The Boston Bruins have enjoyed more than two decades of success, with a Stanley Cup championship and many long playoff runs. Many of the players who were pillars of the Bruins success have retired. The Bruins have been able to make good on late first round picks with players like Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak. Sitting outside the playoff picture at trade deadline, Don Sweeney made a decision. Sweeney and his staff recognized the Bruins may have been good enough to make the playoffs, but they were not good enough to beat out the likes of Florida, Tampa or Washington. The Leafs are better on paper, but we all know how that playoff matchup likely ends up…
Pending UFA Brad Marchand met with Bruins management to try and get a deal done. Marchand has been underpaid his entire career, following in the footsteps of Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara. The Bruins were not willing to bend on their number and that was the sign that things needed to change. Jeremy Jacobs is one of the most powerful owners in the NHL, and it is no secret that the Jacobs family expects playoff success. Staring at the reality of missing the playoffs and a baren prospect cupboard, Sweeney and his staff were able to convince the Jacobs family that a retool needed to occur, albeit a year or two too late.
The Bruins made the difficult decision to start the tear down because Cam Neely and Don Sweeney knew the Bruins didn’t have the requisite pieces to compete long term. They can’t full tear down because the talent of Pastrnak, McAvoy, Swayman and the Lindholms make that difficult. Elias Lindholm’s contract is a problem for the Bruins and is a product of Bruins management trying to extend a window that was already closed. As the cap goes up, the hope is he can be a serviceable second line center for the Bruins.
Out the door went three long time Bruins that were culture setters. Brad Marchand, Brandon Carlo and Charlie Coyle were big pieces of the Bruins culture on and off the ice. Carlo was the team’s PA representative for quite a while, Marchand was the captain and Coyle, a valued member of the room.
For their efforts, the Bruins were able to secure a few solid pieces for the retool. Fraser Minten is projected to be a middle-six center and looked good with Toronto in a small audition. He could be in the lineup as soon as next season. William Zellers has been a productive player everywhere he’s played and while he’s a longer shot to make the lineup, he’s a worthy swing. The Bruins have at least four first round picks in the next three seasons, after securing Toronto’s first round pick in the Carlo deal. If Marchand plays 50% of Florida’s playoff games and they make the Conference Final, they would also own Florida’s 1st round pick in 2027. The picks can be moved for current NHL players if the Bruins want to compete while Pastrnak, McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm are still in the primes of their careers.
Casey Mittelstadt and Henri Jokiharju have struggled to have the impact of a first-round selection but should get ample opportunity to have immediate impact in Boston. Mittlestadt has shown flashes of the skill that made him a top-10 pick and the Bruins are hoping he can show that more consistently in an elevated role. Marat Khusnutdinov was a nice pick up along with Jakub Lauko in exchange for Justin Brazeau. The 22-year-old Khusnutdinov is a responsible two-way player, who can effectively penalty kill and consistently works in the hard areas of the ice. He’ll be a reliable shutdown player for the Bruins because of his quickness and tenacity. Those 4 players are 26 or younger and should play solid roles going forward in Boston.
The concern in Boston after losing important parts of the dressing room is how the team reacts. The Bruins are well known for having a quality culture that brings players along “the Bruin way.” Many of those tone setters are gone and the Bruins need the likes of Swayman, Pastrnak and McAvoy to usher in a new era of that culture. If they can do that and the Bruins are able to turn draft picks into quality NHL players, it won’t be long before they are back where the Jacobs family believes they should be.
Vancouver Canucks: Uncertain Direction and Frustration
The Jacobs family was willing to do what Francesco Aquilini does not seem to be willing to do in Vancouver. The Canucks are not as good as they were last year, but they aren’t as bad as they have been this year. It has been nothing short of an abject disaster on and off the ice for the Canucks this season, which necessitated JT Miller’s exit, left many wondering about Elias Pettersson’s falloff and increased concerns about Thatcher Demko’s ability to stay healthy.
The Canucks haven’t been a true contender since the Sedins and Roberto Luongo played starring roles at Rogers Arena. All of them have since retired and become Hall of Famers. I am, for obvious reasons, loathed to give this management group the benefit of the doubt, but standing pat at this deadline was probably not their preferred approach. Having worked in a front office (especially the Vancouver one), you understand the role that various people play in setting the direction of the team. Jim Rutherford has three Stanley Cups; the man knows what he’s doing, and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that he looks at the current roster and thinks “holding the line” is the best approach.
