Chia (and others) on the hot seat - here come the panic moves?

[Titoschew]

Charlie Jacobs is holding a presser, as he has been bumped up to CEO of Delaware North.  Stated the team is in a constant state of evaluation, pressed if that meant players/management/both should not feel too cozy, said "As I said, it's a fluid process".
 
Not much there to read too much into but it does underscore the uncomfortable times over there right now.

 

[Salem's Lot]

Well when the new CEO of the Delaware North Boston fires this shot;

"Utter failure if Bruins don't make the playoffs. Management team under evaluation."

https://mobile.twitter.com/globefluto

It's all hands on deck.

 

[Salem's Lot]

The tweet from Fluto made it sound more ominous then that. I think it's safe to say Chiarelli is on the hot seat by mid next season if they miss the playoffs.

 

[cshea]

The Bruins have had basically 2 front offices since the Jacobs family took over almost 40 years ago. Sinden/O'Connell and then Neely/Chiarelli. Good for Charlie to fire a shot across the bow, but I don't think Chiarelli's seat is all that warm. It took a complete bottoming out (IIRC, the season ticket base dropped to under 5,000) under O'Connell to move them to action.

 

[Reardon's Beard]

Well when the new CEO of the Delaware North Boston fires this shot;

"Utter failure if Bruins don't make the playoffs. Management team under evaluation."

https://mobile.twitter.com/globefluto

It's all hands on deck.

 

 

[PedroSpecialK]

On the flip side, this is the first time in a long time that the Bruins are consistently among the league leaders in annual salary. More investment by the Jacobs family likely means lower tolerance for missing the playoffs (at least one would hope).

As an aside, with Charlie at the helm, expect an uptick in pony shows

 

[cshea]

That's a good point and Charlie did mention that they have too much time and money invested in this group to miss the playoffs.

 

[Salem's Lot]

That's a good point and Charlie did mention that they have too much time and money invested in this group to miss the playoffs.

 
They also have plans to develop the front lot of the garden into retail and restaurant space (like a mini Patriot Place). They are also heavily involved in the new balance site which includes the new practice rink. These projects are only successful if the team is competing for championships most years and at least in the tournament in the others. He is not going to keep Chiarelli around if this starts to go the other way.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

Well when the new CEO of the Delaware North Boston fires this shot;

"Utter failure if Bruins don't make the playoffs. Management team under evaluation."

https://mobile.twitter.com/globefluto

It's all hands on deck.

Can we split this out?
 
I'm torn on this. I don't want Chiarelli making any rash decisions to try and save his job and screw the franchise over in the future for short-term success, which is exactly what might happen. A guy with job security makes decisions based on what's best for the now and the future.
 
I'm worried what Chiarelli might do to get into the playoffs this season to save his job.

 

[Salem's Lot]

Can we split this out?
 
I'm torn on this. I don't want Chiarelli making any rash decisions to try and save his job and screw the franchise over in the future for short-term success, which is exactly what might happen. A guy with job security makes decisions based on what's best for the now and the future.
 
I'm worried what Chiarelli might do to get into the playoffs this season to save his job.

 I'm extremely worried about this. Charlie also needs to grab Neely privately and tell him to make sure this doesn't happen. No trading Hamilton for Yandle type moves.

 

[cshea]

Yeah, maybe that's the case. A counter point is that they invested in and built TD Garden, opened it in 95-96 then finished dead last the next year in 96-97. It took another 9 years of playoff DNQ's and first round exits for them to move on from the Sinden/O'Connell regime. It was a complete bottoming out.

I don't know, I just don't completely trust the Jacobs to be proactive in cleaning house. They're great owners in that they hand over a blank check to hockey ops and then get out of the way and let hockey ops do their thing. Are they capable of a proactive front office cleansing? They still have a season ticket waiting list and a sell out streak going, so their bottom line can't be that bad.

 

[Eddie Jurak]

Yeah, maybe that's the case. A counter point is that they invested in and built TD Garden, opened it in 95-96 then finished dead last the next year in 96-97. It took another 9 years of playoff DNQ's and first round exits for them to move on from the Sinden/O'Connell regime. It was a complete bottoming out.

I don't know, I just don't completely trust the Jacobs to be proactive in cleaning house. They're great owners in that they hand over a blank check to hockey ops and then get out of the way and let hockey ops do their thing. Are they capable of a proactive front office cleansing? They still have a season ticket waiting list and a sell out streak going, so their bottom line can't be that bad.

I think the slow action on Sinden/O'Connell was partly due to Sinden's history with Jacobs. I don't think Chiarelli or any future GM will ever get the same kind of latitude. Well, if Chiarelli turns this thing around and establishes himself (and Julien) as the hockey Belichick, then he would get that kind of latitude. But that is a long way off and already looking dubious.

