If someone knows a way out of this, something that will spark the Bruins out of their midseason malaise, well, enter and sign in, please.
The bedraggled Black and Gold, in their longest winless streak of the season (0-3-1), and with the Cup-contending-woke-again Oilers here on Tuesday night, appear to be poised to ride out 2024-25 with status quo the way to go.
If there is a trade to be made, the front office is shopping at Trader No’s.
If there is a warm, viable, potentially productive body to call up from Providence (good morning, Matt Poitras), Cam Neely and Don Sweeney have their cellphones switched to OFF.
If there is some secret sauce for interim coach Joe Sacco to ladle over what is believed to be the weakest power play since the pre-Bobby Orr days, it remains on a back burner at the Garden’s Iron Horse test kitchen. (Note: the NHL only has power-play stats dating to 1977-78)
Watching Chapter 42 of the regular season play out Sunday night, a 5-4 overtime
loss to the Islanders at the Garden, brought back memories of the late-November 2005 Bruins. Specifically, Nov. 29, in New Jersey, where a 3-2 loss to the Devils dropped that one-win-a-week iteration of the Bruins to 8-13-5.
Not even 24 hours later, after having been hosed on a faceoff vs. John Madden that led to Alex Mogilny’s game-winner with 32 seconds to go, Bruins captain Joe Thornton was summarily shipped to the Sharks. What had been a slow drip of a season suddenly cascaded with Niagara Falls force.
It remains, arguably, the NHL’s biggest trade of the 21st century, particularly from the Sharks’ perspective. They landed a franchise center, one who is now poised to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Oh, how the January 2025 Bruins could use a bona fide No. 1 pivot right about now. Spoiler: Elias Lindholm isn’t that guy.
In the wake of the ill-fated Jumbo Joe trade, the Bruins plummeted, with Mike O’Connell dismissed as general manager the following spring, and legendary team boss Harry Sinden shoved deeper into the front office broom closet. By late spring, Peter Chiarelli was installed as the clerk of the works and the franchise was on to a new era.
Change, forever slow to happen on Causeway Street … until it isn’t.
The current Bruins aren’t as bad as the ones on which Thornton made his last stand. The record (20-17-5) alone tells us that. With a .536 points percentage, No. 7 in the East, they remain in the playoff picture, though expecting anything other than a Round 1 knockout would be a flight of fancy incapable of getting off the ground.
It’s also possible the Bruins miss the playoffs outright, though for that to happen, two of the following sorry lot would have to eclipse them in the also-ran category: Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Montreal. Possible, but not practical.
It’s that low risk of a DNQ, something that hasn’t happened here since 2016, that plays into the status quo posture. Neely and Sweeney acted when the record stood 8-9-3 (.475), cashing out Jim Montgomery as coach Nov. 19 with a playoff berth about to slip out of the picture. Under Sacco, they’ve gone 12-8–2 and now the hope (and prayer?) is that a finish somewhere around 88-92 points will be sufficient to clinch a playoff berth.
Meanwhile, the waiting continues.
Because of contract restrictions written into most of the pricey deals on the roster, there really isn’t a shock trade to make on the magnitude of the Thornton deal. The need may be there, to shake the lethargy, but the biggest names are protected.
For instance, David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, still have years of “no move” protection. Ditto for newcomer Elias Lindholm and the injured Hampus Lindholm. Brad Marchand can be dealt, but Sweeney and Neely aren’t about to swap out their captain, who, by the way, remains on course to be an unrestricted free agent July 1.
Forwards Charlie Coyle and Pavel Zacha, along with veteran defenseman Brandon Carlo, can be dealt, though all three have varying ability to govern what teams they would accept in trade.
Franchise goaltender Jeremy Swayman, signed on the eve of the season for eight years/$66 million, is the one gemstone who can be dealt. Because of his age (25 when he signed the deal), his “no move” clause won’t trigger until the start of 2026-27, which would have been the season he bridged into unrestricted free agency.
Realistically, dealing Swayman is absolutely, positively, 99 percent out of the question, which is another way of saying anything can happen (see: Wayne Gretzky, age 27, Edmonton to Los Angeles, Aug. 9, 1988).
Just keep in mind, Thornton was fresh from signing a three-year/$20 million package with the Bruins when he pulled on that teal Sharks sweater. Neither the front office nor Bruins ownership was happy about the price.
A No. 1 pick (1997), Jumbo Joe’s profile in the Hub of Hockey at the time was larger than that of Swayman today. We can argue whether a No. 1 center or a No. 1 goaltender plays a bigger role in a franchise’s fate, but all the ballyhoo around the Thornton draft and his eight years/532 games in residence, along with the captain’s “C” on his sweater, gave him a unique standing on the roster. Until, it didn’t.
For now, no one is going anywhere, be it framed by personnel or wins, losses, and league standings.
The beat goes on. No trades, no call-ups, and no discernible form of life to be found on planet power play.
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