Don Sweeney had seen enough. Twenty games of subpar play, capped by an embarrassing 5-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, had forced his hand. So the Bruins general manager did what most GMs do in this situation: He fired head coach Jim Montgomery, promoting Joe Sacco to interim head coach in the process.
“It came from a decision of our team really just not performing to the level of expectations that we have grown to appreciate as a fan of the sporting community here. For me, I just had to change course,” Sweeney said Wednesday.
If the Bruins don’t get on the right course soon, it will not be the last change. Sweeney made that clear as well.
“From a personnel standpoint, for the players themselves, they have to understand that they're not where they need to be. We're either going to get back there, or there will be continued changes across the board,” Sweeney said.
What those next changes would be remains to be seen, but the obvious threat there is a trade, or multiple trades. That aligns with Elliotte Friedman’s report earlier this week that Sweeney has been “active” in looking at trade opportunities. WEEI’s own Rich Keefe, who broke the news of Montgomery’s firing on Tuesday, said on Wednesday that he has heard the same thing.
“I was hearing they’re not going to wait around until the March 7 trade deadline to shake up the roster,” Keefe said.
Sweeney and the rest of the Bruins front office and management team truly believed that they had assembled a roster that would be better than last year’s team, which got to the second round of the playoffs. Instead, Boston would not even be in the playoffs if the season ended today.
The Bruins are not in a position to just go out and trade picks or prospects in order to add to the roster. Even if Sweeney wanted to keep mortgaging the future for the present, he simply does not have enough cap space to do so at the moment.
That means any move would more likely be a money-in, money-out hockey trade, and that means trading away someone on the active roster. Who that might be is the big question.
As much as some fans might be screaming to blow the whole thing up and ship out one of the big names at the top of the roster, it’s unlikely the first move would involve any of Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy or Jeremy Swayman, even if all four have drastically underperformed this season. Marchand, as a pending free agent, could be a possibility closer to the trade deadline if the Bruins are out of it, but let's cross the bridge if and when they get there.
It’s also unlikely it would involve Elias Lindholm or Nikita Zadorov, Sweeney’s two big free-agent signings over the summer. They have underperformed as well, but Sweeney is not close to giving up on them yet. Both would be able to block a move thanks to their no-trade clauses anyways.
“I don’t think there’s a concern they’re not a good fit,” Sweeney said of Lindholm and Zadorov. “They have not played to the level we expected them to, but it’s pretty widespread. … They need to be better, they’ve admitted that, and they will. But from a fit standpoint, the identification that those were players that would help us, I’m not second-guessing that right now. I’m second-guessing the performance of them and our group.”
It feels like pretty much anyone else could be on the table, though. Pending free agents Trent Frederic and Morgan Geekie, both of whom are way off the pace they set last year, would be a natural place to start. It’s fair to wonder about veteran, complementary core pieces like Brandon Carlo, Charlie Coyle and Pavel Zacha as well. They have also not met expectations this season, and trading any of them would certainly serve as more of a wakeup call than tinkering around the edges of the roster.
The other big change that could happen would be one involving Sweeney himself, and Sweeney knows it.
“Moving forward, that rests with me now,” Sweeney said of getting the Bruins turned around.
If it turns out that Sweeney actually did just build a roster that isn’t good enough to make the playoffs, and if he can’t make a trade or two to meaningfully change the mix, then team president Cam Neely and the Jacobs family could decide his time as GM is up.
“We’re always on notice,” Sweeney said. “The results are in this business, that’s just what you accept. When you take the job, you know that you’re on notice. And when you make recommended changes, they could say no and you might be the change. So you face that and you make decisions based on your experience level and what you need to do for your hockey club, and that’s how I do the job.
“I’m appreciative that in this case, they still let me make that decision. I’m disappointed that it wasn’t moving forward with Monty in a lot of ways. … But in evaluating where this team is at and the performance level, I had to make a different decision.”
And now, if that performance level still doesn’t improve, expect more changes, whether that’s Sweeney changing the roster or, eventually, someone above Sweeney changing the general manager.