Cam Neely Pushes Back On Bruins Draft Narrative

BOSTON — Don Sweeney has been the general manager of the Bruins for a decade. During his tenure at the helm, Boston has made the playoffs in eight of the 10 years.

Despite his success in building competitive rosters, Sweeney is often under fire for what many perceive as poor drafting and development of the franchise’s prospects. Bruins president Cam Neely defended Sweeney’s draft history at Boston’s end-of-season press conference Wednesday at TD Garden.

“Well, obviously, you know, you want to hit on all your picks. There’s no question,” Neely said. “The work that the scouts do throughout the course of a year, they put in a lot of time and effort. They understand the players the best they can. We get the information from the scouts.

“Don ultimately ends up making the picks with the information that he gets from the scouts throughout the year. But, I think that our drafting and developing, the narrative there is a little off, and it’s been going on for quite some time.”

The narrative goes back to Sweeney’s first offseason on the job and the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. The Bruins wound up with three first-round picks after Sweeney made some deals to move on from defenseman Dougie Hamilton and forward Milan Lucic. Sweeney ultimately selected Jakub Zboril, Jake DeBrusk and Zach Senyshyn with the 13th, 14th and 15th picks.

Neely recalled how the night unfolded and, in hindsight, how things could have been better.

“It was really unfair to Don,” Neely said. “By the time Don got hired, it was late May, draft was late June. He wasn’t even probably about being a general manager of the Boston Bruins at the time. What Don did leading up to the draft to make the acquisitions that he did with those picks, to get the three picks, I thought was really good.

“Then Don was trying to move up in the draft. 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 got three picks in a row.’ I think it was very new for everybody.”

While DeBrusk developed into a solid NHL player, Zboril and Senyshyn have combined for 92 career NHL games and are both playing overseas. Other first-round picks include Charlie McAvoy, Trent Frederic, Urho Vaakanainen, John Beecher, Fabian Lysell and Dean Letourneau.

“I think we’ve got a number of players, not necessarily playing with the Boston Bruins, but a number of players that we have drafted that have played NHL games,” Neely said. “We have traded those picks, we have traded some of the prospects to try and improve our club to win Stanley Cups.

“So, I think the narrative that we’re not hitting on all of our draft picks — no one is. You pick in the top 10, you better hit. We haven’t done that in quite some time. So, have we been perfect? No. Can we be better? Yes.”

Neely admitted the Bruins can be better going forward when drafting players, but Boston has benefited from later-round draft picks like Jeremy Swayman, Matthew Poitras, Mason Lohrei and Jakub Lauko.

“When you’re picking and looking at 17-year-old kids, you’re hoping they’re going to be NHL players by the time they’re 23, 24 at the latest,” he said. “It takes some time for these kids to develop, and some develop at different ages. Some don’t develop at all. But we can be better, there’s no question we can be better, but it’s not as bad as everybody thinks.”

Finishing the season with 76 points and last in the Atlantic Division, the Bruins fell to the No. 5 spot in the lottery, but they definitely will have a first-round pick in this year’s draft and will have four picks in the first three rounds.