Boston Bruins Media Day Press Conference Owner
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BOSTON BRUINS MEDIA DAY PRESS CONFERENCE OWNER JEREMY JACOBS, CEO CHARLIE JACOBS, PRESIDENT CAM NEELY, GENERAL MANAGER DON SWEENEY, HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY Monday, October 3, 2017 BOSTON BRUINS MEDIA DAY PRESS CONFERENCE On expectations for the season… JJ (Jeremy Jacobs): How many times you guys have asked that. How many times have I been right? I think they are a very exciting team, a very young team. I think we have a real – we’ll see change since the end of last year, versus when Butchy [Bruce Cassidy] took over. I think it’s going to be a continuation and maybe an improvement on that. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Again, how many times have I been asked that? How many times have I been right? It’s another answer. Hope springs eternal as far as this guy is concerned. On Zdeno Chara… JJ: Zee [Zdeno Chara] has been a real killer here. His physicality and his endurance, the time he spends on the ice. He’s been a tremendous investment, but his personality and his character goes a long way to establish what this team is. I think he’s done a great job with it. And his captaincy is very much earned. BC (Bruce Cassidy): As far as a mentor on the ice, Brandon Carlo could best answer that. But clearly he has been paired with him and both Charlie McAvoy, two young guys. Because he accepts that role, he relishes it. He wants to work with younger guys, while still taking care of business on the ice. He embodies the hard to play against identity we are trying to create and continue to build on. He just pulls guys along. It’s what you want out of leadership, take care of own, your own game, and then pull some guys along in the mean time. Continue to build on that identity and culture. It goes beyond just on the ice. Off-ice, one of the most professional people I’ve ever been around. Again, the culture and identity of fitness trickles down to the rest of the guys as well. On the synergy in the organization… CN (Cam Neely): Communication has always been there, and that’s key. Everybody understanding what the process may be and what you have to go through to get to where you want to be. We talk a lot about everybody pulling on the same rope. Its really, I think it’s been as strong as it’s been in a long time. I think everybody, especially up here, understands what we are looking to do, what we are trying to accomplish, and how we need to do that to get to where we want to be. On expectations for the season… CN: Right now it’s exciting. It’s been a few years in the making, to see some of the young kids being able to push for jobs. It looks like a couple have done that. Once you – you have to give credit to drafting properly. Then once you draft them, you have to do a good job developing them. It starts with our development camp, and having these younger players understand what our expectations are of them, where they need to work on their game to get to the NHL level. I think we can really build off what we did last year. I saw a little different style of play, and the league has gotten faster. Our coaching staff has helped us become faster with the way we practice and how Butch [Bruce Cassidy] wants us to play. I think, even though we lost in the first round, it was a close series. I think it was the first time for some of our players to play in the playoffs. They haven’t – understanding what its like to play in the playoffs, and they got a taste of it. I hope they are hungry for more. On upcoming roster decisions… DS (Don Sweeney): We’ll have at least one more roster decision to make before we submit it tomorrow. Just going through the last decisions sometimes, they are the hardest. Some of the players have made life difficult for what this lineup looks like Thursday night, and that’s a good thing. On the youthful excitement… CN: I think it certainly feeds off in the locker room for some of the other players. I know a couple of our veteran players made comments early in preseason, that they were excited about getting them into the lineup, when they weren’t playing. It’s exciting to hear that. These guys are, they are new and they’re fresh, and they’re learning. But they have all this energy, and it does certainly permeate through the locker room, and guys do feed off it, there’s no question. On Patrice Bergeron’s injury… BC: He left early today. We’ll classify it as day-to-day for now. I think that’s accurate, and we’ll see where he’s at tomorrow. We’ll have a much better update then. I mean, I don’t want to speculate. It’s a lower body injury, and from there, I guess I’d say I don’t expect it to be long term. I honestly can’t tell you, we’ll see how he is in the morning. On David Pastrnak’s contract… JJ: I think the investment was in a proven player. The investment was not – throughout the league, this is what that demanded and what he was worth. It was not an imprudent move, it was one with calculated based on all sorts of scales. They bring the yes or no to me at the very end, and I go along with their thinking, so really, it wasn’t a decision necessarily I made. It was a giving of support from my standpoint. They made the right decision. I’ve always – I said early on with Harry [Sinden] – If it’s right, it was my decision. If it’s wrong it was yours. That has not changed. On leverage for players with arbitration rights, and its impact on the potential 2020 lockout… JJ: I think I’m going to defer that to these guys as to the first end of that decision, and I think the 2020 lockout, I don’t know if that is going to happen. I think it’s way too much in the future right now. I don’t see, necessarily, a lockout. It will not be constructive to the game, and it won’t be constructive to the players, and definitely not constructive to us here at the Bruins. CN: I think what you see over the years, when players come in on entry-level deals, if someone gets a good deal for their player, then that becomes a comp. Don [Sweeney] and the hockey ops staff did a very good job looking at the various comps for a player like David Pastrnak. There was a number of them. It’s becoming – if you’re showing you’ve played two, three years coming out of your entry- level deal, and you’ve shown a progression like David has, you’re going to see the jump going from entry-level to where David went to. On how Anders Bjork has developed… DS: Obviously, Anders has taken a real leap in his own development. Last year, had a tremendous year. We really feel like he’s going to bring a lot to our hockey team, with the speed and skill that he has. Back when he was drafted, he was in a development program that was really playing in a third line role, and not really playing with the upper echelon players, and penalty killing and power play situations. You’ve seen him evolve over the course of time. His first two years playing under a demanding coach, and really doing a lot of things away from the puck as an extension of what he does in the development program. Last year, taking an enormous leap offensively, and playing with a tremendous amount of confidence and speed, going to a World Championships and acclimating himself there. We sat down, had long discussions about what he felt. He felt he was ready to take the next step and play against the best players. I think the results have been pretty good so far, and hopefully they continue. It’s hard to jump into this league, but he’s playing with two pretty good players and hopefully we can take advantage of the skills that he brings to the table. On the core group of Bruins… CJ (Charlie Jacobs): You know it’s funny, I’ve seen Bergy [Patrice Bergeron] come in as an 18-year old and make our team, and progress. It’s kind of hard to imagine, he’s almost 30. Now he’s taken on the role of being the leader. I remember when he first came to Boston, he roomed with Martine Lapointe, lived with the family, and kind of acclimated to learning the English language and becoming the hockey player that he is now, with four Selke trophies. He certainly is one of the leaders in that room, a quiet one at that. Between him and Zdeno [Chara] and March [Brad Marchand], we have a real strong identity in that core. I wouldn’t exclude David Krejci from that as well. I think, we spoke a lot this morning about a lot of the younger players that have been recent additions to our roster, but I’d like to think ourselves as a good mix of youth and veteran leadership at this point, which is a really good story in terms of what I hope to be a great 2017-2018 season.