Boston Bruins Cam Neely Expects Improvement From Defense
Boston Bruins Team President Cam Neely Expects Improvement From Teams Defense
Boston Bruins Team President Cam Neely expects the team’s defense to improve this season. The issue is the team still has the same players despite Neely committing to improving d-core earlier in the offseason.
“We know that it’s an area that we need to improve upon,” he said. “That’s probably at the top of the list.
Even with Neely publicly stating improving the defense is a priority, the team failed to bring in any players to actually improve their defense. A month to go till the season starts and the Boston Bruins defense remains the team’s biggest liability. The only real move the team completed with its defense is the buyout of Dennis Seidenberg, Neely explains the lack of activity.
Basically from April to now everybody is talking about our back end, and not being able to land a top-4 defenseman. We still have an opportunity as far as cap space goes if something shakes free, and I know [GM Don Sweeney] has worked hard trying to do something.
Neely for some reason believes that his current squad should still play better despite no upgrades to the d-core.
But I feel like as a group we can do better than we did last year. I think Tuukka [Rask] can play better than he did last year. If that happens we should be a better club. It’s going to be a challenge and it’s going to be competitive. But I feel like the changes we’ve made through the organization, and not just in player personnel, that there’s opportunity for our group to improve.
Neely threw his netminder under the bus in his comments to CSN New England, not something you typically want to do to a fragile player like Rask. Tuukka Rask happens to be the highest paid goaltender in the NHL. But ranked in the bottom half of the league in many key stat categories last season. Rask also happened to rank 44th in save percentage, which is never a good sign. But throwing him under the bus was uncalled for, the defense in front of Tuukka was putrid.
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The Bruins defense last season ranked in the bottom half of the league and caused Rask to look worse than he actually was. That being said, Rask does need to step up if the Bruins want to make the playoffs this season.
Neely expecting his defense to play better even though the best defenseman Zdeno Chara is 39 years old is startling. The only players I can see improving are Torey Krug, Kevan Miller, and Colin Miller. The team already knows what it has in Chara, Adam McQuaid, Joe Morrow, and John-Michael Liles. There isn’t enough talent on the defense for the team to improve greatly.
Boston Bruins Betting On Defensive Prospects
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In my mind, the Bruins are waiting on their defense in the hopes that some of their defensive prospects leap to the NHL and are studs. A couple of the prospects that they are betting on are Matt Grzelcyk, Jeremy Lauzon, and Jakub Zboril. The issue is that most of their top d prospects are at least two years from being called up. Maybe Grezlcyk makes the jump this season, but chances of that are slim.
Either way, the Boston Bruins have the cap space and the assets to go and make a trade for a player like Kevin Shattenkirk who is reportedly on the trade block. The question is whether or not the teams GM Don Sweeney has the trade capabilities to pull off a move.
His only big trades were ones that caused some to question his abilities to manage a team. He reportedly didn’t advertise Dougie Hamilton when the team moved him and later a rival gm said he would have offered a bigger package for Hamilton. Another move was the trade of Milan Lucic in which Edmonton Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli reportedly offered more than the Kings but the team didn’t want to make a move with its former GM.
The Boston Bruins are a middle of the road team this season and if they miss the playoffs look for head coach Claude Julien, Neely, and Sweeney to be fired by the Delaware North ownership group.
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