Cam Neely is clear: Bruins need more talent

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Cam Neely is clear: Bruins need more talent

Matt Vautour · MassLive

Thu, May 7, 2026 ·

2 min read

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BOSTON — It’s become almost a tradition when Cam Neely and Don Sweeney share a Bruins press conference stage.

Sweeney, the Harvard graduate speaks in longer responses using more words to explain or sometimes dispute in his answers to questions.

Neely, the former power forward, usually speaks like he played. Direct.

On Wednesday, Sweeney and Neely, along with CEO Charlie Jacobs, met with the media for the first time since the Bruins were eliminated by the Buffalo Sabres in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.

After struggling to match up with the Sabres’ speed and skill, the two franchise leaders, both men, in their different styles, said the same thing. The Bruins need better players.

“Obviously, yeah, we got bounced in the first round. So yeah, we need more talent, we need more speed,” Neely said. “That’s something that we have to try to acquire in one way, shape or form. But you look at the elite teams in the league, we’re not there.”

Sweeney acknowledged that the Bruins lost one avenue to add talent this year when Toronto won Tuesday’s NHL Draft Lottery, which gave them the No. 1 pick and preventing Boston from getting the No. 6 or 7 pick.

“The ping pong balls dictated that it wasn’t going to be this year,” he said. “We have to have everything in play in terms of how we continue to improve our club, and we have that mindset. We didn’t sit back last year and say, ‘This is a five-year process.’ We just said we need to attack these areas. We need to be a competitive team, and then we’re going to allow some of our players to grow. And I used a couple of younger players in that regard, but we bounced back in some areas, and we’re happy about, but now we have a lot of work to do to continue to get better.”

The Bruins head into the offseason with $16,439,167 of cap space. Some of that will go to re-signing or replacing unrestricted free agents Viktor Arvidsson and Andrew Peeke .

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