Will the Bruins' ownership do anything about this mess? - The Boston Globe
After another disastrous loss that included a shot-less period, Bruins fans are unhappy with the state of their team and they made it known loud and clear on Saturday.
www.bostonglobe.com
Bruins ownership was dealt an emphatic, “Yo, are you listening?!” moment after the second period of the club’s embarrassing, historic 6-2 loss to Tampa Bay Saturday night on Causeway Street.
The protracted thunderclap sounded like this: “Booooooooooo!” and “Boooooooo!”... and “Boooooooo!” and …
You get the idea. The general throat-clearing from the TD Garden stands went on and on. Vox populi was rightly vexed. The listless home team had been outshot, 21-0, in the middle period. To repeat: 21-0. In their own building, an address that once had the opposition shaking in their long socks.
To review: the Lightning recorded better than one shot per minute in that second period, while the Bruins went for a skate straight to puck Palookaville. And we thought they coulda been contendahs?
Per the NHL, which began tracking shot stats in 1965, never had there been such a night for the Bruins in the last 60 years, and likely not one like it since opening the barn door for business in 1924.
To be clear, the Bruins have been held shotless for a period (as recently as Nov. 9 this season) but never while the other side manufactured rubber at such Goodyear/Bridgestone rates. The only comp: the 15-0 period the Rangers slapped on them in a 5-1 Blueshirt win at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14, 1979.
After the Lightning game, a couple of the players in “Black & Gold” — Pavel Zacha and Elias Lindholm — owned up to the risible performance, each labeling it an “embarrassing” night. Good on them. Not easy to say, but it had to be said.
It remains an endearing part about hockey that its players know when they stink out the joint and they’ll freely admit it, largely because they’re smart enough to know that we know when they stink. That’s especially true in this town, where we have a century-plus of acquired hockey wealth that has included some sensation highs (see: Orr to Sanderson back to Orr!) and some soul-shredding lows (see: Don Cherry counting fingers behind the visiting bench at the Forum, May 10, 1979).
If only Bruins ownership were as blunt, as accountable, as honest, as ready to stand up and say, “This ain’t right.”
The bile and bellowing from the customers Saturday night should underscore to owner Jeremy Jacobs (not spotted here for years) and his progeny (most notably, son Charlie, the Bruins' CEO) that their franchise/cash cow has reached a crossroads. No telling if they’ll do something about it, or frankly, if they even recognize it.
What they have today is an overmatched product that will not win, and could force season-ticket holders to bail, and most critically, a franchise badly in need of adding legit, varsity, bona fide players.
It’s up to team president Cam Neely and general manager Don Sweeney to fix it via trade and/or free agency, and therein lies the crossroads.
Virtually everything the Jacobses know about hockey, their team, and how it’s constructed, and how the hockey sausage is made up and down the organization, is based on what Neely and Sweeney tell them.
At this dire hour, that’s it, because, well, that has been the Jacobs ownership model here for 50-plus years. They own. They observe. They let the hired help take care of all the hockey things and the building(s). They monitor the dollars in and out.
Now, to that latter point, Jacobs ownership boosted their hockey ticket prices by a “blended” average of 9 percent late last season. Less than a month ago, as Causeway burned with the speed of a California brushfire, ownership tacked on another “blended” 4 percent for 2025-26.
Put it all together and you get a 13 percent wallet grab at a time when the team stinks to high heaven and the American consumer at large, even here amid the gold-cobblestone roads of the Hub, is having a helluva time coming up with discretionary income (defined as money left over for hockey after purchasing a $6.29 dozen of eggs).
So, again, it’s not solely hockey truths that escape the Jacobses. For good reason, they’ve come to believe that the sky’s the limit when it comes to what they whack customers for tickets, not to mention beer and hot dogs.
Sorry, that model crumbles when fans are booing the team off the ice, including that guy in the lower bowl Saturday night who taped the word “FIRE” above “NEELY” on the back of his Bruins sweater. That, folks, is a five-minute cross-checking penalty with an added deuce for instigating.
Up until early on here in the 21st century, ownership had Harry Sinden in place as the franchise’s omniscient hockey overseer. It worked great, until it didn’t, the senior Jacobs not compelled to make an overhaul until the Joe Thornton trade to San Jose proved to be the plug that pulled the stopper out of the bottom of Jacobs’s deep tub of trust. Harry wasn’t completely out, per se, but he was very much out of the day-to-day picture, for both better and worse.
Here’s the truth as of St. Paddy’s Day 2025: Whatever ownership now decides is in the best interest of the team and its roster is what Neely and Sweeney tell them is in the best interest of the team and its roster. It has been that way for nearly 10 years, including this season’s collapse.
The issue there, of course, is that Neely and Sweeney engineered the team that Saturday got bum-rushed out of its own building by a solid, but not great, Tampa team, and Monday night stands again to be in for a rough ride at home against the visiting Sabres, who haven’t suited up for a playoff game since April 26, 2011.
We hear nary a peep anymore from the 85-year-old senior Jacobs. Charlie once in a while emerges to tell us he has handed the full faith and trust of all hockey operations over to Neely and Sweeney. They’re his guys and he’s sticking to ‘em.
Meanwhile, round ‘n’ round it goes, with the end of the season (April 15 vs Devils, good seats still available) at hand, the draft on the horizon (June 27-28), followed by July 1 free agency. It can only get better, right?
What we have, at the moment, is 21-0 and status quo. Unless ownership hears and sees what’s going on.
