With Tuesday at noon ushering in this summer’s opening of NHL free agency, there was hope from Bruins fans that the team would go out and rebuild with the top talent available.
With many of their key veterans being moved at the trade deadline in early March and with a bevy of cap space to work with, it felt like a perfect time for general manager Don Sweeney to garner back some goodwill from a fanbase that just watched one of its franchise legends hoist a Stanley Cup for a hated rival in June as their team selected seventh overall in the draft.
Instead, the Bruins seemingly prioritized signing mid-level veterans who profile closer to third and fourth line help than they do players who can help bolster scoring next season.
Sure, a six-year extension for an ascending player like Morgan Geekie is nice, but it’s not exactly going to shift the 2026 Stanley Cup odds in Boston’s favor any time soon.
So what’s the silver lining here for a franchise with its arrow pointed in the wrong direction for the first time since the early aughts?
WEEI’s Scott McLaughlin may have given Bruins fans a glass-half-full comp to use at their 4th of July cookouts this year.
“I think there are similarities [with the Bruins] to the Patriots,” said McLaughlin on Wednesday’s Jones and Keefe. “I think what their hope is - and we'll see if Marco Sturm and his staff are capable of this - their hope is that last year was the 'Jerod Mayo year,' where everything's kind of just a mess, and Marco Sturm is their version of Mike Vrabel.
“Where, at the very least, it's going to be a professional program, and guys are going to be ready to go and ready to work. And there's going to be a clear vision in place starting day one of training camp. That's the hope. As you said, Marco Sturm is a first time NHL head coach, so whether he's actually capable of that, we're all about to find out.”
Look, if you’re not a fan of Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, then this comp does you no good. And for the glass-half-empty crowd - sure, Vrabel hasn’t coached a single game for the Patriots yet. Understood.
But in being around the operation throughout the offseason, I can tell you that it all has an air of “adult” that was missing during Jerod Mayo’s lone season at the helm in Foxborough:
- It appears like more coaching is being done on the practice fields than during the previous regime, highlighted by Vrabel running around in a penny on the scout team
- Press conferences aren’t filled with constant contradictions and a need for carving out time to walk things back every single week
- Their best receiver gets caught on social media handing out an unidentified substance to a group of women on a boat, and yet the train remains on the tracks. Vrabel nonchalantly sidesteps the questions, and brings the focus back to the practice field (and clearly handled things with Stefon Diggs behind the scenes in a way that kept his messaging above board as well)
All of that to go along with a free agent class that includes some of the best players at their respective positions in the league, and it’s as if Patriots fans are coming off a 10+ win season the way they’re talking about this team ahead of training camp.
This same excitement can’t be said for Sturm. The same ingredients aren’t in the mix, and it will be a bit before we see his impact on the team.
But if Sturm can stabilize this team as it begins its rebuild/retool, it will go a long way towards making Bruins fans feel better about the future of a franchise that has only won one Stanley Cup since 1972.
And to be fair - Vrabel still needs to prove that everything he’s doing down at 1 Patriot Place isn’t just window dressing.
But for the sake of your cookout conversations, let’s use the Vrabel comp to spin things positive, eh?