BRIGHTON – There was perhaps some surprise among Bruins fandom this week when it became clear there would be no Bruins front office shakeup once the B’s had wrapped up their season with an overtime loss to the Devils.
There was a Wednesday morning announcement that Cam Neely, Don Sweeney and Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs would meet with the media next week, and a statement from Jacobs essentially giving Bruins management a vote of confidence from ownership.
“Over the past decade, hockey operations, on-ice talent, hard work and commitment brought Bruins hockey to a level of success we are proud of – but we are not satisfied. Our goal of winning another Stanley Cup remains unchanged,” said Jacobs. “It’s clear that we have a lot of work to do, and that work is already underway. Despite how difficult it has been to say goodbye to some of our most beloved Bruins this season, these decisions were rooted in the best interests of the future of our franchise.
“Together with our hockey operations leaders, we are actively preparing for the NHL Draft and anticipate a top-tier selection with more draft capital in hand than we have had in recent years. We are also eager to bolster our roster through free agency and open the door for some of our young prospects to take the next steps in their development. There is only one way forward from here; expectations and accountability are higher than ever. I’m incredibly proud to be a Bostonian. I take even greater pride in being a Boston Bruin. Together with leadership, we are embarking on an ambitious journey to restore glory to this great franchise.”
A message from #NHLBruins CEO Charlie Jacobs: pic.twitter.com/26mKSGPp7G
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) April 16, 2025
The support for Neely and Sweeney is understandable from a clear-eyed perspective when you factor in the longtime TD Garden sellout streak, the eight straight playoff appearances under Sweeney and the longtime expectation there was going to be a painful and unavoidable period of adjustment once Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci all moved into retirement.
A resounding thud of a season was going to happen for the Bruins, and quite honestly, many people thought the bill had come due last season when they still managed to produce a 109-point season and a playoff series win over the Maple Leafs.
But it also absolves, or ignores, some serious miscalculations by that B’s front office group this time around, after it was the players themselves who couldn’t get things done with a loaded roster during the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. That failure was undoubtedly on a group of players that choked in the first round against Florida, and on a head coach in Jim Montgomery, who seemed like the playoff moment got much too big for him.
This time around, though, so many situations were impacted by issues that probably could have been managed better by the Bruins as Sweeney now heads into the final year of his contract with the Black and Gold. It started with the goaltending situation where the Bruins rushed into trading Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators before inking Jeremy Swayman to a new contract.
Ostensibly, they did it because they wanted a first-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft that they indeed landed in a pretty solid Ullmark trade. But the Bruins went out and drafted a player (Dean Letourneau) in the first round who didn’t look ready to play at Boston College after finishing with three assists in 36 games for a loaded college hockey team.
Maybe the 19-year-old Letourneau will develop into a blue-chip prospect, but that will pretty clearly be two or three seasons down the road if it ever happens at all for a very raw 6-foot-7 center that couldn’t even dominate Bruins development camp competition.
What we do know is that the Bruins lost any negotiating leverage they had with Swayman, and the ugly, protracted negotiations that followed played a starring role in derailing Boston’s season. The training camp holdout led to a lost season for Swayman, who finished with .892 save percentage and 3.11 goals against average marks that were easily the worst of his career.
Swayman endured a humbling, learning experience type of season where he played 58 games and took on a No. 1 goalie workload, but did it all while planning to be a much better goaltender next season.
“I think we're allowed to talk about [the missed training camp hurting his season]. We're allowed to make that apparent, but it's a long season. One thing that I really want to be is a guy and a goalie that can stay in the moment and really focus on the here and now and not let past stuff affect my present,” said Swayman. “Moving forward, I can't wait to be a part of training camp and use it as an extremely valuable piece to start a season, having compete, obviously, getting to know the guys right before the season starts, and setting a standard. And I can't wait to be a part of it again.”
All of that is great, optimistic talk, but the only thing that’s going to stabilize Swayman’s standing in the locker room is performance that lines up with the $8.25 million salary he leveraged the Bruins into giving him.
That wasn’t the only misstep, though.
There were also the unresolved contracts for both Montgomery and Brad Marchand entering the 2024-25 NHL season once they got through the Swayman holdout.
