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Entering his 10th season with the organization from a behind the scenes personnel standpoint, and his 25th in total between his playing days and more recent suit days, 48-year-old
Don Sweeney is ready for his next challenge, as the 8th general manager in the 91-year history of the Boston Bruins.
“It means a lot to have gone through this process as exhaustive at times as it was, as challenging as it was, and come out the other side knowing they have the confidence in me to take this organization forward,” Sweeney said in his introductory press conference at TD Garden on Wednesday afternoon. “Tremendous amount of great people that I have the opportunity to work with day in, day out, that I have had the chance to get to know over the past eight years in every different capacity. I think that when I came through in the interview process, knowing that I was confident in being able to lead this group where it needs to go to, it was a good feeling to have, as I said earlier, them bestow that confidence in me. It really isn’t about deserving, to be perfectly honest.”
The overwhelming feeling from everybody around the team was that Sweeney, the club’s assistant general manager since 2009, was the best guy for the job from the moment
Peter Chiarelli was fired based on his rapport and understanding of the club from top to bottom.
“Obviously the institutional knowledge on my behalf probably tipped a bit in my favor, in some regards. The work ethic piece, knowing that I have the passion to do whatever’s it gonna take to make decisions that at times will not be easy,” Sweeney continued. “But I’m gonna make them as to what’s best to the interest of the Boston Bruins and everybody that I have a chance to work with.”
In a lengthy presser, Sweeney said just about everything you’d want to hear, too.
“I’m excited about the challenge in front of us to get back to where we need to get to. I know what it’s like to be booed in this city, to be cheered in this city, as a player, and I expect at times to take criticism. But that’s part of it,” Sweeney said. “And I think - we finished with 96 points this year, we did not meet expectations, but we’re not as far away as what people may think. We have some challenges, we have some flexibility issues that we have to get back out in front of, that we have to address head on. And we have to get back a little bit the aggressiveness that is lost in our group.”
Boston is a tough city for outsiders -- especially in the sports world -- to wrap their head around.
Some guys struggle with the 24-hour scope that surrounds the teams here. And executives are not necessarily immune to that. So to bring somebody that’s been involved in this city’s sports scene since his mid-80s days at Harvard University obviously helps. And his latter points should be music to everybody’s ears, really. The Bruins missed the playoffs, yes, but this is not a team in ruins. Their biggest challenge will be jumping out ahead of some salary cap issues (what he means when he talks about flexibility) and leveraging that into some new blood to revive the team’s aggressiveness.
Sweeney also touched on the future of head coach
Claude Julien, too.
“I have some things that I want to sit down with Claude and go throw in a very orderly fashion as to where I think needs to change and what direction we need to change as a group,” said Sweeney when asked about Julien’s future. “I also acknowledged to Claude during this whole process that I think tremendously of him as a coach and as a person, so I think it’s just about lining up philosophical approaches that I believe in, that he believes in, and that we can move the group forward. As I said, some of that will involve personnel decisions. Some of that will involve staff member decisions and or changes. That’s to be determined. He’s the coach of the Boston Bruins as of today; that’s for sure.”
OK, so that’s not what you’d call a ringing endorsement. But it’s not the end of Julien, either.
When Sweeney talks about the discussions they’ll go through, you’ll have to think it comes back to a stubbornness when it comes to doling out ice time for bottom-six forwards versus skill guys, or tweaking the personnel in terms of the power play and/or who’s running it behind the bench next season. The days where guys like Gregory Campbell log more ice time than a David Pastrnak are clearly over, and that will especially be true with Sweeney, a big believer in the Bruins’ youth movement, in charge.
“From a staff standpoint, there’s a bit of a shift that needs to come — from our transition game, from our ability to create anxiety in other teams, because I think we, at times, had a retreat mentality,” admitted Sweeney. “You can be the best defensive team in the National Hockey League, and all four teams playing — as I referenced earlier — are very good teams. They suppress what we call shot value and scoring opportunities very, very well. Their goaltenders are a big part of it. We have a very good goaltender. But if you don’t create anxiety in the other team and have the ability to score goals in a time fashion or generate quality chances, then you’re going to find yourself chasing the game. And this year, we chased the game too much. We were behind in third periods, we didn’t score enough third period goals as to what we normally have in the past, and there are reasons for that.”
