Regret + Retool: What Bruins coach, management think of first-round loss

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Your Lockdown Bruins, your daily podcast on the Boston Bruins, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. What is up Bruins fans and welcome back to the Lockdown Boston Bruins Podcast. I'm your host Ian McLaren and this is a daily show where we discuss all things Spoked B. Today is Wednesday, May 10th and I want to thank you so much for making Lockdown Bruins your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. And today's episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account and use code Lockdown NHL for $20 off your first purchase. Yesterday in Boston the brass met with the media to discuss a disappointing first round exit after the historic regular season. I'm going to recap what was said by head coach Jim Montgomery, general manager Don Sweeney, team president Camnely and CEO Charlie Jacobs and also touch on Mason Lorey signing his entry level contract and what it can mean for the team next season. Before we get to that quick reminder you can find the podcast on Instagram and Twitter at locked NHL Bruins. You can find me, my dad jokes and hockey tweets at Ian C. McLaren. Now I don't think it's a stretch to begin here with Montgomery as the guy on whom the first round was falls on most. I don't think you can blame Don Sweeney for what happened this season or Camnely or Pendant on ownership. Everybody was in it to win it and the Bruins had a very deep roster of talent to draw from. We heard Bruce Cassidy last year when he was dismissed, make the analogy that a chef can only cook with the ingredients that he has in his shopping cart or whatever. This year Jim Montgomery had a cart full of fresh, beautiful, produce meat to work with and served up some processed food and some leftovers. That didn't really amount to anything substantial unfortunately and you know to his credit he is putting the onus on himself. He said it's his job to get the players to own the moment, seize the moment and it didn't happen and that falls on him. He said the hard times they went through they have to learn from them. It's going to be difficult to imagine them having the same opportunity next season but the guys who remain will have to learn from it grow so they don't repeat the same thing next year he said. His plan is to connect with players over the summer, build relationships through training camp about what they have to do to make sure they have more energy in the playoffs. They didn't have the same energy level they had in the regular season, didn't have the same puck confidence they had in the regular season and it hurts. Part of that can be attributed to playing regular lineups way down the stretch. We've talked about in hindsight the mistake of Patrice Bergeron playing in Montreal and the injury that B fell him. He said the guys just didn't seem as sharp in the playoffs as in the regular season. He's going to institute peer meetings where they set up players in groups and they can communicate with each other hard truths that they're experiencing. There's some things you don't necessarily want to admit to the coach that you're feeling tired that you aren't ready to go. Being able to express that inner conflict to each other can help prepare them a bit better four hard times ahead because the playoffs are a different animal. Guys need to be honest with themselves, with each other about where they're at, about needing rest here and there, about whether they're dealing with injury that's a bit more serious and they want to let on. They can only deal with the information they're given from the medical staff and from the guys themselves. They can't get in their heads as coaches and he's hoping that kind of peer to peer discussion will help things. He even said that he was talking to Tampa Bay Lightning head coach John Cooper who said the first round is Wild Wild West. You just have to get through. They didn't get through hard times that fall on them because of it and hopefully that can prepare them for next season. But again, you're not going to have the opportunity to be that far ahead of the field heading into the end of the playoffs and maybe that's a good thing because of the president's trophy curse. Now Mason, sorry, Montgomery pinpointed. Sorry, got Mason Laura, I'm in mind. Montgomery pinpointed a couple key mistakes that he made that could have turned the tide in the series. First of all, not playing Jeremy Swaven earlier. You have two days off prior to game five. You think it's going well. And then there was that gaff and overtime by Linus Almark who took ownership over where he was at physically and mentally in and after game five. What he relayed to Montgomery was something that made him believe that he would learn from it and lead them to a game six win. And again, was Almark being honest with himself, with the coach, with something ailing him physically mentally. Montgomery was just going by what was told to him by Almark in conference with Bob Essensoff and made the decision to go back for him for game six. Ultimately, that was likely a mistake and they probably should have gone to Swaven either in game five or certainly for game six. And then he also said he would not have mixed up the lines like he did prior to game five. He was talking in hindsight. I think a lot of us when we saw those lines on game day knew that something could go wrong here. Why are you being overly creative with the lines when you know what works? A learning experience for him for sure and it's unfortunate you look at, you know, again, looking at last year, you could say Bruce Cassidy got the most out of what he had to work with. In this case, Jim Montgomery perhaps tried to do a little too much with what he had and same result losing in game seven of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Would Cassidy have been able to do a better job? Should the Bruins have not entrusted Montgomery? Well, they didn't know that they'd have this opportunity. First of all, when they brought Montgomery in again, hindsight 2020. Montgomery hopefully will be able to learn from this as a head coach. But who knows when the Bruins will have this prime of a chance to compete for the Cup again, although it's clear that they want to be as competitive as possible year in and year out or not yet headed for a major rebuild. We're going to touch on what upper management had to say yesterday here in a moment. 