Zadorov (six years/$30 million). For $77.275 million, we were expecting something of the Marc Savard–Zdeno Chara kind of impact that grew out of their 2006 UFA acquisitions. It was the priciest UFA spending day in club history.
Thus far, man, what a revoltin’ development. It’s been hard many nights, postgame, to recall anything Lindholm did to impact play. Zadorov has been the league’s most penalized player (total minutes) for most of the season. Back when that was Terry O’Reilly, that was just fine. The New Z has shown some flashes the last four to six weeks, including impressive bursts of speed, but otherwise he’s been a pricier Moore.
3. Key assets departed with zero in return.
A topic rarely discussed, or even mentioned, but essential to understanding why the Bruins are where they are in January 2025.
Absent today from that last Cup stand in 2019: franchise faces Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, and Chara. Bergeron and Chara should soon be first-ballot HHOF inductees. All four have their name etched on the Cup.
All but Chara played their final NHL games as a Bruin. Big Z, then 43, signed as a free agent with the Capitals in 2020. All four left here in a span of 36 months, capped by the summer ’23 retirements of Bergeron and Krejci. They were deep, deep roster cuts.
No one (again, including here) would have made an intelligent case for any of those four — even if their contracts allowed — being traded late in their Boston tenures. It was a franchise still viewed as a legit Cup contender. They were all franchise stalwarts. Icons, in the cases of Bergeron and Chara.
However, the cost of their departures was only made worse by the fact nothing came back in return. Giant assets out, not even a pair of fifth-round picks in return.
A similar talent drain, and accompanying no return of assets, played out decades ago in the wake of the Islanders winning their four consecutive Cups, 1980-83.
Then-GM Bill Torrey dared only nibble at the edge of his core group, dealing away the lesser-talented Bob Bourne and John Tonelli. Otherwise, the New York played on, leading to retirements, or end-of-career waiver departures, of Denis Potvin, Mike Bossy, Brian Trottier, Clark Gillies, Bob Nystrom, Butch Goring, and Billy Smith. The cost of doing business was keeping them all there well beyond their “trade by’’ dates.
The Islanders dynasty officially ended in 1984, a loss in the Cup Final that proved to be the transition to the Oilers dynasty. All the aforementioned names were out of Uniondale by the spring of 1990, with Trottier the one to turn out the lights. New York has yet to make it back to a Cup Final. Careers died on the vine. Ditto for the Long Island franchise.
What Neely, Sweeney, and Jacobs are left with today is a team challenged to score and, many nights, challenged to defend.
This season marks the worst the Bruins have performed on the power play (based on percentage) in the 47 years the league has kept track of the stat. Entries on the man advantage have been poor, zone time fleeting, passing slow and off the mark, high-grade scoring chances few.
Prior to Saturday’s matinee in Ottawa, the Bruins had allowed 144 goals. Only four teams in the East had yielded more. If not for Swayman, back to his elite form the last few weeks, the club’s recent 0-5-1 skid might have made its way into February.
If there is an answer here beyond Swayman tossing a string of shutouts, it’s where it rested last July, with Lindholm performing like an elite pivot, driving one of the top two lines, and Zadorov stepping up to galvanize the D corps. That was the plan. What looked like a smart, solid bet in July has, thus far, been a profound disappointment.
Ultimately, if it proves Neely and Sweeney miscalculated the talent and forked out A-list dough for C-list talent, it will be left for Jacobs to decide what he’ll do about that. The five-year trend has not been promising.
On Wednesday night, the Executive Son backed both Neely and Sweeney with a vote of confidence. He believes this team can be a winner. So Sweeney and Neely are good. For now.
We’ve seen, though, that things have a way of changing quickly here in the Hub of Hockey, where, you know, the Cup is Job 1.
hunt for answers
Nashville money not well spent
Perhaps even more of a head-scratcher than the Bruins’ plight has been the struggle in Nashville, where general manager Barry Trotz spent north of $100 million this past summer to shore up the Predators’ roster by re-signing Filip Forsberg, plus adding UFA impact performers Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault up front and Brady Skjei on the backline.
Put it all together and whaddya get? Answer: possibly a lottery draft pick, with only the Sharks and Blackhawks separating the Predators from being dead last in the West.
It borders on unfathomable that a team with a franchise goaltender (Juuse Saros), a franchise blue liner (Roman Josi), and a Stamkos/Ryan O’Reilly combo to center the top six could go this bad for this long. They did open the new year with back-to-back wins on the road in Vancouver and Calgary, but dropped the next two . . . back on the road to rinse, repeat, and ruin.