Again, music to everyone’s ears.
At the same time, Sweeney’s presser didn’t come without some alarming buzzwords.
“You spend the amount of time you do with the players in Providence, understand it’s one thing to throw the word culture and identity around, it’s another to live it, breathe it, and teach it, to some degree so that other players are drawn into that,” Sweeney said when press about playing ‘Bruins hockey’ and the mindset of the players from the moment they’re brought into the organization.
There’s nothing that’s particularly wrong with that quote per se. But it’s the word ‘identity’ that will always send me for a bit of a loop, I’ll admit. That can mean so many different things with this franchise, and that’s not always a good thing. I think that the Black and Gold have always valued ‘toughness’ in their lineup, but at the same time, if the game’s trending away from that, as most seem to believe and/or accept at this point, it’d make no sense for the Bruins to ‘improve’ by becoming even bigger or tougher. You heard a lot of this at the club’s year-end availability. They talked about how this team wasn’t tough or tougher to play against. Those have two very different meanings, and failure to understand that is a disaster waiting to happen (and you thought last year was bad) for the B’s.
“I think one of the distinct advantages I have is that I’ve been a Boston Bruin. I was a Boston Bruin for 15 years, knocked on the doorstep of the Stanley Cup and then won it as part of the management group. I know what resonates with our fan group,” Sweeney said. “I know that our players have to have the will to want to play with that identity that I think you’re describing. You can have skill in any different fashion. Patrice Bergeron is a tremendously skilled player, but he’s a hard skilled player. All of our players have to understand that the four teams that are playing this week all have different attributes of skill, size, speed, grit — but they have a sacrifice level that it takes to win in the playoffs. You have to have a blend of that to get there; we have to have more aggression in our game.”
Yet another successful talk down for most, I’d say.
On his first day on the job, Sweeney said just about everything you’d want to hear. He talked about the changes the Bruins will have to make to get themselves back on track for a Stanley Cup, and didn’t necessarily hold back when it came to assessing what needed to improve from the players and staff. That honesty is key, and the realization that 2011’s Cup is now four years old seems to be there.
But what can you expect from Sweeney the GM? I think it’ll be a mix of everything you’d like to see out of the new boss. I’m confident he’ll make some trades for legitimate assets (or cap relief) the club needs, but I also think he’ll also put an emphasis on what the club has in store for the long-term future, too. Given how much he’s worked with the club’s young talents between development camps and Providence, it’s clear to me that Sweeney will be on the forefront of the organization’s youth movement.
Seriously, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a guy work so closely with young players. An example: He’ll be the first one in the room after a game to talk to a Providence call-up and go over stuff. He took on the responsibility of the day-to-day operations with that club with the energy and intelligence you’d want. He knows this pipeline like the back of his hand, and that’s invaluable in today’s NHL where entry-level contracts can be the key between cap hell and a still-competitive-while-retooling club.
Off the bat, Sweeney will have to battle the belief that he’s simply Cam Neely’s marionette puppet.
After all, Sweeney and Neely are former teammates, and reports have indicated that hiring Sweeney was Neely’s call, as Charlie Jacobs and Harry Sinden apparently wanted to wait to interview Jeff Gorton.
“It’s all about communication. For me, Don has ideas and thoughts, things he’d like to do, I’d like to know about it,” Neely noted. “It’s really about communication. When we went through the process interviewing candidates, that was a strong point of ours was the communication process.
“As I said after we let Peter go, I’m not a micromanager. Don’s going to be able to do his job but I want to know what’s going on. As president of the team, I need to know what’s going on because if I get questions from ownership I need to know the answers. So for me it’s really, Don’s the GM, he’s going to be the GM, he’s going to make the decisions and communication’s going to be there, it has to be there.”
This dynamic will rear its end soon, too, without question. The future of
Milan Lucic, a player Neely loves and is an unrestricted free agent after this upcoming season, could be the first test. Or maybe the B’s direction at the 2015 NHL Draft, a draft loaded with both size and skill, could tell us.
There’s no shortage of questions in Boston. But Neely and the B’s have determined that Sweeney is the best mind to answer those questions, so there should be an element of trust right off the bat, really.
But as any GM could tell you, Day 1 is the easiest day. Now comes the actual work.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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