For now, CEO and alternate governor Charlie Jacobs believes that the right people will be making those calls, in Neely and general manager Don Sweeney, saying he has “faith that they’ll make the right decisions.”
“I feel everyone’s frustration -- and I hear it too -- but I also feel it because, like our fan base, I am also a fan and I support this team,” Jacobs said. “I believe in our leadership. I know that’s been called into question quite a bit recently. I hope that we can build off the last two games that we’ve played because they played like our team.
“Our team, in my opinion, has yet to play its best game. I feel like we’ve got it in our system, we’ve got it in the room. And our hope is that we can find it.”
By the time the trade deadline rolls around, the Bruins’ problems may have been solved. They may be reaching out to GMs around the League, trying to see if they can acquire the pieces that will make a playoff run possible.
Or they may be working on the future.
Either way, it appears that Neely and Sweeney will be the ones making the calls.
“We’ve been working together for, in Cam’s case, almost a couple decades now,” Jacobs said. “I have very good faith in it. Listen, we all feel it. We all walk it. This team, we’re all accountable for it. I am too, just as much as they are.”
After the Bruins missed the playoffs in 2014-15, general manager Peter Chiarelli was fired, replaced by Sweeney, who was then his assistant GM. Boston failed to qualify for the playoffs again in 2015-16 but has not missed them since. Those are the only two seasons the Bruins haven’t made the playoffs since 2006-07.
“If history is any indication of what we can anticipate -- if you look at Don Sweeney’s stewardship and Cam Neely’s stewardship since 2015, since Don took over, we’ve made the playoffs eight of the 10 years,” Jacobs said. “And listen, I’m not going to measure the success in making the Stanley Cup Playoffs, OK? Let’s be very clear about that.
“Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup. But you can’t win the Stanley Cup if you don’t make it to the playoffs, and our team has done that for the past eight years and I hope we do it again this year for our ninth. But it’s been some trying moments, for sure.”
Since the Bruins fired coach Jim Montgomery on Nov. 19, they are 14-10-2 under interim head coach Joe Sacco; they were 8-9-3 at the time of the firing.
“To watch this team play and know what it’s capable of and see it perform and then come out the next night and not be able to do it, it’s a head-scratcher, for sure,” Jacobs said.
For the moment, the Bruins are trying to reset. The past two wins, against the Florida Panthers and the Lightning, came after a six-game losing streak.
It’s a season and a run that has been, as Neely put it, “frustrating,” beginning with an uncharacteristically slow start, even knowing that a number of the players on the team had possibly hit the high end of their production last season, something that might not be repeated.
But they thought they would be close. They are not.
And though it has gotten better, there is a long way to go.
“We’re aware of the situation we’re in,” captain Brad Marchand said. “We understand the roads that are in front of us and where they lead. We understand that we haven’t performed the way we’ve needed to and there’s consequences that come with that.
“There’s very high expectations with this organization and we’re expected to perform and do our job and compete every year for a Cup. If we’re not going to do that, then changes are going to be made so that the team does compete for a Cup.”
As he was discussing the nearly 50 years his father has owned the Bruins, Jacobs mentioned that the city of Boston deserved another Stanley Cup championship. The Bruins have won six, most recently in 2011.
It is always the goal, even if right now it seems very far away.
“We’re aware of the expectations here,” Neely said. “We try to meet and exceed those every year. Right now, it’s a year that we’re not really accustomed to.”
