There are a lot of reasons why the Boston Bruins find themselves in the unusual position of not playing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and staring at the possibility of having a top-five pick in the NHL Draft.
Poor drafting and player development are at or near the top of the list.
You can get away with bad drafting and development if you have a good veteran team, which the Bruins had for over a decade. But at some point it catches up to you, and for the Bruins, that reality came in the 2024-25 season as they sunk to the fifth-worst record in the league.
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SIGN UP HERE The Bruins could make a few fixes this summer to get back in the playoff mix next season, but for them to really compete for a Stanley Cup title over the long term, there has to be a much larger emphasis on drafting and player development.
The Bruins' draft record over the last 10 years is not good. There's little room for debate. In fact, since Don Sweeney took over as general manager in 2015, he has drafted only two impact players who are still on the roster: defenseman Charlie McAvoy and goaltender Jeremy Swayman.
Only one forward drafted by Sweeney has scored 20-plus goals in a season -- Jake DeBrusk -- and he's no longer on the roster. Only 10 of the 38 players drafted by the Bruins from 2017 through 2023 have played in an NHL game.
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Despite the team's lackluster draft and development history, Bruins president Cam Neely got pretty defensive when asked about it during Wednesday's end-of-season press conference.
Here's the exchange between Neely and The Boston Globe's Kevin Paul Dupont:
Dupont: "Question on drafting and development, neither of them have really been up to expectations in my opinion."
Neely: "Can you just elaborate on that, Kevin?"
Dupont: "The drafting?"
Neely: "Yep. Where we've picked, who we've picked and how it's turned out."
Dupont: "Well, where you've picked is not a lot of top 10 picks."
Neely: "Not a lot of first-round picks."
Dupont: "But ultimately, are those draft picks, have they developed and come on line the way you've wanted? If that's the case, fine."
Neely: "Well, obviously, you want to hit on all of your picks. The work the scouts do over the course of a year, they put in a lot of time and effort, they understand the players as best they can. We get the information from the scouts. Don ultimately ends up making the picks with information he gets from the scouts throughout the year.
"But I think our drafting and developing, the narrative there is a little off. And it's been going on for quite some time. It goes back to 2015. In 2015, it was really unfair to Don. By the time Don got hired it was late May, the draft was late June. He probably wasn't thinking about being the general manager at the time.
"What Don did leading up to the draft to make the acquisitions he did with those picks, to get those three picks, I thought was really good. Then Don was trying to move up in the draft and it didn't work out.
"What we should have done, looking back, we should have taken some time out and said, 'OK guys, let's regroup here. We didn't move up. We've got three picks in a row.' I think it was very new for everybody. We stood backstage for those three picks. What we should have done was get back to our table and say, 'Are we OK with our list?'
"These are things you try to learn from. Other picks after that, I think we've got a number of players, not necessarily with the Boston Bruins, that we have drafted that have played NHL hockey games. We have traded some of the picks and prospects to try and improve our club to win the Stanley Cup.
"The narrative -- we're not hitting on all our draft picks. No one is. You pick in the top 10, you better hit. We haven't done that in quite some time. Have we been perfect? No. Can we be better? Yes."
The lack of accountability from Neely and Sweeney at this press conference as it relates to the franchise's drafting and player development should concern Bruins fans.
Neely's excuse that the Bruins haven't picked in the first round much recently is pretty unsatisfying.
If the Bruins had done a better job drafting and developing over the last 10 years, maybe they wouldn't have had to take so many huge swings at the trade deadline in recent seasons. Fixing roster weaknesses at the trade deadline usually ends up costing valuable draft picks (including first-rounders). And the fewer draft picks you have, the harder it is to draft good players.
Neely also noting "where we've drafted" didn't make sense, either. So, good players can't be found outside the first round? Or outside the top 10?
In 2021, the Bruins picked forward Fabian Lysell at No. 21 overall. Two picks later, the Dallas Stars took Wyatt Johnston. In 2017, the Bruins selected defenseman Urho Vaakanainen at No. 18 overall. Two picks later, the St. Louis Blues took forward Rob Thomas. There were two top-six forwards on the board in the range Boston picked in both of those drafts and the front office missed on both.
The 2015 draft conversation also won't die. While it does get tiring to talk about it over and over, the reality is it was a major blunder by the franchise.
Not being able to trade up in 2015 shouldn't have been a major setback. The three players selected after Boston's three picks were Mathew Barzal (top-six center), Kyle Connor (one of the league's best goal scorers) and Thomas Chabot (top-four defenseman). It was all there for the Bruins to get three impact players, and they came away with zero.
You could argue the Bruins could have won the the Stanley Cup in 2019 and 2023 (and maybe other years) if they took Barzal and/or Connor. If they drafted Connor, they probably don't have to give up a first-round pick (and more assets) to trade for Rick Nash in 2018.
The Bruins have picked in Round 1 in just three of the last seven drafts. They've made just three second-round picks in the last seven drafts. The last time they picked in the first two rounds of the same draft was 2017. This path is not sustainable. The Bruins need to fully commit to building their prospect pool and developing the next wave of franchise pillars.
After trading away so many veteran players at the March 7 trade deadline and stockpiling a bunch of draft picks as a result -- four first-rounders and five second-rounders in the next three drafts -- it will be fascinating to watch how they use this capital.
Will they trade some of these picks for immediate help? Charlie Jacobs, Neely and Sweeney all said or hinted at the notion that if healthy, and with upgrades this summer, the Bruins can be in the playoffs next season.
That's great, but if this team actually wants to win the Stanley Cup in the near- or long-term, the drafting and developing has to improve. Throwing money at free agents and gutting the farm system/draft capital to address major roster issues isn't a way to build a perennial winner.
And if that means the 2025-26 season doesn't go well and you get another lottery pick, so be it. The Bruins don't need to go through a Buffalo Sabres or Chicago Blackhawks type of rebuild where it's a prolonged period of bad hockey.
They just need to reset a bit.