Boston Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs, president Cam Neely and general manager Don Sweeney fielded questions from the media for nearly an hour Wednesday at TD Garden during their annual end-of-season press conference. At the end of that hour, questions about expectations and accountability – two of the day’s biggest topics – remained.
“Let me be clear: the results from last season are absolutely unacceptable, and accountability has never been higher,” Jacobs declared in his opening statement.
What form that accountability is taking was not made clear in the 50-plus minutes that followed. What was made clear is that Neely and Sweeney remain safe in Jacobs’ eyes.
“I'm proud to sit alongside these two gentlemen, because I know we've got the right people in the right seats on the bus to bring this franchise back to glory,” Jacobs said. “…Cam and Don, in their respective roles as president and general manager, have proven that they can take a franchise that has missed the playoffs and build one for sustained success. It is my opinion that we can do it again, and this time get over the hump and become a Stanley Cup champion. I don't think it's an accident that the Bruins are tied for the best winning percentage in the National Hockey League since Don Sweeney's hiring. We've made the postseason eight years in a row prior to this spring, and we've made a lot of historic achievements along this journey.”
The Bruins have held coaches accountable by firing them. Sweeney replaced Jack Adams Award winner Claude Julien with future Jack Adams Award winner Bruce Cassidy in 2017. Then he fired Cassidy in 2022 and hired Jim Montgomery, another future Jack Adams winner. Montgomery lasted just two-plus seasons, one of them a record-setting regular season, before getting fired in November and replaced by Joe Sacco on an interim basis. Sweeney will get to conduct another coaching search this spring, one that is already underway.
Jacobs made it abundantly clear that he believes his president and GM have a longer shelf life than the coaches they churn through.
“There's been a narrative that I think we should address,” Jacobs began when asked why coaches are held accountable in a different way than Neely and Sweeney. “I believe there have been three head coaches of the Boston Bruins over the past, I'm going to say 10, more like 15 years when you count Claude. Sweens just mentioned that we hired Bruce Cassidy for Providence, and he coached down there and then came up and coached us, the Boston Bruins, for some time.
“I think the shelf life of a head coach is significantly shorter than one of a general manager or a team president. It's the nature of the beast of the job. You can have players’ attention for a select window of time, and then, unfortunately, sometimes you lose it. It's our… it's Don's job to make sure that he's got his hand on the pulse of whether or not the players tune him out, the head coach. And I feel he's done a pretty good job of measuring that.”
Surely, though, president and GM are not lifetime appointments, right? There must be benchmarks Sweeney and Neely need to hit, and they certainly did not hit them this season. So, what do they need to do next season? And what are the consequences if they don’t?
It was again hard to get a straight answer. Asked if the Bruins need to be back in the playoffs next season, Jacobs would only go so far as to say he expects they will be.
“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 was, ‘Absolutely,’” Jacobs said. “We feel like we have a team that we feel if, again, everyone needs to stay healthy, can make the playoffs, absolutely, and make a push. … I do feel, 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 will have a playoff team and play meaningful hockey at this time of year in 2026.”
“The biggest thing for me,” Neely added, “is I don't want everybody just to focus on making the playoffs. Yes, we do want to make the playoffs, but we have bigger goals in mind than just making the playoffs. It's not just about getting in and getting bounced in round one. We're here to understand that we have to build a team that's going to compete for Stanley Cups. Don and his group have done it before. I have full confidence we can do it again. You know, the game is so fickle. We win in 2019 in Game 7 at home here, I don't know what the conversations are externally after that. But, you know, I think it's not just about getting into the playoffs here, it's about winning.”
Neely has his own decision to make. Sweeney is his charge, and the GM is entering the final year of his contract. If Neely has “full confidence” in Sweeney, then presumably there is a desire to extend him, right? Well, in the words of the great Lee Corso, not so fast, my friend.
“I’ve given a lot of thought. I'm still contemplating what the best course of action is,” Neely said when asked if he wants to extend Sweeney now or let it ride into the season. “But as I mentioned, I really feel like Don has done a good job here for the most part. Him and his staff have been very collaborative. I like when I sit in their meetings how collaborative they are. Obviously, the year that we had is a huge disappointment, and that falls on all of us, not just Don. That falls on all of us. I'll figure that out in the near future with that particular question, whether we're going to re-sign Don or not. But he's got another year left.”
So, maybe Sweeney gets to oversee a multi-year retool, or maybe one year is all that’s promised. Maybe he needs to get the Bruins back to the playoffs next year, or maybe he doesn’t. Fans who were hoping for clear answers and a clear vision Wednesday were likely disappointed. And if they were hoping for the accountability and humility that seemed to at least be present for Jacobs’ opening statement, well, that didn’t really last either.
A big part of the Bruins’ offseason will be the draft, where Boston will pick no lower than seventh. It will be the organization’s highest pick since at least 2010, and one they absolutely need to hit on with the team in desperate need of young, impact players. But when the subject of the Bruins’ past failures in drafting and development under Sweeney’s tenure was brought up, instead of owning it, Neely got defensive.
“Can you just elaborate on that, Kevin?” Neely countered in a combative exchange with the Boston Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont. “Where we've picked and who we picked and how it's turned out?”
“Those draft picks, have they developed, have they come in, have they come online the way you want?” Dupont responded.
“Obviously, you want to hit on all your picks, there's no question,” Neely said. “I mean, the work that the scouts do throughout the course of the year, they put in a lot of time and effort. They understand the players as best they can. We get the information from the scouts. Don ultimately ends up making the picks with information that he gets from the scouts throughout the year.
“But I think that our drafting and developing, the narrative there is a little off, and it's been going on for quite some time. Goes back to ‘15. It was really unfair to Don. By the time Don got hired, it was late May. Draft was late June. He wasn't even probably thinking about being a general manager of the Boston Bruins at the time.
“…Other picks after that, I think we've got a number of players, not necessarily playing with the Boston Bruins, but a number of players that we have drafted that have played NHL hockey games. We have traded those picks, we have traded some of the prospects to try and improve our club to win Stanley Cups. So, the narrative that we – we're not hitting on all our draft picks. No one is. You pick in the top 10, you better hit. We haven't done that in quite some time.”
Does that sound like the accountability Jacobs was referencing? It certainly didn’t sound like an embrace of criticism, which is something else Jacobs said ownership and management are doing. It kind of sounded more like excuse-making and scout-blaming, to be honest. At least we got one clear mandate at the end there: “You pick in the top 10, you better hit.” Well, the Bruins are picking in the top 10 this year, so Sweeney and his staff better hit on it.
There is also a clear mandate to be better offensively. Sweeney referenced the need to “evolve offensively” multiple times, including when discussing what kind of coach he’s looking for. He also said that adding on the wing will be a priority.
Beyond that, there wasn’t a whole lot of clarity on what Neely needs to see from Sweeney over the next 12 months, or what Jacobs needs to see from both of them.
“Today is a time to look forward, to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” Jacobs said at one point. “And I believe strongly that we can bring the Stanley Cup back here to Boston. I feel we're in a great position to do so, and I invite our incredible and loyal fans to come along for the ride with us, because together, we can do this.”
There you go. Come along for the ride. Trust that there’s a Stanley Cup at the end of it. Ignore all the glaring issues with the vehicle that’s carrying you there.