 

[lexrageorge]

The team is a year away from winning the President's Trophy.  One bad season should not be enough to put either Chiarelli or Neely on any seat warmer than 50 degrees F.  Chiarelli deserves at least another season to turn the ship around or begin a rebuilding process if that's needed.  There are far worse GM candidates than Chiarelli; I fail to see the need to "clean house".

 

[Reardon's Beard]

I'd say C. Jacobs is saying what's expected of the new CEO of Delaware North's Boston Holdings - which includes the Bruins, NESN, and the TD Garden.

 

[Myt1]

The team is a year away from winning the President's Trophy.  One bad season should not be enough to put either Chiarelli or Neely on any seat warmer than 50 degrees F.  Chiarelli deserves at least another season to turn the ship around or begin a rebuilding process if that's needed.  There are far worse GM candidates than Chiarelli; I fail to see the need to "clean house".

I agree. Measuring his body of work, he's been very good for quite a long time. Making a change for the sake of making a change based on the lowest current value is basically what every complains about with regard to Chia, isn't it?

Anything else is, I think, stopped clocks crowing at finally being right.

 

[Toe Nash]

I have certainly criticized the current FO (and I think it's more than just Chiarelli that deserves blame) but they deserve more rope than this. If they make a few shrewd moves to clear cap space / bad contracts and some of their minor league talent makes the jump they should have better depth again and the team should be basically fine. They still have a top goalie, top center and two good defensemen (one who should keep improving in the near future) under control for a while and they will be out of the "bad" contracts soon. I don't love the Krejci or Seidenberg deals but DK is still a good player and if Seidenberg never returns to form you can deal with one bad contract. So all told that's a very nice core just as it was last year, and with ELCs contributing you can sign a couple key UFAs for depth and be in good shape.
 
But it's certainly a key moment for the team. If guys like Koko, Spooner, Morrow, or Pastrnak don't develop, or if they extend someone like Lucic long-term for too much money, they could get stuck in medocrity (I don't think they'd ever bottom out with a very high pick, either, as Rask, Bergeron, Hamilton, Chara are enough to keep that from happening). And Chia has to pick the right guys to sign or trade for, and results are mixed there.

 

[Red Right Ankle]

I agree. Measuring his body of work, he's been very good for quite a long time. Making a change for the sake of making a change based on the lowest current value is basically what every complains about with regard to Chia, isn't it?

Anything else is, I think, stopped clocks crowing at finally being right.

Not only that, who's the alternative if you dump Chia (and Neely?)?

 

[Eddie Jurak]

I'm of mixed emotions.
 
On the one hand, the Chiarelli/Julien track record is very strong and should speak for itself. In a vacuum, it is senseless to even consider management changes at this point.
 
On the other, the current problems could be more than a one year blip - and the problems were built in part by Chiarelli's willingness to spend elite dollars for non-elite players (Hi Milan!), his largesse with no trade protection, recent poor performance of the drafting and player development system, at least for forwards.  We may now be locked into an aging, expensive roster that lacks star power.  This could be a mess that takes a long time to fix, particularly given their seeming inability to develop forwards (no successful home grown forwards since Marchand in 2010-11).  
 
Maybe Chirelli has a fix for this, or maybe there isn't a fix.
 
The one thing I don't want to see is for ownership to push Chiarelli into making all sorts of bad, crazy moves in a desperate try for the playoffs.  Like Dan Duquette grabbing over the hill players like Ed Sprague and Dante Bichette in his later years with the Sox.   But i think that those kind of questionable moves are the reason they finally fired Mike O'Connell, so probably they aren't that insane.  

 

[Myt1]

Not only that, who's the alternative if you dump Chia (and Neely?)?

Exactly.  fivethirtyeight.com did a study on changing NFL coaches and found little improvement beyond likely regression to the mean in the first season.  With the twin caveats that I think most of their meta sports analysis is so much bullshit cloaked in math and that this is hockey, this intuitively makes sense and feels like it would be similar with regard to front offices and the like in similarly capped sports.
 
And you can't just measure the no movement clauses based on the chickens coming home to roost.  I disagree with some moves and sometimes did in real time, but in eight seasons, they've made the playoffs seven times, and they have a cup, a competitive finals appearance, three other seasons with a playoff series win, and a President's trophy.  And every playoff series loss but the Cup to the Blackhawks has been 4-3.  Over that time period, they're what, a top 3 team with the Kings and the Blackhawks?  No worse than Top 4 including Pittsburgh?