Bruins for Bedard? How a one-year tank could revive Boston

Even three weeks ago, the future looked bleak for the Boston Bruins. Captain and future Hall of Famer Patrice Bergeron tearfully hugged his teammates after they’d been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Carolina Hurricanes. Speculation began on whether Bergeron, a pending UFA who turns 37 before next season, would call it a career. In doing so, he’d be joining Tuukka Rask, the franchise’s all-time leader in most major goaltending categories, who retired this winter. And those two would be joining other core members of the perennially contending Boston teams who walked out the door in recent offseasons, from defensemen Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug to center David Krejci.

The Bruins were already poised to open 2022-23 virtually unrecognizable from the group that went to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final in 2018-19. And that was before the strange end-of-season presser in which president Cam Neely gave coach Bruce Cassidy an awkwardly public vote of non-confidence. That was before the Bruins announced that star left winger Brad Marchand needed double hip surgery and would miss six months. That was before the Bruins revealed that No. 1 defenseman Charlie McAvoy would miss six months after shoulder surgery. And before Boston added in fine print that defensemen Mike Reilly and Matt Grzelcyk also went under the knife and are expected to miss the start of the season.

Then came the odd firing of Cassidy this week, which seemingly could’ve been done earlier rather than Neely publicly criticizing him and letting him twist in the wind.

So things sure seemed simpler a few weeks back when Bergeron’s possible retirement was the “only” thing holding the Bruins back from staying competitive in the stacked Atlantic Division next season. How about now? Few teams have more worrisome outlooks relative to their fans’ expectations at the moment. Factor in that the Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers and Toronto Maple Leafs are squarely in their contention windows; that the Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators are getting deep into their rebuilds; and that the Montreal Canadiens will pick first overall in July’s draft, and it’s hard to feel confident about Boston’s chances at a playoff spot next season. Not when so many of its stars are gone or won’t be healthy enough to suit up next October.

That’s led to some spicy tanking chatter on social media over the past couple days. Is it possible the Bruins could take a dive in 2022-23, allowing them to pick high in a loaded 2023 draft class that features possible era-defining stars in Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli and Matvei Michkov? What would a rebuild look like? How quickly could the Bruins become competitive again?

Honestly: this franchise has a unique window to retool aggressively and quickly if it executes the next year correctly. How could it play out? Here’s a hypothetical ‘Bruins for Bedard’ game plan.

Step 1: Remove Don Sweeney as GM.

Cassidy guided the Bruins to six consecutive playoff appearances. In 399 games as their coach, he compiled a .672 points percentage. For perspective on how good that mark is: among coaches with 500 or more games coached, Scotty Bowman holds the highest points percentage of all-time at .657.

Now factor in that Cassidy kept the Bruins competitive even after Krejci and Krug left as UFAs – and even after the Bruins have repeatedly failed to provide help from within. If you look at the more impactful members of their core over the past decade – Bergeron, Rask, Marchand, Krejci, Krug, David Pastrnak and so on, each was drafted or acquired by a regime predating Sweeney’s except for McAvoy.

The first-round picks of the Sweeney era:

Jakub Zboril, 13^th, 2015
Jake DeBrusk, 14^th, 2015
Zach Senyshyn, 15^th, 2015
Charlie McAvoy, 14^th, 2016
Trent Frederic, 29^th, 2016
Urho Vaakanainen, 18^th, 2017
John Beecher, 30^th, 2019
Fabian Lysell, 21^st, 2021

Sweeney’s staff did hit outside the first round on defenseman Brandon Carlo and goaltender Jeremy Swayman, but it has missed time and again when given the opportunity to build up a long-term core that can replace its current generation, especially at forward. I didn’t include the players Boston passed on in the first rounds of the Sweeney era, as it would almost be cruel. It’s that ugly.

In Sweeney, then, the Bruins have a GM who hasn’t set them up for future success and has mostly ridden players brought in before his tenure. Now let’s factor in the report from The Athletic’s Fluto Shinzawa this week that superstar right winger Pastrnak, sour over watching Krug and Krejci walk as UFAs, will not re-sign with the Bruins as long as Sweeney remains as GM. Pastrnak enters the final season of his contract, carrying a bargain cap hit of $6.67 million. He’s still just 26. Over the past five seasons, he’s fifth in the NHL in goals, trailing only Alex Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid.

If it’s truly “me or him” with Pastrnak and Sweeney, whom would you choose to keep around long term? Easy choice, I agree.

