By: Declan Flavin | Follow me on Twitter / X @FlavinDeclan
In the pregame of what was the Boston Bruins’ fifth win of the season, General Manager Don Sweeney directed the fanbase’s attention to the players. This is a decision-maker who isn’t going to sugarcoat where his head is at as he works around the team facilities. For that, everyone should be thankful, but at the same time, the present situation of the team is frustrating, to say the least, so the details of Sweeney’s feedback provoke profound thought and, possibly, regret.
Should one agree with Sweeney’s thought that the Bruins’ roster should be coming along more and buying in, or is it the way the units were constructed? More than the personal opinion, what does the situation with the core players mixed in with the team’s identity really look like right now?
“The players themselves have to take some ownership of what’s being asked from them.”—Sweeney on the Bruins’ current play, via NESN
The reality is that the players, particularly the core players as part of the team’s defensive efforts, deserve half of the blame to this point in the first season of the retool. What has become of the starting point of this season, and of the past few years, is simply the defensive identity of the organization waning, and it’s been under a defense and cast of supporting forwards that are capable of more. It all has come to a head this season in terms of fans recognizing it, but over the past years, there has been plenty of evidence on tape that situational stuff, like boxing opponents away from the net, for example, that has been ignored and abandoned by the whole roster at certain points.
Where the other half of the blame goes is probably to a Bruins front office that can’t be right all the time, but that has probably stuck with certain guys who have contributed to the problem for too long. For example, while Charlie McAvoy has continued to contribute in recent seasons on the offensive end while being reliable enough defensively, the team has had a taxed defender like Brandon Carlo and a half-baked defender like Mason Lohrei around the front of the net for half the time, and the reality is the rest of the defensemen and the roster structuring were surely affected because of it.
So yes, the onus is firstly on the players, especially the core players most related to the team’s current issues, to do a better job of setting the precedent with their own play, but this situation also points to a lack of addressing repetitive in-game mistakes at the root. Winning is nice in the short term while a team’s brass can see the in-game issues in front of them, but sooner or later the overall identity gets affected. That’s what the Bruins’ brass is staring at right now, and you can’t blame them in a way, especially when McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman lead your defensive efforts with David Pastrnak roaming on the other side.
This, though, poses a question: Do the Bruins eventually choose to move on from one of these core players to shake themselves out of this dynamic? Time will tell, and maybe three-quarters of that time will be needed to recognize everything, but as long as the organization sets itself up for the future, that’s all that matters.
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