Don Sweeney makes it clear as day that Bruins are all in on winning the Stanley Cup this year
BOSTON -- In the midst of his team's historically dominant season, Bruins general manager Don Sweeney entered last week sitting in perhaps the most comfortable position of his career. He could have easily sat back and largely left his team as is, allowing the rest of the Eastern Conference to sell off its resources in a scramble to try to climb to the level of the best team in hockey.
As we know by now, Don Sweeney did not do that. Not even close.
Instead, Sweeney grabbed a megaphone and made sure the rest of the NHL heard his message loudly and clearly: The Boston Bruins are all in.
This was clear a week ago, when the team sent this year's first-round pick, plus a 2025 second-round pick, plus a 2024 third-round pick to Washington to acquire defenseman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway. The Bruins didn't need those players, given the way their season was going. But the players make this year's team better, and they'll give Boston a better chance of making that coveted Cup run through June. So Sweeney made the move.
Under normal circumstances, such a deal would be all that a contending team executes before a trade deadline. The team had been beefed up. Picks were sent away. The deal was done.
Yet the rest of the conference made it clear that this was no ordinary year. The Rangers acquired Vladimir Tarasenko, and then acquired Patrick Kane a week later. The Devils got Timo Meier. The Maple Leafs added Ryan O'Reilly and Luke Schenn. The Hurricanes got Shayne Gostisbehere. The Lightning acquired Tanner Jeannot. The arms race, so to speak, was on.
With that particular climate taking hold, and with a pair of injuries to left wingers Taylor Hall (third line) and Nick Foligno (fourth line), Sweeney woke up Thursday morning and decided it was time to push even more chips to the middle of the table.
Sweeney sent away another first-round pick, this one a 2024 first-rounder that's top-10 protected, to Detroit to acquire Red Wings top-line left winger Tyler Bertuzzi. Sweeney also sent a 2025 fourth-round pick to Detroit to complete the deal.
With Bertuzzi set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, this was a mighty high price for a team to play. It's a pure rental scenario, and with Bertuzzi having a very poor season (four goals, 10 assists in 29 games, with a ton of time missed to injury), it would represent an over-the-top gamble in the traditional GM's handbook.
But for one, this isn't a conventional year. And for two, Sweeney doesn't seem to care.
In convincing Patrice Bergeron to play another season, in getting David Krejci to come back from the Czech Republic, and in putting $4.5 million of their current contracts into dead cap hits next season, Sweeney made it clear from the jump that the Bruins organization was all about this year.
In trading away not one but two first-round picks in the span of a week, Sweeney further drove home that point.
And then, sort of a cherry on top of the expenditure sundae, Sweeney announced that David Pastrnak has been locked up for eight years, at a reasonable salary of $11.25 million per year.
The deal gives Pastrnak the second-highest cap hit among wingers, behind Artemi Panarin at $11.642 million and ahead of Mitch Marner ($10.9 million) and Patrick Kane ($10.5 million). With salaries always rising and cap hits always growing, give this Pastrnak deal three to five years, and he'll likely end up being the seventh-highest-paid winger in the league sooner than later.
Watch: Pastrnak, Bruins discuss eight-year extension
Yes, Thursday was a strong day for Don Sweeney, who has done anything and everything within his power to supplement the best team in the NHL, while locking up a homegrown young star for good measure.
Of course, the bill always comes due. And a look at the Bruins' draft chart is a bit ominous. It shows the team having no first- or second-round picks for the next two years, while also lacking a third-round pick in 2024 and a second-round pick in 2025. On a team where three of the four best forwards are in their mid-to-late 30s, future reinforcements will be tough to add via the draft, given all of this capital spent.
But, well, Sweeney is not sweating that at the moment. He's instead adopted Albert Einstein's famed phrase: "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
That quote may be tweaked just a bit to reflect Sweeney's outlook on this season. He absolutely cares about the future, but only the near future. Beyond that? Well, it'll come when it comes.
Is it reckless? Sure, at least a little bit. Does it help the Bruins in the long term? Not particularly, no, outside of that Pastrnak extension.
But if this past week's moves can contribute to the Bruins delivering what's been missing in Boston for the past decade-plus? They'll all be deemed worthwhile. Certainly, nobody in Boston laments the trading away of a first-round pick for Tomas Kaberle in 2011. Even though Kaberle was more of a burden than an asset for that Bruins team ... they still won the Stanley Cup. The cost was worth it. Same goes for the second-round pick traded for Chris Kelly. And the removal of Blake Wheeler and Mark Stuart in order to acquire Rich Peverley. Now a dozen years later, nobody cares about that pick, and nobody's been overly concerned that Wheeler's turned into a real player for a long time. Because the Bruins won the Cup.
The trades made in the interim -- a first-rounder (with David Backes) for Ondrej Kase, a first-rounder for Rick Nash, a second and a fourth for Lee Stempniak, another second and another fourth for Marcus Johansson, a third-round pick for Zac Rinaldo -- are the ones that receive the harsh criticism. Because they didn't lead to the Bruins winning the Cup.
And that, of course, is how this season will be judged. Sweeney, for his part, understands that, and he truly grasps that being this good and this close to a championship doesn't come around too often. Now in his eighth year on the job, he knows that winning or losing the Cup will be how his tenure will ultimately be judged. So the chips are in. Now it's up to the players and the coach to finish the job.
That still won't be remotely easy. Not in the loaded-up Eastern Conference, and not in any year with the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But at the very least, Sweeney isn't letting the fear of a barren future limit him from building up for the present.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
