My take is that Cam Neely is genuinely a good and hard-working guy who loves the Bruins, but he is not necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed. On top of that he is rather thin-skinned and prone to getting flustered when on the defensive, which tends to get him into trouble. His argument about 2015, for example, made zero sense. He has done a decent job as President but there are almost certainly quite a few people out there who could do it better.
Charlie Jacobs probably even more so falls into that ‘not so bright’ category and he certainly wouldn’t be in charge of an organization as large as the Bruins if he weren’t Jeremy’s son. He’s not an idiot by any means but he’s limited. That’s nepotism for you.
Don Sweeney, on the other hand, is genuinely intelligent. We like to poke fun at ‘Harvard’ Donnie, and it certainly doesn’t mean that every decision he makes is smart or right, but he truly has an intellect and capacity well-suited to his job as GM. His weaknesses from a public/media point of view are he tends to come across as smug and he likes to talk in circles.
So that’s only one out of three of your bigwigs who’s a really sharp, relevantly talented person, and even that one has his flaws and is probably approaching his used by date. That doesn’t bode well, even if you accept that they have a few other smart people around them. Overall, the Bruins seem to me to have a generally competent but somewhat lumbering management group that is frayed and lacks dynamism.
I would be curious to see how Don operated without Cam, but Neely gave some pretty strong hints that he has no intention of going anywhere, and if he is he’s taking Sweens with him. So we’re not getting any change there in the short term. Best we can hope then is the GM has a mostly free hand to execute his plans, and he makes the right decisions, and most of all that they get the new coach selection right. What they do there will give us a huge indication as to whether they genuinely want to aim high, or simply want to get back to being mediocre contenders who consider just making the playoffs essentially job done. We will see.
Charlie Jacobs probably even more so falls into that ‘not so bright’ category and he certainly wouldn’t be in charge of an organization as large as the Bruins if he weren’t Jeremy’s son. He’s not an idiot by any means but he’s limited. That’s nepotism for you.
Don Sweeney, on the other hand, is genuinely intelligent. We like to poke fun at ‘Harvard’ Donnie, and it certainly doesn’t mean that every decision he makes is smart or right, but he truly has an intellect and capacity well-suited to his job as GM. His weaknesses from a public/media point of view are he tends to come across as smug and he likes to talk in circles.
So that’s only one out of three of your bigwigs who’s a really sharp, relevantly talented person, and even that one has his flaws and is probably approaching his used by date. That doesn’t bode well, even if you accept that they have a few other smart people around them. Overall, the Bruins seem to me to have a generally competent but somewhat lumbering management group that is frayed and lacks dynamism.
I would be curious to see how Don operated without Cam, but Neely gave some pretty strong hints that he has no intention of going anywhere, and if he is he’s taking Sweens with him. So we’re not getting any change there in the short term. Best we can hope then is the GM has a mostly free hand to execute his plans, and he makes the right decisions, and most of all that they get the new coach selection right. What they do there will give us a huge indication as to whether they genuinely want to aim high, or simply want to get back to being mediocre contenders who consider just making the playoffs essentially job done. We will see.
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