Hot take time
Don Sweeney is a great GM, one of the best in the game. He's great at finding value players, always builds a great bottom six and d core. He's worked wonders with the cap and people were saying the Bruins were due to collapse due to the core aging out since 2018, and he not only kept things afloat but put together the best team of the decade. And at the deadline he went all in on that team. For a bunch of reasons that team didn't get it done in the playoffs, which is primarily on the coach and players. But Sweeney is not to blame for that at all and if he didn't go all in on the deadline it would've been a mistake.
In a cap world you can't keep everything going forever, and this year everything they'd leveraged for years caught up to them. And instead of trying to patch things up and be mediocre enough to complete for a wild card and one and done, he had the guts to aggressively tear down everything that wasn't bolted down. Marchand, Carlo, Coyle, Frederic. And he collected some good talent and draft picks (and got the first rounder for Marchand to convey). Shut down the injured players, and they put themselves in position to get a high pick (then got f***ed over by the NHL' bullshit lottery system).
Next year might be another DNQ, but with some good futures to work with, expiring cap space, having an elite RW and #1D locked up long-term, and hopefully hiring a new coach who isn't a piece of shit, they could be back on the rise soon enough, and I for one do trust Don Sweeney to lead that rebuild.