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From the hottest players to the biggest upsets, we've got you covered. Don't miss a beat this postseason locked on NHL. People on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts, locked on podcast network, more team every day. Thank you so much. Once again for making locked on Bruins part of your day every day. Every day is can expect a return to the player reviews that began earlier this week and will be focusing on Jake to brusque on tomorrow's episode. Let's get back to what management team president CEO had to say yesterday during their end of season media availability. One that everybody lamented came far too soon. For Don Sweeney, he pinpointed ill timed execution and breakdowns and structure, particularly in game two, game five, even game six, and the goal tending, which was fantastic for the regular season, was average as was some of the team play overall. I don't think anybody can argue with that a perfectly valid assessment of what happened against Florida. You just say they have no impending surgeries on the books. We remember last year, Matt Grislick, Brad Marsh on, Charlie McAvoy all went under the knife with significant procedures in the off season. Nobody facing that at the moment, meaning everybody should be healthy, good to go from day one of training camp. Now who exactly will be there remains to be seen. They have a ton of free agents and because of their cap situation, he can't just go out right now and sign them all. It's just not going to happen. There's guys that will not be returning. They have that salary cap or bonus overage of four and a half million dollars against the cap. We don't know yet what the ceiling will be, but whatever it is, take four and a half off. That's like a good middle six winger right there or a mid pairing defenseman that you have to scrap because of that overage. They have some constraints. Their goal this season was to put the absolute best roster they could and try to take a legitimate run. Again, full credit to Don Sweeney for doing just that. If you look at what they did in the off season and what they did in the trade deadline, before the trade deadline, the roster was as optimized as it was going to get. Now they have to pay for that a little bit with a lack of draft picks and lack of cap space as well. They're going to be instituting some younger players. There's going to be some roster changes and maybe they can sign one of the unrestricted free agents, ideally Tyler Bertuzzi, but he's probably priced himself out of the market. They also have to address RFAs in Trent Frederick and Jeremy Swamin. So roster changes are coming. They're going to have younger players in the lineup. Again, here today, Mason Laura signing a two year entry level contract that will begin next season with a cap hit of $925,000. Very successful season at Ohio State and could very well make the jump to the NHL next season, especially if Matt Grizzlyk, Derek Forbort, somebody's moved off the blue line. Sweeney did pinpoint only Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindom, and Brandon Carlo as core guys on the back end. So any other defenseman, a viable candidate to be moved. He did mention the centennial season. Guys are excited about that. Guys that are part of the next 100 should understand the expectations don't change with regards to taking leadership responsibility and fitting into the Bruins culture. For Sweeney, you'll see the Camarilla echoes this later on. It had a lot of 2019 feeling to it, talking about a game seven on the press of his winning. Now you're losing in the first round. Same sense of failure because you know that it's a missed opportunity, missed a massive opportunity not to push aside a historic season, but it's going to get lost in translation because of this end result. I think we're all feeling that. I personally will look back on the regular season fondly. It was a great experience to watch to see these guys rack up points accolades history, but they're still that empty feeling at the end of the day because they cannot get the job done. So as far as Don Sweeney goes, he's got a busy summer ahead. Again, they have a ton of free agents who either. Neither resign or part ways with he hasn't told anybody that they will not be re resigned or at least attempted to. You got Nick Felino, Tyler Burtuzzi, Thomas Noeschick, Garnet Hathaway, and then of course Patrice Bergeron and David Crayche. There's no timeline for their decisions, but similar to last year, we'd like to see that happen before free agency so they can try to work something out otherwise to fill those holes. On the back end, Demetri Orlov, Connor Clifton, UFA's, and then you could have Grizzlyk forebort on the trade block with some younger guys possibly able to step up specifically. Let me see Laura, Jack Ashan as well. Mike Riley will try to be moved to go along with possibly Grizzlyk or forebort. So it's a tricky cap situation. It's