Jim Montgomery lighting into Brad Marchand on the Bruins bench after a turnover by the Bruins captain led to a short-loved Utah goal pic.twitter.com/EBjQeJr1gl
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) October 20, 2024
Joe Sacco was named associate head coach prior to the season, perhaps in part because of the uncertainty of Montgomery as a lame duck coach who, it feels like in hindsight, had one foot out the door ready to return to the St. Louis Blues team he was with prior to Boston.
The situation explains the lukewarm training camp that clearly didn’t have the Bruins ready to start the season, and the ensuing 20 games that ultimately spurred on the head coaching change. Sacco got the team playing a better brand of hockey, but a lot of the same problems persisted for a team that didn’t get off to the strong start they’ve been accustomed to in the past.
The offense was sparse outside of David Pastrnak, the defense was porous, the special teams were abysmal, and the goaltending no longer performed at a level that could hide any of it.
“There's a lot of things. I mean, obviously the coaching change, and just a slow start. I think that's the main thing for us. If you look at New Jersey and Minnesota [getting into the playoffs], you know, just because of how great their start was, and they were kind of hanging in at the end, and they got in, it's hard,” said Nikita Zadorov. “I'm going to improve, for sure, and so does every other guy on this team. You know, it's a big summer for us. Obviously, it's not where the Boston Bruins want to be. The Boston Bruins want to be in the playoffs every year, compete for the Stanley Cup. I think that's the main goal for us.
“Obviously there's a lot of talk. There's today, and we're going to get together in the leadership group and [go over] everything over the summer and talk it out, what we need to do, how we need to pull guys in, and then what we need to do to be successful next year.”
Then there was the Marchand contract, which also had a lame duck captain presiding over the team this season. The sense was that Marchand wanted to be paid at a level close to the $7.75 million the Bruins shelled out for a struggling Elias Lindholm, and that obviously never happened prior to his stunning trade to the Florida Panthers.
Did that cause some kind of friction in the Bruins' dressing room, perhaps even more than the overblown stuff with Marchand and David Pastrnak? We may never know but having the contracts of two of your team’s most important leaders (head coach, captain) unresolved going into last season obviously didn’t end well at all.
What’s the point of all this?
Sweeney has one more year remaining on his contract as general manager and he’s getting a chance to retool this Bruins roster and get things moving in the right direction. The Bruins' general manager did a masterful job of amassing assets at the NHL trade deadline while shipping out Trent Frederic, Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo and Marchand, among others.
He has shown on plenty of occasions that he can rise to the occasion at the NHL trade deadline or on July 1 free agency to get the team what it needs to compete. But he’ll need to be even better than that this time around with a hockey club that has more needs than perhaps ever before.
Sweeney has had his share of hits and misses during his entire run in Boston, but he’s generally done a very good job up until last summer when he ran headlong into a number of sticky contract negotiations and two big ticket free agent signings (Zadorov, Lindholm) that didn’t quite live up to their hype.
The coach has been fired (several times over in his tenure) and most of the players have been traded after a disastrous, lost season. The blame and accountability have been spread to some other places for the failings of this past season, but now the pressure is squarely on the Bruins' front office to turn this thing around quickly.
There won’t be anywhere else to shift the blame if the Bruins can’t utilize free agency, trades, a talented core group that should rebound and some very good draft picks to turn this Black and Gold ship around quickly. Sweeney is on the clock at this point, and we don’t mean the one utilized at the NHL Draft where the Bruins are assured of a top-10 pick in the first round for the first time in a long time.
ONE TIMERS
*Pretty sobering exit interview with fourth line energy center Mark Kastelic while the Bruins cleaned out their lockers this week as he revealed he’d been dealing with concussion symptoms since the first couple of weeks in January.
Kastelic was concussed on this late-game crosscheck from Tampa Bay’s Emil Lilleberg and then fought Zack Ostapchuk in his first game back from injury playing against his old Senators team in Ottawa for the first time.
I would suspect that Lilleberg is going to get a fine for the cross-check on Kastelic, but...
— Matt Marchese (@Mattymar89) January 10, 2025
What is the expectation there from Kastelic? You can see he looks at the clock before to see if he's got time to start something and tries to make a late hitpic.twitter.com/ciE0BMFfHL
That is not an ideal sequence for a hard-nosed grinder that, in retrospect, admitted he was trying to tough it out through concussion symptoms he described as “pressure in his head” and “not feeling right.”
