By: Chris Nosek

Now that we have been through locker room clean out and have had a chance to dissect the end of season press conference, let’s see how the highest in the Boston Bruins organization grade out for the 2024-25 season.

Ownership: Jeremy & Charlie Jacobs

Grade: B

In giving this grade, you have to remember that the bar for owners in the world of sports is on the floor. Even with that, the Jacobs family doesn’t exactly clear the bar by leaps and bounds. They come off as completely disingenuous to the fans which makes fans hate them. I’m not a big fan of them myself, however we have to put them in perspective. Their checks clear (Alex Meruelo, I’m looking at you) and they don’t make impulsive decisions seemingly at random (James Dolan is a good culprit for this). This season, they allowed the organization to take the necessary steps so that they could work on resetting the roster for a brighter future. They will spend to the salary cap on players (possibly more if necessary), they have already invested in top level training facilities, and they provide an environment where players will want to play. Overall, they could be a hell of a lot worse.

President: Cam Neely

Grade: C

His comment about Jeremy Swayman having “64 millions to be playing” was a massive overstep and completely undermined his General Manager in his negotiations. Did this help get the deal done? Yes, but at what cost? Not only did the comments force Sweeney’s hand in the negotiations, they also sent resounding waves through the locker room. We won’t ever really know how much this contributed to how the team worked through training camp causing their extremely slow start under Montgomery. Sweeney has also been very successful at re-signing players already in the organization, so would he have gotten Swayman to sign at a cap hit? Maybe. Similar to ownership, he completely dismisses the fanbase and does not do anything to help put a positive image the team as it failed to meet everyones expectations. While not a fireable offense, he backed out of a weekly radio spot and has significantly contributed to the complete lockdown of transparency. Is this him taking necessary shrapnel for others in the organization or a poor calculated overstep that is keeping him too attached to his General Manager?

General Manager: Don Sweeney

Grade: A-

People want to criticize Don for the start of the season, but he’s not the one who led the team out of camp to a point where they were not in shape. Despite the poor start, and an injury to Elias Lindholm, the team was still in the mix for a playoff position for most of the season. Sweeney finally made the decision when the trade deadline was looing, but he gave the players and coaching staff as much time as possible to settle things on their own before he stepped in with massive changes. Yes, he fired Jim Montgomery, but that was a situation that wasn’t helping the players find flat-footing, but instead made things worse. There was heavy concern was he would “soft sell” at the trade deadline or even add, but instead he made the decision to go all in on selling in an effort to rebuild the roster. He acquired numerous prospects and draft picks and gave himself an ample amount of cap space to work with over the offseason. He set himself up well for the retool and they want to be back in the playoffs next season. Now he just has to execute on the rest.

Head Coach: Jim Montgomery

Grade: C-

Despite his success in previous seasons, Montgomery did not have the team ready to go when the team finished training camp. He failed to galvanize the locker room in any way and seemed to be half out the door for most of his time here this season. On the bench, he failed to call timeouts at critical times and was constantly changing the lineup between and during games leading to a lack of chemistry in the forward group. Things clearly got contentious between himself and the organization so moving on from him became necessary. Both sides are at fault for how it ended and that has to be factored in, but so does the fact that he still had them flirting with a playoff spot during most of his time here this season.

Interim Head Coach: Joe Sacco

Grade: C

We have to acknowledge the extremely tough position that Joe Sacco was put in as Interim Head Coach this season. This grade isn’t about the final record, but instead more so how he got the team to perform overall. Unlike Montgomery, there were times that Sacco failed to shake things up in the lineup when it was clearly needed and on many occasions he made questionable decisions about the starting goaltender in a given situation. Often times, the goaltending decisions were proven wrong by early goals causing the team to chase the game. Yes, some of that falls on Bob Essensia as well, but there were many times he didn’t call a timeout when he should have or failed to make in-game adjustments when necessary. He was, however, pretty successful when it came to decisions on coaches challenges – but the Bruins have been pretty good at those for a few seasons now.

Coaching Staff:
(Bob Essensia, Jay Leech, & Chris Kelly:

Grade: C+

The special teams this season were, to be nice about it, not great. The power play clocked in at a miserable 15.2% with only the Flyers, Islanders, and Ducks converting at a lower rate. The penalty kill was far worse than we are accustomed to seeing as well. They ranked 24th in the league with a 76.3% rate when normally they’re in the top-10 or even top-5. Due to injuries and poor play, the player personnel the staff had to work with this season was quite limited. Zadorov and Lohrei were running point on your penalty kill and power play because of injuries, but both unites could have been shakedn up more than they were. Despite struggles in predictable starts, Swayman was still given starts that could easily have gone to Korpisalo, while the duo provided a quality start only half of the time save perecentages below .900. Not all of this falls on the coaching staff, but they’re certainly not at fault for failing to make adjustments along the way.