B’s are what they are
This is a season of uncertainty and nowhere is that truer than on the frozen ice upon which the Bruins have been slipping and the soft grass of Fort Myers where the Red Sox are trying to figure out when their $30 million a year pitcher will throw a baseball again. As someone in the coaching business once said, “This is not what we’re looking for.”
For the Bruins, their recent slide back to what they’d been most of the season, which is to say a mediocre hockey club, has come as a shock to some. Those are people who also believe in the tooth fairy.
The fact of the matter is, was, and will remain so until the front office actually does something meaningful about it. Claude Julien couldn’t finish for his players and neither can Bruce Cassidy. Coaches coach, but on game nights, they mostly watch like the rest of us. Unfortunately, lately, the Bruins have been watching as well.
Losers of four straight before last night’s big win over the Islanders, who had tied them prior to last night’s game in the battle for the final playoff spot, the Bruins were either cracking under pressure — as they did at the end of the previous two seasons — or returning to their mean. Either is not good for fans, or for Don Sweeney and Cam Neely.
When Cassidy first replaced Julien last month, he came with a bounce in his step and put one in the Bruins’ as well. They won 12 of 15, primarily by pressing far more aggressively on offense than Julien would have ever thought wise. This resulted in defensemen getting off good shots from low in the zone and an emphasis on transitional offense over stay-at-home defense.
This caught their opponents by surprise for a minute, but Cassidy’s system has now been seen 19 times and it appears his peers are catching on to what the Bruins have become. While that is surely true, there is more afoot than that. What truly is happening is a mediocre team, what Bruins’ management left Julien with the past three years, is returning to its middling norm.
The Bruins collapsed at the end the last two years and failed to make the playoffs, but it was close. This year, the same thing is happening. Whether they make it or not, it’s going to be close because that is what their talent dictates. They are a middle-of-the-pack team, and changing coaches and playing styles wasn’t going to change that. In the end, it is the men on the bench, not the one behind it, who decides the spokedB’s fate.
Julien is in Montreal, where he took over a struggling Canadians team that had gone 1-5-1 in February at the time of his arrival. It’s 10-6 since, but at one point won six straight just as Cassidy’s Bruins won seven of eight. Neither team was that dominant, so each ultimately returned to its norm.
Only problem with that is Montreal’s norm has been atop the Atlantic Division all season, while the Bruins have hovered at hockey’s version of the Mendoza Line for three years. With eight games to go, that’s still where they reside.
Neely and Sweeney can claim all they want that their team has more talent than it has displayed, but in sports you are what your record says you are. What it says of this team is it’s the same as its two predecessors. No better. No worse.
Maybe a coaching change was needed, but coaches don’t win many games. Players do, and until the Bruins find more of them, especially ones who can finish — hello Tyler Seguin — mediocrity will be their middle name.
Meanwhile, there is angst of a different sort at the Fort. While the Bruins are coming to the wire, the Red Sox are readying to toe it, yet already anxiety rules because of two missing Davids: Ortiz and Price.
Ortiz’ retirement means reduced run production. That doesn’t mean the Sox don’t have a solid lineup that will score, but you don’t just replace all Ortiz meant overnight.
That’s why the Sox loaded up on high-priced pitching. Chris Sale is a bargain as far as aces go, earning only about $12 million this season, but Price’s price is not. He’s become a man with a $30-million contract and a two-bit elbow, which means it’s time for antacid pills for John Farrell and Dave Dombrowski.
Price’s arm strength is below where it was when spring training began, and he’ll be on the DL well into May at least. For a team building around pitching, that’s troubling news.
Despite that, you’d still rather be a Sox fan at the moment than a B’s backer. The Sox have all summer before they reach where the Bruins stand today, which is the crossroads of another failed season, regardless of who is standing behind the bench.
If, when it’s all said and done, Bruce Cassidy and the Bruins go home while Claude Julien and the Canadians skate deep into the playoffs, who will Bruins’ management blame next?
How about the players for once? And the people who picked them.