With one of Boston’s sports teams eliminated from the playoffs this week and another on the cusp of their first championship in 16 seasons (and only second since 1986), it felt like a good time to examine the state of the four New England teams.
BOSTON BRUINS:
The Bruins were eliminated from playoff contention for the second consecutive season by the Florida Panthers. This time, they made it into the second round, while last year, the Panthers took them out in the opening round (as the Bs entered those playoffs with the Presidents Cup for the most regular season pts.
They have consistently been among the best regular-season teams for the past 15 seasons, with players like Zdeno Chara, David Krejci, and Patrice Bergeron. The only player left from the Stanley Cup team 2011 is current captain Brad Marchand.
This is a team in transition. Their core of players is young, including perennial MVP candidate David Pastrnak, who is only 28. Its defensemen are decent, but they lack a true lockdown, no.1 defenseman in the mold of Chara, Ray Borque, or Paul Coffey.
Their No. 1 defenseman is 27-year-old Charlie Mcavoy, who was God-awful in this year’s playoffs. They have 28-year-old Brandon Carlo and youngster Mason Lohri, who is only 23 years old.
It is tough to replace a legend; ask Mac Jones. Replacing future Hall of Famer Bergeron fell to 26-year-old Morgan Geekie. The center was eighth on the team in the regular season with 39 points, and he was second on the team in playoff goals with four. The player with the most upside is 23-year-old speedster John Beecher. He and Geekie will make a fantastic first and second-line center combo.
And now to the goalies…there is an adage that says, if you have two goalies, you don’t have one. Last season, the combo of Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark led the team to the Presidents Cup. They each had a fantastic regular season, basically switching off in a game-by-game rotation.
After Ullmark’s game-two performance against the Toronto Mapleleafs in the first round, the net belonged to Swayman. Undoubtedly, he is now the clear no.1 goalie for the Bruins heading into the 2024 season. The team tried to trade Ullmark last season, but he exercised his no-trade clause to stay on the team. It is a limited no-trade clause, and I have no doubt the team will find a trade partner who isn’t on his list. The 31-year-old goalie has played his last game with the team. The Bruins have a more than serviceable backup for Swayman at their minor league affiliate, 26-year-old Brandon Bussi.
The Bruins should be able to get an excellent return for Ullmark to bolster their roster. They have a desperate need for speed on this team. With their core and goaltending, they will stay in the mix for the next five to ten seasons but are unlikely to get past the second round of the playoffs to be a perennial final-four team.
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BOSTON CELTICS:
Speaking of the final four, that is all the Celtics have been in the last eight seasons. This is now the sixth time in the previous eight seasons, (and third in a row), that the Celtics find themselves in the conference finals. Prior to this, every team with that playoff pedigree had won at least one title. This is the Celtics last chance to match that, and win a title. This is when a team’s top player traditionally wins a title, in their age 27 season, (Jayson Tatum is 27).
Prior GM Danny Ainge was excellent. Former HC and current GM Brad Stevens may prove to be great. Ainge had the moniker of “Trader Danny,” but Stevens truly is. He throws caution to the win with first-round draft picks, constantly trading them away, instead looking at current NBA players to trade for. While Ainge was fantastic at the draft, trading down for Tatum and snagging Jaylen Brown, he held onto his players for far too long.
In this offseason, Stevens traded away four very popular players: Marcus Smart, Robert Williams, Grant Williams, and Malcolm Brogden. Their replacements of Jrue Holliday and Kristaps Porzingas catapulted the team to the No. 1 overall seed and league-leading 64 wins. The trades freed up more playing time for players like Peyton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, and Derrick White.
They have breezed through the first two rounds of the playoffs, winning in five games (gentleman sweeps). They are odds-on favorites to make it to the Finals and favorites to win it all. But getting over the hump and winning it all is the most challenging thing to do in sports, and until they prove they can, there are doubts. Can Tatum elevate his game? Can HC Joe Mizzulla win a close game in crunch time?