Josi, 34, is the one who looks most off-register. The 2020 Norris winner as the league’s top defenseman, the savvy Josi averaged 80 points the past three seasons, his 240 second only to Cale Makar’s 242. He has been running about 25 percent below that rate all season, the overall pace of his game also not up to his standard. He was a career-worst minus-20 as the weekend approached.
Before weekend play, the Predators had the fewest five-on-five goals (60) in the league and ranked 20th on the power play. That’s not all on Josi, but when he’s not clicking on standard Josi time, the rest of the product is almost guaranteed to be out of synch, too. Not unlike the rare instances in Boston when Ray Bourque was even a shade off his game.
The Predators of a year ago, with lesser roster talent, also were destined for a playoff DNQ, particularly after a 9-2 shellacking by the Stars on home ice Feb. 15. That’s when coach Andrew Brunette and his charges pulled the plug on the club’s planned field trip for a U2 concert at the Sphere in Las Vegas. What followed was a rattle and hum of a 16-0-2 run across the next six weeks, boosting the Predators into the playoffs.
Following a recent loss to the Capitals, Brunette said the club’s scoring struggles have been “about as crazy’’ as he’s ever seen.
“It’s a little mystifying,’’ he said. “Pucks just aren’t going in.’’
If the Predators end up sellers at the deadline, the likeliest to go would be ex-University of Maine center Gustav Nyquist, 35, whose deal ($3.185 million cap hit) is up after this season. O’Reilly’s deal (two more years at $4.5 million) carries no trade restrictions, while Marchessault ($5.5 million) has the right to nix a deal to nearly half the teams in the league.
As for Josi ($9.06 million), he has three more years on his deal and cannot be dealt until after 2026-27. Like his game right now, he’s not going anywhere.
ETC.
Hutson catches Bowman’s eye
Legendary coach Scotty Bowman, during “The Sick Podcast — The Eye Test’’ hosted by Jimmy Murphy and Pierre McGuire, jumped aboard the Lane Hutson express train.
Bowman, 91, loves the Canadiens’ rookie defenseman — ex- of Boston University — and compared him, as we did here last week, with Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes.
“When they’re not on the ice, the game changes,’’ mused Bowman. “Same now with young Hutson.’’
Into weekend play, Hutson led all NHL rookies in point production (3-33–36), which also saw him tied among all NHL blue liners.
Younger brother Cole Hutson, a freshman blue liner with BU, went to the Capitals as the No. 43 pick in last June’s draft. Similar to his brother, Cole is small (5 feet 10 inches, 172 pounds). Lane is a smidge shorter and about 10 pounds lighter, which initially had some worried he’d be challenged to find space and leverage at the NHL levels. Thus far, Lane has left those concerns in the breeze.
“He’s got all the tools,’’ Bowman said. “I don’t know how he could be so good, so young.’’
Loose pucks
Ex-Bruins forward Taylor Hall, as quoted on nhl.com during the week, sounds resigned to getting dealt by the Blackhawks at the trade deadline, though he arrived from Boston hoping to be in Chicago “for years to come.’’ The Blackhawks again have plummeted to lottery position, ranked 32nd in the overall standings as of Saturday morning. Chicago hoped for much better in year No. 2 of Connor Bedard. Other likely trade deadline offloads include ex-Bruins Ryan Donato, Pat Maroon, and Craig Smith, as well as defenseman Alec Martinez, just recently back in action after being sidelined over a month with a neck injury. All are playing under expiring contracts . . . The well-traveled, and controversial, Tony DeAngelo and KHL St. Petersburg mutually agreed to cut ties, with the 29-year-old defenseman (right shot) reportedly headed back to North America. There is nothing stopping an NHL club in search of some offensive pop from signing the quick, skilled blue liner, taken No. 19 overall by the Lightning in 2014. But he comes with a caveat emptor tag, after his reported run-in with Rangers teammates led to his buyout only six games into a $4.8 million (AAV) deal in Manhattan. He was St. Petersburg’s top producing blue liner (6-26–32), but left after reportedly being benched in his final game . . . The Red Wings, stagnant under coach Derek Lalonde, held a minus-39 goal differential when GM Steve Yzerman finally sacked him in favor of veteran bench boss Todd McLellan. Detroit popped at plus-17 (44-27) over the next 10 games (8-2-0) and jiggled their way into wild-card contention. Numbers from their top producers in the first 10 under McLellan: Patrick Kane (6-9–15), Dylan Larkin (8-7–15), Lucas Raymond (5-11–16), and Alex DeBrincat (6-6–12). A striking metamorphosis similar to what happened in 2017 when the Bruins barreled to an 18-8-1 mark after Bruce Cassidy took over for Claude Julien.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.