With one coach canned and a power play all but encased in cement, it’s more a mess for Don Sweeney and Cam Neely to clean up.
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The Bruins have opened the new year with a bang, provided their solemn resolution was to go lean in 2025.
They jump-started their dieting ways on Dec. 31,
putting a lone puck in the net in Washington. A little more than 48 hours later, the mirror already showing the effects of their slimming down, they again fasted around
one goal across 60 minutes at Madison Square Garden.
Two games. Two goals. Two losses. Four points dropped between D.C. and NYC. What we have here, as the Bruins reach the midpoint of their 82-game schedule Saturday night in Toronto, appears to be a team intent on starving its way into the playoffs on a single serving of 6 ounces of vulcanized rubber. Their Awaken-One-Goal diet, as frustrating as it is nonfattening, as of Friday morning left them standing with 103 goals for the season — more than only Chicago (96), Anaheim (95), and Nashville (91).
In other words, the Black and Gold are going nowhere fast with this fast, unless interim coach Joe Sacco and staff can wring more juice out of the existing offensive pulp, or if Don Sweeney and Cam Neely, the corner office chief chefs, can fatten up the offense with a roster move or two, or more.
At this hour, with one coach canned and a power play all but encased in cement, it’s more a mess for Sweeney and Neely to clean up. The parts are the parts, their parts, and the parts have proven unfit, with a half-season’s poor results as proof.
Where from here?
The obvious place to begin is AHL Providence and the call-up/return of Matt Poitras. The varsity lineup needs the 20-year-old center’s IQ, hands, and sense for the net.
Leaving Poitras with the WannaB’s, to build his game, frame, and confidence, is now a luxury that Neely and Sweeney cannot afford, even with the Eastern Conference shelves stocked with enough tomato cans offering a pathway to the playoffs.
Poitras, 8-10–18 in 19 games since his Nov. 11 assignment to Providence, wouldn’t be the single ingredient to trigger a goal rush. However, he has shown some finish around the net since joining the JV, contrary to the stony hands that Thursday night fired 77 shot attempts at Rangers goaltender Jonathan Quick, landed fewer than half (33) on net, and in the end had only an Elias Lindholm goal to show for it.
Poitras has a top-six skill set and can play center and wing. Lindholm finally is beginning to produce after a near flatline opening quarter of the season, but there’s still plenty of room for “Potsy” to try his hand at No. 2 pivot or maybe No. 3, where it’s possible he’d find a fit with newcomer Oliver Wahlstrom at right wing.
Wahlstrom, called back into the lineup Thursday, showed a couple of encouraging flashes. He remains a long shot to get his game and career grounded here. Pairing him with a young, eager Poitras for, say, 3-5 games would offer a place to start. For a team averaging a scant 2.58 goals per game, the risk is zero.
As for trades, the two most obvious candidates to go are Trent Frederic and Charlie Coyle, and perhaps goalie Joonas Korpisalo, whose price tag ($3 million) as a backup has made him vulnerable to a trade from the moment Jeremy Swayman finally signed on the dotted line for $8.25 million the next eight years.
Korpisalo is among the very few on the roster to play to his value this season, but every nickel counts on Causeway Street, especially in a hard-cap world.
Frederic’s game is many steps beyond the “fighting it” stage. The 6-foot-3-inch center/wing has but 5-6–11 to show for the season and lately looks lost in space, all 200 feet of it. His production represents about a 50 percent drop from his encouraging career high of 18-22–40 last season.
The honest, gregarious, well-liked Frederic is a great guy to have on a team, but his production has vanished — he’s pointless, with eight shots on net, the last 11 games. He also can walk as an unrestricted free agent on July 1. He’d be a guy for the Bruins to keep if they were seriously in the Cup hunt. That’s not where they are, which leaves his value higher as a trade prospect than a roster part positioned for the thick of an April-May-June run up Mount Stanley.
Coyle, best when he captains the bottom six as No. 3 center, currently is employed as a top-six winger. Hmm. Circumstances dictate change, fine, though in Coyle’s case that literally has meant moving him out of a position where he can best succeed.
Coyle’s contract (one more season, $5.25 million cap hit) allows him to limit the number of prospective trade partners. If Sweeney can find a deal, the target would be the obvious: someone with a penchant for putting pucks in the net, particularly on the power play. Potential names: the Rangers’ Chris Kreider and Anaheim’s Frank “The Springfield Rifle Redux” Vatrano.
Reminder: The trade deadline is March 7, a little more than 60 days from now. Technically, there is time to make a fix.
If the Awaken-One-Goal diet doesn’t kill them first.