Kastelic played 17 more games after the OT loss to Ottawa and had just one point in that stretch before finally shutting things down after the March 20 road loss to the Vegas Golden Knights where he flew back to Boston from the road. Kastelic said that nothing really happened in that game against Vegas, but that’s when he finally came to grips with the post-concussion symptoms he’d been battling for a while.
“Nothing happened in that Vegas game, it was more just not feeling like myself and having to kind of be honest with how I was feeling, because it's not something I feel like was worth pushing through when it's a head injury. It's been really hard on just trying to tell myself I'm okay, but being honest with myself,” said Kastelic. “It was a hard conversation I had to have [with myself]. I think it was for the best, though, long term, because I want to have a long, healthy career, and I'm confident I'll do that, and I think that was necessary. But like I said, I'm feeling a lot better now.
“I think time will be to my advantage coming up here over the summer, and I don't think that's something I'm going to think about ever. I think I'm past that point now, and I only know how to play one way. I don't think there's any way I can change my style of game. I only know how to play one way and it's frustrating to kind of be dealing with [concussion symptoms]. So now going forward, I don't think there'll be any concerns in my mind. I'll be just as confident out there to be doing what I've done my whole career up to this point and being physical and not afraid to mix it up if I have to. I don't think that's going to be in my mind at all.”
It's good news that the 25-year-old is saying all the right things and has turned the corner with the concussion symptoms, but this has to be a concern for a player the Bruins just signed to a three-year contract to play with fearless physicality and the kind of rugged style he showed in his first season in Boston. Just put it on the things to watch for next season concerning the Black and Gold with the hope that Kastelic returns to full health as a player that absolutely plays to the Bruins' identity.
*At the end of his second NHL season, it feels like it’s time for the Bruins to cut bait on Johnny Beecher.
The 23-year-old finished with three goals and 11 points in 78 games while pretty much being a staple on the fourth line this season. It was a step down from the seven goals and 10 points he produced in 52 games last season, and in truth a really difficult season in terms of generating even occasional offense as a bottom-6 forward.
After breaking up a lengthy goal-scoring drought in January, Beecher finished the season goalless in 33 straight games and had just two assists while doing little aside from winning faceoffs and occasionally showing off pretty good skating speed. He looks the part of a former first-round pick with the powerful way he skates and his 6-foot-3, 220-pound size, but he just isn’t enough of a factor with or without the puck to justify an NHL spot.
This probably isn’t a surprise as he’s a player who has never produced offense at a high level anywhere in his hockey career.
“Definitely the offensive side of things [needs improvement]. Looking back on the season, I think there's a lot of chances to just bear down a little bit harder and contribute more on the score sheet,” said Beecher during B’s breakup day. “Just doing things like carrying pucks through the neutral zone, using my speed a little bit more, testing D wide, and keep using my strengths, just continuing to try and win draws in the D zone, staying dialed in on the penalty kill and all.”
Beecher is a restricted free agent with arbitration rights this offseason and it wouldn’t surprise this humble hockey writer a bit if the Bruins don’t even tender him a contract to stay with the organization. They have seen enough over two seasons to know there are better fourth-line options out there and it doesn’t look like Beecher is ever going to turn into whatever they envisioned when they selected him 30th overall in the first round back in the 2019 NHL Draft.
Fun fact: The first three players taken after Beecher at the top of the second round were Shane Pinto (51 goals, 107 points), Arthur Kaliyev (38 goals, 75 points) and Bobby Brink (23 goals 68 points), who all have developed into much better prospects and way more productive players at the NHL level than Beecher.
*Still waiting for that big Wednesday resignation that WEEI’s Greg Hill said was coming out of the Bruins front office this week.
Our guy Greg Hill is hearing whispers that there will be a resignation in the Bruins' front office on Wednesday.
— Jones & Keefe (@JonesandKeefe) April 14, 2025
We have an idea of who that individual may be... https://t.co/eteruOZ9eE pic.twitter.com/3wc0D3wWXv
Maybe it was somebody in the janitorial staff? Thanks for reading this week, as always, and we’ll see you at the rink.
