Don Sweeney bristled at the question Friday evening: Has this moved from a retool to a rebuild?
“No,” the Bruins general manager responded. “…We didn't burn it down. We have a lot of guys. Now a couple of those guys, in particular, are injured that are big, big players and pieces for our group. Now we have to do a better job of building around it and charting the course that says we're back. And that's the job.”
“That's really what our fanbase needs to hear, that we're trying to put things in a position where we're right back in that competitive mindset very next year and doing things right,” Sweeney added later in his post-trade deadline press conference.
Sweeney is right to frame Friday – a day in which he traded away Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle and Brandon Carlo – that way. Neither Bruins fans nor Sweeney’s bosses want to hear that this process of getting back on the right track might take years, possibly a lot of them.
But make no mistake: whether Friday marked the start of a retool or a rebuild for the Bruins will not be determined by what Sweeney said. It will be determined by what he and the rest of this organization's management team does in the months and years ahead.
The possibility absolutely exists for this to be a shorter-term retool, where the Bruins get better this offseason, play better next season, and position themselves to be buyers rather than sellers at this time next year.
The possibility also exists for this to turn into a longer-term rebuild, where the Bruins get stuck in the messy middle or slide further towards the bottom of the league and watch the prime years of David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy slowly slip away.
Sweeney and the rest of Bruins management have a lot of work to do, and there’s a lot they need to get right in the multi-step process to come. The future of this franchise, not to mention their jobs, depends on it.
This week was the first step. Overall, it would be hard to argue that Sweeney didn’t get good value. In four of the five trades he made where he sold a player off the active roster, he could rightfully claim a “win.” This was a seller’s market, and he took advantage of it.
Getting a first-round pick, a fourth-round pick and a top forward prospect (Fraser Minten) for Carlo is pretty damn good. So was the Coyle trade, which saw the Bruins land a 26-year-old middle-six center (Casey Mittelstadt), a promising 18-year-old goal-scoring prospect (Will Zellers) and a second-round pick.
Getting two draft picks and an OK defense prospect (Max Wanner) for an injured Trent Frederic, whom they weren’t going to re-sign, is rock solid. Getting any three pieces for Justin Brazeau is commendable, even if none of Jakub Lauko, Marat Khusnutdinov or a sixth-round pick are real needle-movers.
Of course, the biggest trade of them all (the Marchand trade) is the one where the return (a second-round pick that could turn into a first if certain conditions are met) looks extremely underwhelming. Sweeney said Marchand’s upper-body injury complicated trade talks. There is a case to be made that getting something for him now is still better than potentially losing him for nothing after the season, although that might be a tough sell to some fans who just saw one of their all-time favorite players traded away for a pick that might not even get made until 2028.
This was a hard step because of the quality of the players and the people who got traded. The next steps are going to be hard because Boston management now needs to turn these new assets into impact players and core pieces of the next era of Bruins hockey.
Will Mittelstadt be the bona fide second-line center he appeared to be trending towards, or will he be the player who struggled in Colorado this season and looked more like a third-liner? Will Minten be able to tap into more of the offensive potential scouts believe he has and develop into a top-six player, or will he ultimately settle in as a hard-working bottom-sixer?
The Bruins added four picks in the first or second round this week. Will they hit on them? Will they use them in trades to acquire more NHL-ready players? Did they find a gem in Zellers, or will he just be a kid who scores a bunch in the USHL (he currently leads the league in goals) but can’t translate it to the pros?
The Bruins would have the ninth overall pick in the 2025 draft based on points percentage as of Saturday morning. They could end up with an even better pick than that if they continue to slide down the standings after Friday’s firesale. Can they land a future star? Maybe even the legitimate No. 1 center of the future they so desperately covet?
They are slated to have nearly $29 million in cap space this summer. Will they spend it wisely and not whiff on any big-ticket signings like they did this past summer with Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov? Speaking of those two, will they be better going forward? Will Jeremy Swayman bounce back and be the No. 1 goalie he needs to be? Will Mason Lohrei and Matt Poitras take sizable steps forward? Will Morgan Geekie continue to produce like he has since December if the Bruins extend him?
Maybe most importantly, are Pastrnak and McAvoy ready for this to be their team? Are they ready to lead this new era? Will they have enough help around them, not just on the ice but in the locker room?
That’s a lot of questions that require answers. If Sweeney and the Bruins answer most of them in the affirmative, then yes, this could be a fairly quick retool and the future will look bright.
But if the missteps pile up, and if these young players and prospects don’t quite develop the way the Bruins are hoping, well… that’s how this process gets bogged down and dragged out. That’s how you end up no better three years from now than you are today. That’s how you end up with Pastrnak and McAvoy wondering if this is really the best place to spend the rest of their careers.
Friday was a jolt to this organization’s system. It may very well have been a necessary one, and a good first step. The influx of young talent and what it could do in the years ahead is exciting. The thought of what happens if the Bruins get these next steps wrong is terrifying.
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