Would Bruins fans actually turn on Cam Neely?
COMMENTARY
So…is it too late get Peter Chiarelli back?
Yes, it’s been but one weekend under the spotlight, but the Boston Bruins have already become an unmitigated mess under rookie general manager Don Sweeney, working under the tutelage of a fella who just so happens to be one of the most revered athletes in the last generation in Boston sports.
So, here’s the question for you, Bruins fans: Are you ready to have an aversion toward Cam Neely?
Cam Neely?
It’s been a difficult year for presidents/general managers in these parts lately. Bill Belichick had to say goodbye to Darrelle Revis, for some reason. Danny Ainge had to watch Paul Pierce look like a 28-year-old in the NBA Playoffs, and then proceeded to draft like one last week. Ben Cherington has to ask himself where everything went horribly wrong, even as he writes checks for a portly third baseman that already seems like a bad contract, and a left fielder who has a better chance of winning the Nobel before a Gold Glove.
But the Bruins? Even with the hardcore base of fans focusing on their every turn, they have not experienced such angst since the time Mike O’Connell tried to save his job by diving off a cliff and ditched Joe Thornton for what amounted to a pair of collective, signed pucks and a protective vest on his way out the door.
Oh, nobody is seriously clamoring for Chiarelli, the former Bruins GM – fired earlier this year and now in charge of the Edmonton Oilers – to take back his spot in Boston, but at least now we know the poor man was a pawn at last season’s trade deadline. And there’s one message that Bruins fans may or not want to grapple with:
This is Neely’s team now.
Look, everybody gave Chiarelli a lot of guff for not dealing pieces (Carl Soderberg) that the Bruins weren’t going to re-sign, or, even in the throes of a playoff chase that looked to be an moot point, picking up needs (Antoine Vermette) to help them along the way at the deadline in March. The Johnny Boychuk trade looks like more and more like an act of desperation, and the Bruins, in turn, promise to do little of nothing — again — during the impending NHL free agency period which begins this week.
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Meet the Bruins’ 2015 NHL Draft class
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But doesn’t Chiarelli’s incompetence look pale by comparison to what Bruins fans have witnessed with Sweeney?
That’s not fair, of course, now that we know what we do now. This isn’t Sweeney’s realm much like it was never Chiarelli’s once Neely was dubbed the VP back in 2010. The Bruins won a Cup under Cam, something owner Jeremy Jacobs infamously pronounced that Neely was never able to do as a player right before the Duck Boats pushed off from North Station.
In that vein, it’s like Cam Neely’s upper management hip suddenly went out on him.
We all knew that Milan Lucic was headed elsewhere, at some point, this offseason, but the real surprise came on Friday during the NHL Draft when the Bruins surrendered defenseman Doug (you get rid of the “ie’’ once you’re dealt) Hamilton to the Calgary Flames for…what?
Nothing.
Nothing of use, anyway, not for a team that most people pegged to only have a down year, one season after winning the President’s Trophy. The Bruins ended up being the first team in NHL history to have three consecutive picks at the NHL Draft after their unloading of Lucic and Hamilton.
Will we be seeing a T-shirt at the Garden for that accomplishment too this season?
Yippee.
If you get the sense that Bruins fans are angry, well, they have the right to be so. This is, after all, a fan base that was taken advantage of for some some 30-plus years by the Jacobs family, before the benefactors finally lucked into Tim Thomas and Stanley Cup in 2011. The Chiarelli-Neely tandem seemed to be the antithesis of all that hard luck and stinginess, even as the former GM handed out five-year contracts as if they were goodie bags at a birthday bowling party.
Now what?
The fact that Hamilton has been traded amidst a flurry of smear campaign quotes isn’t surprising. Not if you’ve followed the Red Sox for any amount of years. But the fact that he was reportedly “uppity’’ and a difficult presence in the locker room comes as surprise, as in, those are headlines that didn’t exactly emerge while the 22-year-old was here.
Tyler Seguin, of course, departed under much of the same innuendo, except for that one, major reason that everybody keeps under his breath, even in the absence of said party.
But…we digress.
So who’s in charge? Is captain Zdeno Chara the one deeming what’s allowable and not in the dressing room, even if the 38-year-old might not be here in a year’s time? Is it Sweeney in his first months on the job, or is it Neely, trying to instill and attitude that, to be frank, and to quote his owner, never won him a Cup on the ice?
“Ultimately, if Don feels strongly about something I’ve got to allow him to do his job,’’ Neely said last month upon Sweeney’s hiring. “But if I feel strongly about something then I’ll let him know. But this total autonomy thing, since I became club president in 2010, it’s been a big deal. I don’t get it. I really don’t.
“I’ve made it very clear. I’m not a GM. I don’t want to be a GM. I want the GM to do the job, but I want to know what’s going on. I mean, I don’t know how much more clear I can be with that. If the GM wants to push and fight and say this is the right thing then I’ll sit down and listen.’’
That seems to be a convoluted way of taking a step back from the problem.
Sorry, Cam. This has your signature. Just be prepared for a new era of how you’re viewed on Causeway Street.
Cam Neely. Enemy of the people.
Yikes, that seems so wrong.
It’s up to Neely to prove it’s not the reality which it has clearly become.
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