Loved Cam as a player……but I think he’s in way over his head here.
“I thought our training camp was a little disjointed,” said the team president when evaluating the team's up-and-down start to the season.
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DALLAS — Cam Neely is as flummoxed as anyone.
The Bruins’ inconsistent, up-and-down start to the season has surprised many, including the team’s president, who experienced the highs and lows of this week’s road trip first-hand.
Neely felt the exhilaration of the
comeback win over the Blues Tuesday night — arguably the best win of the season — and the depths of
the blowout loss to the Stars Thursday.
The Bruins, who enter Saturday’s rematch with the Blues at 8-8-2, have struggled to establish an identity. The habits and details that were hallmarks of the last two seasons — supporting pucks, being hard to play against, excellent special teams — have come and gone during the early stages of this campaign.
Speaking before Thursday’s game at American Airlines Center, Neely said it was hard to say why the team’s play has been choppy, but theorized the roots of the problems go back to the preseason.
“I thought our training camp was a little disjointed,” said Neely. “Some guys out at camp, whether it was injuries or whatnot. So I think it was a little bit more challenging than we had the last couple training camps. The work on specialty teams wasn’t really something that the staff could do in camp, just because of the guys in and out.”
Newcomers Elias Lindholm and Max Jones both missed chunks of training camp with injuries, while No. 1 goalie Jeremy Swayman didn’t join the team until the day before the season opener when
his new contract was settled.
With a good-sized roster overhaul from the club that pushed the Stanley Cup champion Panthers to
six gamesin the Eastern Conference semifinals in the spring, an acclimation process for the newcomers was something Neely was anticipating.
“That’s usually the case,” he said. “I mean, it does take a little time, and again with camp being a little bit more disjointed than I would’ve liked, it probably played a factor in that.”
Neely has been mostly pleased with the two big-ticket additions —
Lindholm ($7.75 million salary-cap hit) and
defenseman Nikita Zadorov ($5 million) — but expects they will have an even bigger impact as they continue to get comfortable with the Bruins’ systems.
“Elias, I think, is as advertised — a 200-foot player, smart player, maybe see him shoot a little bit more,” said Neely. “I know guys don’t want to be selfish, but sometimes I think if you’re passing up shots, I look at that as a form of selfishness.
“And from Nikita’s point of view, big body, I’d like to see a little bit more urgency in his game, and that’s coming. I think he can kill a little bit more plays just with his size and smarts and skating ability.”
Without mentioning any names, Neely indicated that some players skating in Providence could return and help the varsity at some point.
Matt Poitras, Jones, and Riley Tufte all earned spots on the initial roster but have since been sent to the AHL.
“It’s one of those things where you want to see guys go down, certain guys that if they made our team out of camp and for whatever reason struggle a little bit, you’d like to see them go down there, get their confidence back because they’re capable of playing,” said Neely.
“There’s a reason they made our team out of camp. So go to Prov, [have a] great attitude, work hard, get in all situations. And we’ve got some guys right now that are playing well, that are starting to produce, competing. That’s a big thing for me. Are you competing?”
Neely and general manager Don Sweeney have applauded coach Jim Montgomery’s communication skills. Asked if those skills have been vital in weathering the turbulence, Neely said communication is always key.
“Whether it’s with the players or with the staff, I think you have to talk things through,” he said. There’s a lot of great hockey minds in that locker room, so if you’re not communicating, I think that just makes things a little bit more stagnant.
“So I think our staff as a whole does a really good job of communicating, like I said, not just with each other, but with the players as well.”
As of Friday, the Bruins had the worst power play in the league at 11.4 percent. Perhaps more surprisingly, the penalty kill, perennially among the top units in the league, ranked 26th at 74.3 percent.
“Our specialty teams right now are something that’s not quite what we’re expecting,” said Neely. “And we’ve seen in the past, our PK has generally been pretty strong. So I feel pretty confident we’ll get back to that. We haven’t really changed that much personnel on the PK, so I think we’ll get back to where we were accustomed to.”
Neely remains confident this team can be successful, and he was buoyed by the way it fought back against the Blues.
“I liked our third period, considering the third period the previous game [an
overtime loss to the Senators],” Neely said. “So I thought that was a great step in the right direction where these guys didn’t fold up shop and came out with a purpose to win.”
