Though it might not be wildly popular with a frustrated fan base coming off the worst season in more than a decade, the Boston Bruins did the right thing in signing general manager Don Sweeney to a two-year contract extension that was announced by the club on Tuesday.
The Black and Gold rolled out the two-year deal as Sweeney was entering the last season of his contract in the 2025-26 campaign, and without such action they were poised to have a lame duck GM this year after a lame duck head coach and lame duck captain really didn’t work out well last season. There were also reports that discussions with some head coaching candidates were being adversely impacted by the uncertain contractual status of the general manager doing the coach hiring.
One veteran coaching candidate, Rick Tocchet, was believed to have gone with the Flyers over the Bruins at least in part because of the unknown surrounding Sweeney’s future, and that makes total sense for any coach entering an unresolved long-term situation.
🚨 Sources reveal Rick Tocchet didn’t pursue the Bruins’ head coach role due to uncertainty around GM Don Sweeney’s future and firing record.
— RG (@TheRGMedia) May 18, 2025
via @MurphysLaw74
Full story ➡️ https://t.co/vo2AKrGGoZ
But none of this even mentions the 458-233-91 regular season record posted by the Bruins during Sweeney’s 10 years running the front office, or the team having earned postseason births in eight out of those 10 seasons. The 1,007 points and .644 point percentage are tied for the best in the National Hockey League since his appointment to the role starting with the 2015-16 season.
Sure, there is no Cup to go with those gaudy numbers. But it also can’t be denied that the Bruins have been consistently excellent under Sweeney’s leadership, even as there have been positive and negative moves during his tenure.
“Don has navigated a disappointing period for our club with conviction, purpose, and a clear vision toward the future of the Boston Bruins,” said Bruins President Cam Neely in a press release. “He made difficult decisions around the trade deadline with the confidence they will pay dividends as we craft a path back to contention. He is continuing to follow that track with a robust and thorough search for our club’s next head coach, while also preparing for the upcoming NHL Draft and free agent signing period.
“I am confident in the plan he has followed these past few months – and excited for what’s to come for our team. The expectations in Boston have always been clear. It’s about winning championships.”
Sweeney was named the NHL’s general manager of the year following his team’s run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2019, and he was named GM for Team in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, where Team Canada won a championship this past winter. There have been obvious areas where the Bruins need improvement as the overall draft record, particularly with first-round draft picks, has been spotty under Sweeney’s tenure, as players like Urho Vaakanainen, Johnny Beecher and Fabian Lysell have failed to live up to where they were picked.
And both of Sweeney’s big free agent signings last summer, Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, got off to shaky starts before both key players stabilized and found their games in the second half of the year.
There has also been criticism that Sweeney has gone through three quality hockey coaches during his tenure, with Claude Julien, Bruce Cassidy and Jim Montgomery all fired under the GM’s watch. Some of that may be valid when it comes to the Cassidy firing that nobody saw coming, and was almost immediately followed by the coach winning his own Stanley Cup as the bench boss for the Vegas Golden Knights.
It's hard not to view that as an organizational mistake where they gave in to players looking for a softer approach, but then again, that team set the NHL record for regular season excellence before spitting up in the playoffs.
But the bottom line is that Sweeney has produced consistently strong hockey teams before things went completely sideways this past season, a sign perhaps that the Bruins roster sorely needed the retool spurred on by trading Brandon Carlo, Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle and Trent Frederic among others at the trade deadline. Sweeney made all the right moves to load up for a Stanley Cup in 2023 that would mark Patrice Bergeron’s last season in a Bruins uniform, but it was the players that ultimately didn’t get the job done in falling to the Florida Panthers in the postseason’s first round.
There is considerable pressure on Sweeney to quickly turn things around after collecting an array of draft picks at the deadline, and with the Bruins looking at a ton of available salary cap space this summer. But it all starts with a head coaching search where names like Marco Sturm, Mitch Love and Misha Donskov are among the top candidates after familiar coaching names like Tocchet, Mike Sullivan and Joel Quenneville took other NHL gigs.
There are other takes, of course, like NBC Sports Boston’s Mike Felger trying to thread the sports take needle by saying the Bruins are choosing simply going for the playoffs, over going for a championship, by sticking with Sweeney.
But wasn’t Sweeney going for a championship in 2023 when he traded for Dmitry Orlov, Garnett Hathaway, Tyler Bertuzzi and others to load up for a wagon Bruins team where it was the players, and a wide-eyed head coach in Jim Montgomery, that ultimately failed the championship test?
The players, and the coach, were the ones that ultimately choked in the first round of the playoffs as management was “all in," but somehow that seems to be forgotten amongst fans angry over an NHL Draft that took place 10 years ago and unwilling to accede that Father Time ultimately did the most damage pushing Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Zdeno Chara and now Marchand off the roster.
Either way, Sweeney has consistently said that he’ll keep trying to build a winner as long as he’s the one pulling the levers for the Boston Bruins.
“We've had a lot of success [in the] regular season. We've gotten to the pinnacle one time in 2019, and we have to accept, I have to accept, the responsibility that this team significantly underperformed [this past season]. And the frustration of the fan base, the unique position that Cam and I both have as [former] players, we know what this city craves in its hockey team, and we need to deliver that,” said Sweeney, back at the end-of-season press conference. “I think we've done a good job over the course of my tenure as General Manager to try and to aspire to put the most competitive team we can possibly put together each and every year.
“We have not hit a reset in quite some time, and pragmatically, we chose that decision at this year's deadline to start to deepen a prospect pool, to look forward to what we have to do to hit the reset, to reestablish a core group and to get us back to the competitive level that this organization deserves, the city deserves and our fan base deserves.”
That’s the mission for Sweeney and he now has three years to deliver on it as several massive decisions await this season with a head coaching search, a No. 7 overall pick in the first round and a wide-open free agency period await a Black and Gold group desperately in search of some positive developments right now.
