Who’s to blame for Bruins’ current mess? Sweeney deserves his share

Who’s to blame for Bruins’ current mess? Sweeney deserves his share originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Bruins badly needed a major shakeup, and on Tuesday, that move finally happened as the team announced it had fired head coach Jim Montgomery.

He will be replaced by associate coach Joe Sacco on an interim basis.

Montgomery deserved better, but someone had to take the fall for what’s been a disastrous start to the 2024-25 season for the Original Six franchise. The Bruins entered Tuesday with an 8-9-3 record in the second wild card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. It’s almost a miracle that they aren’t further down in the standings given how poorly the team has played.

The list of issues plaguing this team is a lengthy one. The offense has been lackluster in every facet. The B’s are scoring 2.40 goals per game, the second-lowest average in the league. The power play ranks dead last with a 11.7 percent success rate. The penalty kill ranks 26th. The goaltending — the constant strength of the team for almost a decade — has posted a .883 save percentage (25th). Franchise goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who signed an eight-year, $64 million contract before the season, has played far below expectations.

Perhaps worst of all, this has been a boring hockey team. Low scoring, low energy, low compete level — things we haven’t said about Bruins teams in a long time.

Montgomery obviously deserves some blame for what’s transpired. He didn’t get the most out of his players — many of whom have thrived in his system over the last two years. His line combinations didn’t work. The team has gone long stretches without getting many shots on net. Discipline has been a major problem, too, evidenced by the Bruins’ league-leading 91 minor penalties taken (14 more than any other team).

The craziest stat of all? The Bruins have already lost five games by four or more goals this season.

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But the majority of the blame should not fall on Montgomery. Only four or five players on this team have played to expectations (or better). The top players, with the exception of defenseman Hampus Lindholm, have all underperformed. And if the Bruins are going to turn their season around, the players have to lead the charge.

Another person deserving of blame is general manager Don Sweeney.

The roster he constructed has real flaws. This isn’t a small sample anymore. We’re 20 games in and the same problems — poor special teams, penalties, bad third periods, etc. — keep happening over and over again.

Instead of prioritizing speed and skill in the offseason, Sweeney decided to beef up his roster and make it one of the heaviest and tallest in the league entering Opening Night. Sure, the Bruins did get pushed around at times by the Florida Panthers in their last two playoff runs, but a huge issue in those series was a lack of scoring for Boston.

For example, the B’s scored two or fewer goals in each of their last five games against the Panthers in last season’s second-round playoff series. They lost four of those five matchups.

David Pastrnak is the only elite forward on the team. He led the B’s with 110 points last season — at least 43 more than any of his teammates. Only one player — Lightning star Nikita Kucherov — led his team in scoring by more points. Way too much of the scoring burden is on Pastrnak. The roster lacks quality offensive depth.

Instead of prioritizing a legitimate top-six goal scorer in free agency, Sweeney used up most of the Bruins’ salary cap space to sign center Elias Lindholm to a seven-year, $54.25 million contract and defenseman Nikita Zadorov to a six-year, $30 million deal. Both contracts look like overpays right now.

Lindholm tallied five points in the first three games of the season. He has not scored a goal in the 17 games since. Critics of the Lindholm signing — for the record, we thought it was a good move at the time — argued that he has steadily declined offensively in recent years and that there was little evidence to suggest that a meaningful turnaround was likely. Lindholm had a breakout 2021-22 campaign during which he scored 42 goals with 40 assists as a member of the Calgary Flames. He has 39 goals in the last two-plus seasons combined.

Lindholm has not been a top-six center who generates offense at a high level. If that doesn’t change, the next six seasons of his $7.75 million cap hit could be a burden for the team.

The Zadorov signing has been awful as well. He’s never been the most disciplined player, but he leads the league in minor penalties among defensemen with 13. His defense hasn’t been great, either, and he’s not providing a ton of offense (zero goals in 19 games). He often tries to do a little too much instead of making the simple play.

It’s still early, but Lindholm and Zadorov are trending toward joining the long list of swings-and-misses by Sweeney in free agency.

Making matters worse for the Bruins is they don’t have many Grade A trade assets. Sweeney deserves plenty of blame for that, too. Boston’s prospect pool has ranked near the bottom of the league for several years now. There aren’t any highly touted prospects coming to save the day. Sweeney has traded first-round picks in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023, in addition to other second-, third- and later-round selections dealt away.

Most of these trades were made to give the Bruins better depth for playoff runs. If the Bruins drafted better under Sweeney, maybe some of those deals wouldn’t have needed to be made.

In fairness, Sweeney has put together some very good rosters since taking over as B’s general manager in 2015. The Bruins have consistently been in the mix during his tenure. They’ve made the playoffs in each of the last eight seasons. They even got to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in 2019. But that was the only team that advanced past the second round under Sweeney. The 2022-23 Bruins set NHL records for the most wins and points by a team in a single regular season, and then lost in the first round.

Montgomery is the third head coach Sweeney has fired as GM. Claude Julien was let go in 2017. Bruce Cassidy was fired after the 2022 playoffs and won the Stanley Cup with the Vegas Golden Knights the following season. How many coaches will ownership allow Sweeney to fire? At some point, the roster construction has to be heavily scrutinized.

There’s still time for the Bruins to turn things around. Sweeney can still make roster upgrades before the March 7 trade deadline. Remarkably, they’re still in a playoff spot as of today. But if the season continues to spiral out of control, more significant changes will need to be made.