The shortcomings of the Sweeney era to date are an accumulation of paper cuts (to my eyes), especially more recently. Sorry for the re-litigation of some of these moves as I had another post earlier this summer going through his record to date, but I've been a fan of Sweeney on the whole until this past calendar year.
He started off about as well as one could hope for with the Lucic, Hamilton, and Jones trades in context - taking advantage of a team that was enamored with a player (Jones) but who couldn't pry him from a rival, and leveraging this to extract an extra 1st rounder out of the equation, is his signature trade IMO (up there with the mid-season acquisitions of Coyle and Lindholm). If Hamilton wasn't going to sign, IDK how much more Sweeney could have gotten or done. Got good assets back when dealt a bad hand.
In fact, the only blemishes I can see in the first handful of years were:
- Rinaldo for a 3rd (reeks of Neely)
- Backes as UFA for 5/$30m (reeks of Neely)
- Stempniak deadline acquisition for 2nd and 4th despite having him on a PTO in training camp
- The big kahuna: passing on Barzal and Connor in selecting Zboril, DeBrusk, and Senyshyn
- The rumor around draft day was that a trade for Noah Hanifin was lined up, but fell through. We'll never know for sure, but it's clear they did not get the talent out of that draft that they should have
Through the end of the 2020-21 season, I'd still argue that Sweeney had one of the best GMing records to date league-wide since he took over, even including the fallout of the 2015 draft, by virtue of how strong his in-season trades were, and how well he fared at retaining elite talent at below-market contracts. Sure, some of the latter is due to the culture organizationally instilled by Chara, Bergeron, Krejci etc, but good management identifies that and fosters it. Additionally, the Bruins don't make the 2019 Cup run without the in-season acquisitions of Coyle, Johansson, the emergence of Clifton as an unsigned senior FA acquisition, etc.
Yes, by this point, he'd added to some bad UFA signings by securing John Moore for 5 years at $2.75m AAV, re-upping Wagner for 3 years unprompted, trading Heinen for Ritchie... but again, paper cuts that didn't hamstring the team long-term, and got them to July 1 with loads of cap space, admittedly with question marks looming around Krejci's return. Last summer was when things started to take a turn (for me) from "very positive" to "boy I hope they know what they're doing".
First, giving credit for the good:
- He again retained two players in Hall (4 years, $6m AAV) and Reilly (3 years, $3m AAV) that represented less than either player would get on the open market, and at that point reflected good business, deference to Forbort over Reilly notwithstanding
- Reilly ending up in the press box speaks to a misalignment (to me) between the FO and coach - there's no $3m player signed the same year that should be in the press box, full stop.
- The signings of Haula and Nosek were also at or below market rates, with Haula's remaining year at $2.375m AAV arguably the B's most attractive trade chip not named Pastrnak.
- If they're out of it this year, I bet Nosek returns a 3rd+5th or some such combo from a contender
- He followed this up by retaining McAvoy mid-season for an 8 year, $9.5m AAV
Outnumbering the good, however, was the volume and cap commitment of the bad:
- Re-signing Carlo fresh off of 2-3 concussions in a 3 month span - 6 year, $4.1m AAV deal that to me represents the big boy version of the Moore signing. Paying market rate (at best) at a long term for a known quantity is not the way to operate in the cap world.
- Foligno - 2 years, $3.8m AAV. He has signed two respected veteran forwards in his tenure to outsized AAVs relative to their contribution. They have both been pissed when Cassidy rightly played them in a reduced role (they suck).
- Getting this wrong twice represents either a misalignment between the FO and the coach in terms of what the team needs, or a misjudgment on the character of these players. Either way, both the Foligno and Backes signings get a gigantic F from me, with the added bonus of Backes costing a 1st round pick just to get out form under him
- Forbort - 3 years, $3m AAV. Who was he bidding against? Forbort owes his agent ~25% minimum from this
- Ullmark - 4 years, $5m AAV. I get the idea here in that you needed Swayman insurance, but this is a lot of term and AAV commitment to a guy that isn't much beyond an average goalie. There's value in that, but not at this term IMO.
The above four players represent $15.9m in AAV. That's acceptable if you're getting two top-four D, a middle-six winger, and a tandem starter in net. For a guy who's stretched on the second pair these days, a 6/7 D, a 4LW, and a backup G, that is a criminal usage of cap space, and should (IMO) have sealed the deal for Sweeney.