Great breakdown. LQ is easily becoming one of the best voices on the Bruins imo.
The guy makes some good points, especially about Monty's lack of playoff success and mismanaging assets - letting Bergeron play and get injured, playing Ullmark even though he was hurt, etc. Hindsight is 20/20, but looking back, better decisions could have been made.
And I agree: lots of blame to go around. The one narrative I'd question, though, for a couple of reasons, is this idea that Sweeney went for size in the off-season at the expense of speed. Several people have said this. Yes, he added Zadorov for more size and snarl on the backend, but he also added E Lindholm, who is not big. And, by deciding to keep Poitras up with the big club, that's almost like an "add," and Potsy is definitely not big.
I suppose one could argue that losing DeBrusk meant that Brazeau or Geekie move up, and they're a little bigger, but they were also here last year. Of the other new guys that were new adds, Kastelic and Koepke, Kastelic has size, but he's also been one of the more effective players this season, and in general, the heavy (with Beecher) 4th line has been maybe the only consistently effective line thus far.
So, other than Zadorov, where is this off-season move towards size that appears to be sinking the team right now?
The other thing is, isn't getting bigger, especially on the backend, what everybody said we needed in order to handle teams like the Panthers in the playoffs? That's what I heard so many people say after last year's loss to the Panthers.
It's like a never-ending pendulum of opinion between size and speed/skill.
We need size!
Now we're too slow! We need speed!
Now we're too small! We need size!
and so on....
