Bruins must extend Don Sweeney, and other thoughts

While the other half of the National Hockey League enjoys the gut-wrenching Stanley Cup playoff games the Bruins are in the midst of their own kind of angst They ve missed the post-season for the first time since As management embarks on its biggest offseason since Claude Julien was nearing the end of his tenure here are insufficient thoughts A large and vocal section of the fandom wished nothing less than a residents ritual firing of Don Sweeney at Wednesday s season-ending presser Here s a different take Group president Cam Neely requirements to extend his GM ASAP The Bruins just finished a season that began with a lame duck coach and a lame duck captain You can blame whomever you want for those situations but it was very much a part of the failure At the moment Sweeney is a lame duck GM That cannot continue much longer not with the heavy lifting he s got to do over the next limited months It starts with the coaching search While the Original Six crest still carries certain weight there s going to be a lot of competition with the Rangers who just extended GM Chris Drury who had a worse year than Sweeney Blackhawks Flyers Ducks perhaps the most of attractive job from a young talent standpoint and Kraken looking for new coaches You d think that a prospective coach would like to know if the guy hiring him will be there in a year And then Sweeney will need to attract free agents on July According to puckpedia com the B s have a whopping million in cap space They ll need to sign RFAs Morgan Geekie and Mason Lohrei but after that they ll need get a couple of top-six wings and a No defenseman Money is the loudest talker and the B s have that but those prospective signees would like to see various stability at the top That s not to say Sweeney shouldn t be under pressure to get right the signings coaching hire and top pick in June But giving the rest of the NHL the impression of stability should help him get it right If he doesn t and one disastrous year rolls into another then the decision can be made to go in a different direction It may cost the organization various money if that comes to pass but last I checked the GM s salary doesn t count against the salary cap It s the price of doing business You can usually count me as a fan of the retread track when it comes to coaching hires Claude Julien won the B s only Stanley Cup in the last years and he was on his third HC job Bruce Cassidy and Mike Sullivan won Cups long after their first jobs Experience both good and bad can be very helpful But it feels like this Bruin moment calls for specific young blood Sweeney s strong desire for the next coach to have NHL exposure would at least seem to count out Denver s David Carle one of the hottest candidates who could make the jump from the collegiate ranks But the idea is to find the next Spencer Carbery who went from NHL assistant in Toronto he was also Jay Leach s assistant in Providence for a year before getting the head job in Hershey to the head job in Washington and very successfully The Capitals of two years ago have a lot in common with this day s Bruins So who is the next Carbery There s not an obvious choice but Sweeney requirements to figure that out On Wednesday Sweeney announced that RFA Geekie will be on the club next year He noted it with enough conviction that it gave the impression he d go to arbitration if need be though the goal is to get a long-term deal done Whatever the affair it should cost the B s at least million per season Will it be an over-payment A few look at Geekie s shooting percentage his fortunate pairing with David Pastrnak and think there s no way that that his -goal output will be sustainable On the other hand he has a chance to maintain those totals if he starts the season on time something he hasn t done in his two seasons with the Bruins The first could be chalked up to adjustment issues with a new unit But after having a good playoff in he was extremely cold to start this season enough to find himself a healthy scratch four times But he scored of his goals after Jan tying him with Leon Draisaitl for fifth-best in that time frame Geekie planned on examining what he could do differently in the offseason to avoid another slow start Maybe a little less traveling I drive here in the summer It s a long drive noted Geekie who makes his offseason home in Calgary Maybe that weighs on you more than you think Maybe you get on the ice too early or too late There s a lot of things that I think played into it I don t think it was one thing I came in physically in the best shape that I ve been in in a long time and it was just one of those things where I couldn t get going and think a lot of things compounded especially with the way we were losing games and mentally physically things just weren t adding up It s definitely something I ll think about the next week or two and I m definitely not going to change too much Just try to get my foot on the gas a little earlier this time One of these days we ll put the draft to rest but it still haunts this organization not just on the ice but psychically That much sure seemed to be the scenario when Neely voluntarily went there in defense of Sweeney and what the gathered brass coulda woulda shoulda done when they unveiled themselves with the th th and th picks and chose Jakub Zboril Jake DeBrusk and Zach Senyshyn DeBrusk turned out to be a legitimate top-six forward but Zboril and Senyshyn never made a mark in the league A few players chosen after them Matthew Barzal Kyle Connor Thomas Chabot Zboril s Saint John teammate Brock Boeser and Travis Konecny Who knows if they d chosen say Connor and Chabot that one or both would not have been salary cap casualties by now But there s a good chance and and all the years in between would have ended differently for the Bruins You may not have liked all the answers in Wednesday s braintrust press conference but for nearly an hour Neely Sweeney and CEO Charlie Jacobs took questions the greater part of them uncomfortable ones It may not have been the wisest choice to re-examine and no there s no good justification for raising ticket prices after such a season no matter how high the Garden s electricity bill But I m not sure I can remember one of these end-of-season struggle sessions going on so long For that at least they deserve several credit The NHL draft lottery is scheduled for May It appears that defenseman Matthew Schaefer think Miro Heiskanen is the clear top pick with center Michael Misa to go at No At one point it seemed that the next handful of names could have been thrown into a hat but Moncton center Caleb Desnoyers is gaining steam He s at this moment got - - totals in QMJHL games Producing in big games matters Meanwhile The Athletic s draftnik Corey Pronman has the B s taking Swedish center Anton Frondell if they remain in the five slot The Bruins should get a good performer but as one league executive commented on Friday there s not a performer in this draft who should be in the league next season So temper those short-term expectations