As fans grow restless, Bruins must do something to stop the bleeding
Forget being restless. Bruins fans have downright run out of patience.
Blown out — and, honestly, not even looking somewhat competitive along the way — by the Oilers on Tuesday, the third period of Boston’s fifth straight defeat saw the TD Garden crowd break out into a ‘Fire Sweeney’ chant that echoed throughout the building. This wasn’t just the raving of a mere row of those in Balcony 308 with 617-779-0985 on speed dial, no. It was sung out by a large segment of the arena, from balcony to loge, and the chant was even loud enough to be picked up on the NESN broadcast.
And though this was the latest (and undoubtedly loudest) voicing of displeasure from the Black and Gold’s base, it’s noise that’s becoming downright deafening… and almost constant.
When the Bruins lost to the Maple Leafs last Saturday night, both ‘Poitras’ and ‘Lysell’ were trending in Boston on X (formerly known as Twitter). Both players, in case you were somehow unaware, are currently stuck in Providence, left to prove [shrugs and throws arms up] before they’re given another NHL opportunity with the team currently short on young, offensive-minded, energetic talent. And when the Bruins lost to the Islanders on Sunday night, ‘Sweeney’ was once again trending, and for more than just the latest online gushing over Sydney Sweeney and her newest set photos from The Housemaid.
The message to be found within these trends and this chant in the B’s own building: Enough is enough, and you’re not fooling us with this product any longer.
The Bruins want to tell you that they are a contender. And after doling out $160 million-plus on new talent and retaining Jeremy Swayman, they’re right to want to tell you that. But through 43 games, there’s simply no way for us to believe that the Bruins are a true contender.
At 20-18-5, this team is technically under .500, and their .523 point percentage is the second-worst among the 16 teams currently inside the playoff structure, ahead of only ‘Wild Card 2’ Columbus (.512). And with Tuesday’s loss to the Oilers, the Bruins are now 6-13-1 against teams currently inside the playoff structure in both the East and West conferences, including 3-8-0 against those in the East (they’d lose two series before winning one under that math).
In addition to all of that, the Bruins have played a conference-high 43 games this season, and if the four teams directly behind them in the Atlantic (Tampa Bay, Montreal, Ottawa, and Detroit) were to take care of their games in hand, the Bruins would be well on the outside looking in.
The real topper for the B’s right now, though, is that the current product is just straight-up unenjoyable.
That’ll almost always be the case when a team is losing, and a shoddy, disjointed product with too many holes on a night-in, night-out basis was a major reason why the Bruins moved on from Jim Montgomery. Those holes were seemingly plugged by interim head coach Joe Sacco rather quickly, with a team-wide acknowledgement that boring-but-tight (like the Islanders during their success under Barry Trotz a few years back) was what this team had to be to be successful. But the leaks have sprung once again, and forced us to once again take another honest look at the current on-ice product.
When you’re winning with a boring product, fans can tolerate it. New Jersey has multiple banners hanging at the Prudential Center that acknowledge exactly that. But when you’re losing with a boring (and at times downright bad) product, and at the same actively denying your fans what they want and trying to Orwell them into seeing something that is pretty clearly disputable by every eye test and metric possible, it’s a soup that nobody wants to slurp. Even with a real-feel outside hovering around zero.
Here in this space, I’ve talked about how the Bruins have a player playing at least one line above their ideal ceiling on pretty much every line and pairing. That remains as true as it was when I first said it. But that’s since been extended to having players who most likely do not factor in your long-term plans playing on said lines. Not that this is unique to the Bruins by any stretch, but Boston’s current top-nine forward group features five players currently in the last year of their contract; Morgan Geekie and Oliver Wahlstrom are both pending RFAs, while Justin Brazeau, Trent Frederic, and captain Brad Marchand are pending unrestricted free agents. As it stands right now, the 37-year-old Marchand is the only player you’d consider a lock to return. And this is all being done under the illusion of being a contender.
Wahlstrom, dropped by perhaps the only team with less natural offensive skill than the Bruins, played in his eighth game as a Bruin on Tuesday night. He had four shots on goal, three hits, and one blocked shot. He finished without a point for, you guessed it, his eighth straight game as a Bruin. This is not his fault. He is what he is. But there’s also no real need for the 24-year-old Wahlstrom to be given what’s now become a 92-minute rope with absolutely zero box-score productivity.
While Wahlstrom has been given 92 minutes, mostly spent on his off wing, the lefty-shooting Georgii Merkulov has put up two goals and six points in eight games for AHL Providence. Going back to when the Bruins sent him back to the minors after just one game with Sacco running things, Merkulov has posted five goals and 16 points in 17 games for the P-Bruins. In the NHL this season, Merkulov has been given just 41 minutes, and has outproduced Wahlstrom in that sample (one assist).