Both Rutherford and Patrik Allvin have made public comments about players on their team that raised eyebrows around the league. Contrast what Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky said about Mikko Rantanen to what Allvin said about Brock Boeser. Rantanen, in truth, put the Hurricanes in a bad spot and Tulsky would have every reason to publicly flame the player for how he handled the 10 days leading up to the deadline. He actively handicapped Carolina’s ability to get better. When asked, Tulsky was compassionate and respectful of Rantanen saying “Everyone has their own personal needs. I think we have a great organization, I think we have a great coach, I think we have a great locker room — but it doesn’t fit for everyone. And it just didn’t feel like home for him, as far as I can tell. And that’s OK. It’s a person’s life. He’s making an eight-year commitment, and if this doesn’t feel like the right place for him, then that’s OK.” This is a player who was with the organization for less than two months.
When asked about Brock Boeser, a player who is a top-10 goal scorer in a Canucks uniform and the longest tenured Canuck, Allvin said “If I told you what I was offered for Brock Boeser, I’d have to run out of here because you wouldn’t believe me.” Setting aside that I don’t believe that for a moment given the seller’s market and the reporting that there was a first-round pick available to be had in a deal that fell through, that is not the way a GM should speak about any of their players, let alone one who has been in the organization for nearly 10 years.
Part of your job as GM is to market your players to extract the most value for them. Instead, he stated publicly that offers for Boeser were poor and the player was not worth as much as they believed he was. As Steve Werier points out, that potentially hurts Boeser’s earning potential in free agency because it makes it seem that Boeser doesn’t hold value around the league. If Canucks management can’t market a player who scored 40 goals last season and was a clutch playoff performer, who is on pace for ~25 goals this season, that is a management problem, not a player problem. Sure, Boeser is having a down season, but it seems suspect that the likes of Anthony Beauvillier, Scott Laughton and Charlie Coyle can net useful assets, but Brock Boeser could not. It is difficult to imagine that Boeser or his agent are thrilled with the public comments, and one would have to believe it will be a hurdle in negotiations, regardless of Allvin’s “great relationship” with Boeser’s agent.
It didn’t stop there, either. On Sunday night, Boeser was no longer wearing the “A” that denotes alternate/assistant captain. Instead, he was stripped of it in favor of Marcus Pettersson, a player who has been with the organization for less than 60 days. Not only is it unnecessary, but it sends a poor message. The Canucks stripped Boeser of his visible leadership role, seemingly over a contract negotiation, while they allowed JT Miller to keep his “A” after numerous on-ice issues with teammates and reported off-ice altercations that got so bad it necessitated him being traded to another organization for “culture reasons.” When you combine the public comments from the GM with the stripping of the letter, it is hard to imagine a world where Boeser doesn’t feel disrespected or slighted by the team he has been loyal to for nearly a decade.
Moving along from the mess that is the Boeser situation, trading Pius Suter seemed like a slam dunk. Reports indicate they were far apart on contract talks leading up to the deadline and Suter is a very useful player. He’s versatile in that he plays multiple forward positions, he can play up and down the lineup and he’s a quality penalty killer. All of those are attributes that playoff teams try and target at the deadline. Surely, a draft selection for a player making 1.6 million that provides value on both sides of the puck was available. It might not have been what the Canucks were hoping for, which is difficult to believe in the seller’s market, but when you’re in the mushy middle, getting something is better than letting the player walk for nothing.
The Canucks would have been better off shutting Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko down for the season, selling off assets like Boeser and Suter, and hoping that an elongated summer allows for the high-end roster players to recover and get better. The Canucks have pieces to be a playoff contender, and when those players are injured or not playing up to par, the results match. This was an opportunity to acquire assets, like they did in the Horvat trade, to parlay into pieces that could help them now, like they did with the Hronek trade. Those flips won’t always be available but keeping two players as “own rentals” that could have netted quality assets, while the playoffs aren’t a sure thing, is the type of approach that makes you wonder who exactly is driving the bus in Vancouver.
2011 Cup Finalists Reach a Fork in the Road & Take Different Routes
The 2011 Stanley Cup Final participants are in similar positions but took very different approaches to the trade deadline. The Jacobs family is grinning and bearing the lack of playoff revenue because sustained success is always more profitable. If there was any doubt about what the Aquilini family directive was to Canucks management, there shouldn’t be now. While that is a tough reality to come to grips with, it is not a license to continually throw your players under the bus. You can’t say you want to create a safe space for players when you’re the one throwing darts at them in the media. Every approach has its pros and cons, but one thing is always true: it is very difficult to compete for a Stanley Cup if you aren’t willing to endure some pain to accrue the necessary assets to build a contender.
Rachel Doerrie is a former analyst and video coach in the NHL. She is co-host of Puck Social and her work is featured on ESPN, Stadium and BetMGM Network.