Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs met with the media today for his year-end presser and if you wanted to sum up his thoughts on the season in one word, you could.
Disappointing.
“We did expect to get out of that first round this year,” Jacobs said. “We were probably a little better than the team that won the Stanley Cup when you look at the skill level and the age of the players.
“We wanted to do better, we expected to do better and we have every reason to believe we’d do better.”
That sense of disappointment was shared by team president Cam Neely.
“It’s disappointing to lose out in the first round,” he said. “We didn’t have this at all last year. I don’t like this at all and I don’t think anybody in the organization likes it.”
As for some of the key notes from the presser:
-- Neely said a “philosophical change” might be required for Boston’s ailing power play. In consecutive years, the PP has faltered in the playoffs (in the last two postseasons combined, the Bruins went 12-for-111.)
-- Philosophical change is just fancy talk for “we’re firing our assistant coaches.” It’s not like they’re going to spend the summer reading Nietzsche.
-- Overall, the management group sounded disappointed but hardly crestfallen. The younger Jacobs, Charlie, said he was proud of the team and Neely figured the loss would make the team hungrier heading into next year’s training camp.