Sent to Providence in November, Matt Poitras has posted 18 points in 21 AHL games. Poitras apparently didn’t do enough to earn a recall amid what was a seven-game goal scoring streak for the Baby B’s, and is still waiting for another look, even after eight goals and 15 points in 12 games in December. With Poitras not here and Charlie Coyle moved to the wing, the Bruins have leaned on Trent Frederic to be their third-line center. Frederic has one goal and zero assists in his last 14 games, and has won just 43.8 percent of his faceoffs over that span. Poitras was sent to the minors with one goal and four points in 14 games, and, again, cannot sniff a call back to Boston for reasons unknown.
And then there’s Fabian Lysell. Boston’s 2021 first-round pick, Lysell finally made his NHL debut in Boston’s only victory since returning from the Christmas break, and actually helped create the goal that opened things up for the Bruins in that game. It was one of 15 shifts logged by Lysell in that game, which included a sequence that saw him benched for eight minutes plus in the third period of a four-goal hockey game. He was sent to Providence the next day. Lysell, by the way, has been on the ice for as many five-on-five goals-for as Wahlstrom. In 70 fewer minutes.
All of these players are guys that in theory should factor into the B’s present, but more importantly, their future. A future that’s already appeared short on young, excitable talent as is.
Now, most fans aren’t foolish enough to think that these players are the answers and the answers alone. Nor are they foolish enough to think that they are make-or-break when it comes to this team’s hopes for a Stanley Cup in 2025. But they are smart enough to know when you’re feeding them lesser options and delaying the future you have to at some point embrace for reasons that simply do not make much sense.
When the Bruins let countless forwards walk this summer, this did so with the said-it-out-loud assumption that young guys like Lysell, Merkulov, and Poitras would take that next step. It was the closest thing to an admission that the Bruins were going to have to embrace a slight ‘bridge’ year and shift their energy towards some on-the-job development, but nobody raised a stink. But that ‘next step’ did not happen to the Bruins’ liking in training camp, and the Bruins weren’t willing to let ’em try it out of the gate in the regular season. Instead, the Bruins spent as much and/or more time trying to squeeze something out of Riley Tufte (waived), Max Jones (waived), Tyler Johnson (waived, released, and now out of hockey as an unrestricted free agent), and now Wahlstrom.
WOOF.
This is the kind of stuff that the Bruins were able to get away with during the final days and years of the Chara-Bergeron-Krejci era and Cup windows. Those teams were ‘win now’ and didn’t have time and minutes to devote to on-the-fly development. The Bruins had a roster that was so crowded that breaking younger players in on a seven-minute fourth-line role was always scoffed at, and rightfully so for many of the players you wanted to see. It was actually one of the things that Bruce Cassidy mentioned when he was asked about his failure to develop younger players in Boston. But it’s high time for this team to do exactly that, and they have ample roles and minutes to, again, do exactly that.
For the Bruins, the easy out of playing younger players has been that they’re not ready and they don’t play the complete game needed in this league. Well, the harsh reality is that this current NHL team has not done that either. In fact, since returning to the rink on Dec. 27, only 10 teams have more giveaways per 60 than the Bruins. And these have been giveaways from some of your best players and your leaders, too. Speaking after Tuesday’s loss, Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov said that the team has not been playing as hard as they need to and has been disconnected since returning from the break.
Zadorov also touched on the elephant in the room and acknowledged that fans pay ‘big bucks’ to see the Bruins play, and that there’s no excuse for this team not to play with urgency.
And the truth is that while the ‘Fire Sweeney’ chants were not fun for Sweeney & Co. to hear, it’s better than hearing no cheers at all, which is where things could be trending. While the Bruins remain an expensive ticket (fifth-most expensive in the NHL by ‘fan cost index’ in 2024), there’s no doubt that the demand has dropped compared to last year, and especially two years ago. The cheapest get-in for next week’s Bruins-Lightning game at TD Garden checks in at under $80 per. That’s a borderline deal compared to what the get-in was just two weeks ago when the Blue Jackets were in town.
There’s a level to what the fans are willing to tolerate, though, and it feels like we’re inching dangerously close to that. For 43 games, fans have watched a defense-first team that struggles to play lockdown defense, a team with an $11.25 million goaltending tandem that currently has the 8th-worst save percentage in hockey, and an offense that features just two players with at least 22 points (fewest in the league), the fourth-fewest goals per game, and the 31st-ranked power play.
With numbers like that, it’s become borderline insulting to your fanbase’s intelligence to try and tell them that this is not a team that should mix in more speed, more youth, and more skill. Or that this current group has a formula that has to be respected and can’t run the risk of mixing in players who might make some mistakes in the name of creating some electricity to the table for a truly spark-less team.
The fans know they deserve better. Or something different at the very least.
And they’re gonna yell at Sweeney until they get it.