The reality is that this team isn’t going anywhere as long as its core is intact. Brown just signed the largest contract in the game in the offseason, and Tatum is facing a supermax deal after the 2025 season. The team has one more year of control, followed by a player option. Owner Wyc Growsbeck has proven not to care about the salary cap, but there has to be a limit to what he will spend on another banner.
This could be the next great NBA team, a.k .a. the Golden State Warriors, who are rattling off a few titles, but they have to get their first one, first.
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BOSTON RED SOX:
Now, moving from a team that will seemingly do anything to win a championship to an ownership group apparently content to cash their checks. They are fine with opposing fans invading the hallowed groups of Fenway Park, singing Sweet Caroline. They are fine moving out of the top five in payroll down into the middle of the pack. This is not by accident; it is so obvious what the goal is. The team is merely one asset within their Fenway Sports Group portfolio.
During a recent hockey Winter Classic played at the owner John Henry’s Fenway Park while owning the rival Pittsburgh Penguins. He was booed off the field. Not long after, he was bullied and embarrassed into signing third baseman Rafael Devers to a $300M contract. If he didn’t, the team’s payroll would have been in the lower third of the league.
They fired GM Dave Dombrowski a few years ago, and all he’s doing now is leading the Philadelphia Phillies to World Series appearances. They brought in a Tampa Bay Rays assistant, Chaim Bloom, who promptly traded Mookie Betts and pared it with shedding David Price’s contract. They subsequently fired Bloom for current GM Craig Breslow. He immediately shed money by trading away Chris Sale to the Braves…who is having a fantastic season in Atlanta.
When the team gets outbid by the Tampa Bay Rays for the likes of pitcher Zac Eflin, you know there are problems. They have signed some young players to long-term, team-friendly deals, pitcher Bryan Bello and IF/OF Ceddane Raffaela…not unlike what small market teams do. The reality is, unless this ownership group changes their mindset or simply changes by selling the team, they won’t sniff another World Series title.
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NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS:
Mark Twain famously said, “Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and he can sleep til noon.” Gordon Gekko famously said, “The illusion becomes a reality.” J. Paul Geddy famously said, “You owe the bank $100, that’s your problem, you owe them $100 Million, and that’s their problem”. Donald Trump paraphrased, saying if you owe them $100 grand, the bank owns you, but if you owe them $100 million, you own the bank.
I am referring to owner Robert Kraft. He has built a reputation as a brilliant businessman, but it’s amazing how much of his brilliance depended on the QB that was under center for two decades. He admitted to vastly overpaying for the team when he bought them. That, in itself, isn’t good business. He meddled and fired Hall of Fame HC Bill Parcells. Again, it’s not good business. He fired winning HC (and future HOFer) Pete Carroll, who had a winning record after three seasons. He signed Bill Belichick, who began his Patriots career with a 5-13 record.
It wasn’t until Tom Brady began playing that both Kraft and Belichick started to be considered geniuses. Now that both Belichick and Brady are gone, the team is in tatters. If last season was terrible with their 5-12 record (Vegas had an o/u at 6.5 wins), this season, Vegas has their o/u at 4.5. They have a tough schedule with a ton of travel. They aren’t getting a bye after their London trip. They aren’t getting to stay on the West Coast for their games against the 49ers and Cardinals. They only have one primetime game and not even a home primetime game.
This is not your parent’s New England Patriots…it is your grandparent’s Pats, who stunk. They have a neophyte coaching staff. They have a journeyman QB in Jacoby Brissett and a rookie QB in Drake Maye…(Mac Jones 2.0). They have a subpar offensive lineman. They don’t have any significant offensive weapons. There are a ton of great QBs, mainly in the AFC, and the Pats do not have one. They will likely finish in last place again in the AFC East with another top-five draft pick. How the mighty have fallen.
