There are no two-way around it. The Bruins are in it right now and there will be scrutiny, tough questions and an endless supply of pressure applied until they can work their way out of their currently undesirable situation.
Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs, President Cam Neely and general manager Don Sweeney faced the media on Wednesday morning at TD Garden to conduct the end-of-season press conference and, to put it mildly, it didn’t go all that well. Bruins management and ownership were accountable and confirmed what everybody else knows after a hockey season where the bottom fell out, and the B’s lost 21 of their last 28 games after trading away a number of high-profile veteran players in a clear roster reset.
The message: Last season wasn’t close to good enough for fans that continue to shell out top dollar for game tickets, and it was “embarrassing” to the group of Bruins leaders, in the words of Jacobs.
The subtext was also very clear, as Sweeney is going to get a chance to turn things around for the Bruins, entering the final year of his current contract in Boston without guarantees it will go beyond that.
“This year was very frustrating for all of us, especially our fans. We have high expectations, and we didn't meet them this year, we fell way short. And you know, it's disappointing for us sitting up here, it's disappointing for our fan base. They deserve better,” admitted Neely. “They've supported us for, you know, 100 plus years. This gives us an opportunity to regroup a little bit, reset and build back better. That's what I'm thinking we're going to do, that's what I entrust Don to do. Don has been a great GM in this League.
“Has everything gone, right? No, it hasn't. That's just sports, but there's been more good than bad. Don and his group, in my opinion, have earned the right to get us back to where we all want to be.”
Clearly there’s some disconnect between a management group that believes they can quickly rebound with Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm returning to good health, Jeremy Swayman expected to rebound after a lost season and David Pastrnak in the prime of his game-breaking NHL excellence, and an aggravated fan base that believes things are at least partly in their current bad place after poor drafts, key players lost to retirement and Father Time, and some poor acquisitions like Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm after signing them to massive free agent contracts. Bruins management believes they can be back in the thick of the playoff hunt next season if they make the right decisions in trades, free agency and the draft this spring and summer.
“We've had this conversation. Are the playoffs in the discussion for next year? And the response that I got from both Cam and Don [Sweeney] was absolutely,” said Jacobs. “We feel like we have a team that's very…we have a team that we feel if everyone needs to stay healthy, we can make the playoffs absolutely and make a push.
“If Cam [Neely] and Don [Sweeney] came to me and said, ‘Listen, we do think we have a path towards a championship team, but we need patience’, of course, we can be patient. I do feel, though and we've spoken at great length about this, the team that we currently have, healthy, with the additions we intend to make this summer, I anticipate that we'll have a playoff team and play meaningful hockey at this time of year in 2026.”
It feels like the trust factor in this group isn’t quite as robust with the fan base as it’s been in the past.
It also feels like a lot of the game plan is based on hope right now with the Black and Gold. The hope that McAvoy and Lindholm will bounce back fully healthy and functional at their previous workhorse levels, which is a pretty fair bet. Hope that Swayman’s season is one that can just basically be tossed out and that he’ll be far better with the experience of last season, and perhaps with Joonas Korpisalo pushing him a little bit more.
The hope that Lindholm and Zadorov will be even better next season, and that Morgan Geekie can continue to progress into a gritty, skilled top-6 guy that has great chemistry with David Pastrnak. The hope that young guys like Matt Poitras, Fraser Minten and Mason Lohrei will be able to make a big step up next season. The hope that they can make the right choice with their next head coach and find the kind of innovative, competitive and strong-minded leader that this young crew is probably going to need. The hope that they can make the right free agent signings and trades with a boatload of draft picks and cap space to make rapid improvements if the right situations present themselves.
That’s a lot of hoping and a good deal of line items that need to be fixed, but at least Sweeney seems to have a handle on what this hockey club needs after watching one player literally carrying the Bruins offensively last season. It’s pretty easy to ascertain what needs to be fixed with a hockey team that finished 27th in the NHL (2.71 goals per game) in offense, 29th on the power play (15.2 percent), 26th in defense (3.31 goals per game) and nothing to write home about on the penalty kill either.
“It probably starts there in the health of our group. We have to find, either through [free agency and trades or] the development of our current players, some extra scoring potential, and we have to probably address the wing positions that will deepen the scoring ability that showed up ineffectively this year in the way the roster was built,” said Sweeney. “We didn't score enough. We put a lot of pressure, because our power play was dormant for most of the season, and when we didn't defend with the structure and conviction that we have in years past.”
None of this takes into account Neely and Sweeney appearing defensive and quick to fire back at the press conference, particularly when their draft-and-development system over the last 10 years was taken to task yet again. Or when they were questioned about the head coaching department having gone through Jack Adams winners Claude Julien, Bruce Cassidy and Jim Montgomery during their tenure.
That’s to be expected after a season failure on the level of the 2024-25 group and with Sweeney entering the final year of his contract with so much that needs to be accomplished this offseason.
The stress level is very high and very real on Causeway Street even as Jacobs, Neely and Sweeney tried to project the feeling that they were speaking as a unified group with optimism that things are again on the upswing. The only thing that’s going to relieve that pressure is good, sound, hockey decisions built on other good, sound, hockey decisions with a little good luck thrown in for good measure after a star-crossed hockey season where nothing went right.
If that doesn’t happen, then perhaps it might be some different voices speaking about the Bruins a year from today discussing the pathway forward for the Black and Gold.