Early Exit For Bruins

The Boston Bruins bow out of the playoffs losing to the Florida Panthers in a hard fought seven game series. The Bruins failed to take advantage of a chance to close out the Panthers in game six and were unable to recover. Going into the off season it looks GM Valente will need to re-evaluate his team. Post season success has been hard to come by in the past few season despite having a star-studded line up. The high-octane offense was unble to solve goaltender Jonathan Quick in consecutive games which proved to be nail in the coffin for their quest for glory. After game seven, Bruins head coach Claude Julien had this to say:  " I am not happy with the outcome but I feel we pushed them very hard in the series. We have been a group that has been getting better all season. Take nothing away from them they deserved to win. We needed one more game."  Later in the post game press conference one of the member of the media asked why Coach Julien did not make any changes to his line-ups. He simply responded "No comment".  Despite the disappointing game seven loss, the Boston Bruins will head into next season with increasing expectations. Many questions remain around if the Bruins will keep newly aquired Henrik Zetterburg who was a stellar contributor throughout the series. Heading into the summer it is expected that GM Valente will continue to be active.  

Off the ice drama continues as the long standing General Manager of the Dallas Stars, Mark O'Byrne had recently accused GM Steven Valente of misleading the media into believing his job was in jeopardy. The Bruins GM attempted to clear the air by statiing  he was misquoted by media outets "I have a temendous amount of respect for the Mark, we have come up through the ranks together."   The Bruins GM went on to say his oringial quote was taken out of context and that it was a case of poor timing. "I simply stated if I was unable to get into the playoffs three, four years in a row? I know my job would be on the line, especially in an original six market like Boston."   GM Valente made it clear that he hopes the off-ice circus surrounding the Bruins front office will come to an end. "We have work to do, trades to make and players to draft. I think you guys are trying to make something of nothing."  It is expected the Boston Bruins will entertaining offers on mostly all players. They will need to come to terms with a few key restricted free agents prior to making an offer to Zetterburg. There is a big possibility that the team which takes the ice this fall will be a much different looking bunch.