Bringing in a new GM would also create a much longer runway for Boston to adopt a “win later” mentality. It’s how the cycle of a GM job works in the NHL (excluding royalty-tier GMs like Lou Lamoriello and David Poile): when a GM has held a position for a long time and their team starts to slip, that GM rarely enters rebuild mode, as doing so would be admitting failure, akin to holding up a sign that says “Fire me.” That GM has no choice but to keep the pedal down and try to fix things. Brad Treliving did so successfully in Calgary. Marc Bergevin failed to do it in Montreal. Sweeney was open this week about the possibility of rebuilding – But a new GM hire in Boston could paint with broader strokes. A fresh hire wouldn’t be blamed for the team’s struggles and would arguably have more leeway to field a bad team for a season if need be.

Step 2: Let the injured Bruins heal for as long as they need – and more.

Marchand and McAvoy are two of the sport’s most impactful players at both ends of the ice. They are absolutely irreplaceable when sidelined. Factoring in Bergeron’s potential retirement, the Bruins could open next season minus three of the best play-drivers in the NHL. It will be impossible to be as competitive as they have been in recent seasons – and that can be the franchise’s friend. Let Marchand and McAvoy heal until they’re truly 100 percent – and, by keeping them out of the lineup, you keep the team from winning too many games, and you have a perfectly good excuse to not call it tanking. You’re protecting your stars, making sure you don’t rush them back at less than 100 percent. Wink wink.

Step 3: Grant Jake DeBrusk his wish – even if it’s no longer his wish.

Left winger DeBrusk requested a trade this past season. The Bruins never found a taker, opting instead to extend him on trade-deadline day with a two-year extension at a $4-million AAV. That contract did not signify an end to the trade request, of course. Far from it. It merely erased concern over his qualifying offer and made his contract easier to move. But is the trade request still in play on DeBrusk’s end today? Does the removal of Cassidy, with whom DeBrusk reportedly developed friction, change DeBrusk’s opinion?

Viewed differently: does that matter? DeBrusk recouped some of his trade value by burying 18 goals in his last 34 games of 2021-22. That’s a 43-goal pace and creates a sell-high opportunity on a maddeningly inconsistent player. The Bruins don’t own a first-round pick in the 2022 draft. Is there a chance they could claw one back by trading DeBrusk? Doing so would also remove 25 goals from an already-depleted lineup for 2022-23, further suppressing the team’s competitiveness.

Step 4: Resist the urge to get cute with LTIR.

Even if Bergeron’s $6.875 million comes off the books with a potential retirement, the Bruins are close to the cap, with more than $80 million already committed for 2022-23 contracts – give or take, depending on which players break camp with the team. The point is that Boston in a bad place cap-wise. McAvoy commences his eight-year extension, his cap hit jumping to $9.5 million, while Hampus Lindholm begins his eight-year deal at $6.5 million per year. Theoretically, by stashing McAvoy and Marchand (not to mention Reilly and Grzelcyk) on LTIR to start next season, the Bruins could free up significant cap space to chase free agents, but (a) they’d still have the problem of cap compliance when their stars return and (b) under the ‘Bruins for Bedard’ plan, we don’t want more money tied up in veterans. We want to save that money to extend Pastrnak.

The hypothetical result

A new GM, long layoffs for injured stars, a DeBrusk trade and a deliberately conservative offseason spending plan would lay the groundwork for a bad Bruins team in 2022-23 and a chance at a plum draft selection. We call the plan ‘Bruins for Bedard’ because it has a nice ring to it, but, really, next year’s draft class offers plenty of potential even for a team that doesn’t win the lottery. With only two ping pong balls handed out, a 32^nd overall team could lose the lottery twice and still get one of Fantilli and Michkov, albeit Michkov would represent a longer rebuild timeline since he’s still signed for several more seasons in the KHL.

Picture what Boston could do in 2023-24: A happy, re-signed Pastrnak, a healthy Marchand and McAvoy, multiple key D-corps members signed long term, a goalie to build around in Jeremy Swayman, a new core star plucked from the 2023 draft…the rebuild could morph into a retool quickly.

It’s time to get briefly worse to get better, Boston. I’ve been told dozens of times by players over the years, “Tanking isn’t in my DNA,” but it’s a GM, not the players and coaching staff, who lead a tank job. When you take the best pieces off the board, it’s tough for your team to win even if it wants to.

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Bruins for Bedard? How a one-year tank could revive Boston

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