an opportunity lost and now they have to try to regroup retool on the fly, but the goal will always be to remain competitive according to team president Camnely and we'll talk about what he had to say as well as some comments from CEO Charlie Jacobs here after the break. Camnely, team president, first of all, I should say Charlie Jacobs came out and said there have been no calls from up high, meaning his father Jeremy, to make any changes. He said the general manager, team president pushed all the right buttons to deliver the best possible team they could and he applauded them for the work they've done, far from asking for a management change. He was asked about Jeremy Jacobs' thoughts. He said he talks to him every day. He watches every hockey game for the Boston Bruins. Frankly watches a lot of other teams play too. At first the reaction was disbelief that they were out in the first round and then like all of us, all the fans, he wanted answers. He wants to understand how can this personally transpire and there was incredible disappointment there. You can see that Jacobs didn't really go out of his way to compliment Jim Montgomery's job. It's clear that they believe Don Sweeney came and he really did everything they could. Jim Montgomery made some questionable decisions. Ultimately, it's on the players to get the job done. It's on the players to hold those leads. It's on the players to score those goals, which they did. The offense was there, unfortunately the team defense and the goal tending fell off at the worst possible time. Ken Meely echoed Don Sweeney. You look at 2019, the loss in game 7. This was a close second in terms of disappointment. A historic year. His concern was are the guys going to put too much pressure on themselves because of the regular season they had. The expectations went through the roof. You recall the beginning of the season, the expectation was they probably be a wild car team, sneak into the playoffs, see what happens. But as the points kept piling up, going into the playoffs especially, you can see that pressure ramping up. They just looked like a different team. They were afraid to lose rather than having the confidence to go out there and continue to wagging up like they did all season. A couple guys even at the exit meetings actually apologized. Saying you guys gave us a wagon and we didn't execute. Players know when you have a chance to win and when you don't and they knew they had a chance to win. They knew they had a chance to go deep. For whatever reason they didn't play the way they played in the regular season. Game three for the Bruins probably the best game. But confidence wasn't there. There was nerves. Narratives started to change. You win the president's trophy. Teams rarely win the cup. All those things, the outside noise, maybe creeped in a little bit for Neely especially and for the players. Definitely. However. There's going to be changes. We know that. There's going to be some players who can't fit under the cap. Some of those free agents. There's going to be some guys likely to be traded. There's going to be a youth injection into the lineup. You could see the likes of John Beacher, Georgie Merculov, Mark McLaughlin, Fabian Lysel, Oscar Steen, Jacob Lauco as Mainstays in the lineup. But they're going to try to remain competitive at the end of the day. Neely said the goal is always to remain competitive. The pieces they do have coming back. Pretty good players. Obviously Poshnock, McAvoy, Marchon, Taylor Hall, Charlie Coyle, Jake Dabrowsk. All under contract. As is Pavozhaka. Excuse the tissue. Allergies are nuts today. They got a taste of what the team could look like in games 3 and 4 without Crayche and Bergeron in the lineup. Those were arguably their best games of the series. They can still be a better team but there's a lot of work to do in the summer. There's no question about it. It's going to be a very, very interesting off season in Boston as we see what decisions are made, who is retained, who is allowed to walk, who is traded. If they try to recoup some draft picks, they have no first round pick. This year or next, no second round pick in each of the next three seasons. They can recoup some of those picks. They'd be all the better for it, looking ahead to after the Brad Marchon era. It's going to get a little dicier for the Bruins. It could get dicey next season as well depending on how they're able to retool here on the fly. That's pretty much it in terms of the biggest takeaways from the media availability yesterday with the head coach and upper management, again, disappointment, regret, some mistakes that were made, perhaps a two successful regular season, the pressure mounted, it got to them. I can't remember who said it but somebody echoed the fact that at the end of the day, these guys are all human. They make mistakes, sometimes you don't rise to the occasion, sometimes what looks like a slam dunk on paper doesn't translate into real life. We move on and that's kind of what I've been preaching on here as well. We press on, we get through the disappointment and we'll all be back in September excited about this team. Not crying, these are allities. Again, I thank you so much to everybody who has stuck with the podcast since the disappointing result. We're here every day through till the draft into July, free agency, all that stuff. So keep it locked. Two locked on Boston Bruins, again, tomorrow on the podcast. We continue with our player review series looking at Jake Tabresk. Every day, I can count on that and we'll be here again, daily. Because that's what we're all about here on the locked on podcast network, your favorite team every single day. 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