St. Stephen, New Brunswick, is a border town, just across the St. Croix River from Calais, Maine, and most of the kids in Don Sweeney’s hometown grew up fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens. It was that way for decades, when Montreal and Toronto sweaters were draped on the shoulders of nearly every kid who dotted a patch of ice across the provinces.
“Until we got Channel 38,’’ Sweeney said the other day, reminiscing over the fine art of finagling a UHF antenna to watch Bruins broadcasts in the early 1970s. “Then I got the Bruins emblem stamped on me.’’
Sweeney, 51, has applied a similarly fine touch as the Bruins general manager the last three seasons, helping to bring back into focus a team that had lost its edge in the years following its dramatic Stanley Cup championship in 2011.
Sharp and unassuming, virtually a media recluse at times, the former Bruins defenseman has helped reinvigorate a franchise that Thursday night will face the Maple Leafs — that team that once captivated so many St. Stephen souls — in Round 1 of the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs.
“I can’t honestly say I was ever a Leafs fan,’’ said Sweeney, thinking back to his days at the edge of the St. Croix.
Sweeney’s subtle yet progressive overhaul of the franchise the last three years has centered mainly on two things: 1. his decision to replace coach Claude Julien with Bruce Cassidy in February 2017; and 2. a commitment this season to surround a highly talented core group (most of them sporting Cup rings from 2011) with a large, enthusiastic group of kids who have thrived in the Sweeney-Cassidy model of on-the-job training.
Amid the headlines and huzzahs of the Celtics’ high-profile trades and acquisitions last summer, the low-key Sweeney went a different way, resisting big free-agent spending and instead going with his kiddie cadre.
The 2018 Bruins, with their impressive 50-20-12 regular-season mark, in part resemble the Red Sox of the early ’70s, when management showered the likes of veterans Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli with a cloudburst of talent that included Carlton Fisk, Dwight Evans, Rick Burleson, and the Gold Dust Twins, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn. A new Sox age was born.
“Well, that remains to be seen,’’ said Sweeney, asked if he agreed with the comparison. “That was a pretty successful era. They didn’t win, but they were awfully good.
“I’ve always believed our core players were very good. But without better players around them, we were going to run them out of gas. I think we have gotten better around them, and hopefully we can continue.’’
Quick turnaround
When Sweeney dismissed Julien last February, the Bruins stood a mediocre 26-23-6, with seemingly little hope of making the playoffs. Cassidy didn’t change the parts much, but he did change the playing approach.
Instead of a team with a near-manic dedication to defense — which worked quite well in winning the franchise’s first Cup in 39 years — Cassidy drilled in quick-ups from his defensemen, a mindfulness for steal-and-transition in the neutral zone, and an overall attack mentality. His charges responded with an 18-8-1 finish and a playoff berth.
In Cassidy’s 108 regular-season games behind the bench, the Bruins are a collective 68-27-13.
“Anyone who says they saw this coming — at least this quickly — is full of applesauce,’’ said Mike Milbury, the former Bruins player, coach, and assistant GM now a mainstay on NBC’s TV coverage of the NHL.
Milbury saw a team last year that, prior to Sweeney calling on Cassidy, he believed had gone stale. At the time, he said, team captain Zdeno Chara looked slow and ineffective and No. 2 center David Krejci was not delivering on offense. The change to Cassidy and his game plan clearly motivated both, said Milbury, and Sweeney followed up with the youth surge, including Charlie McAvoy, Jake DeBrusk, and Anders Bjork (now injured) at the start of this season, and then Ryan Donato off the Harvard campus last month.
“Impressed, yes, surprised no, not really,’’ said Milbury, asked if was surprised by the club’s success under Sweeney’s leadership. “Donny’s always been very smart and has a great work ethic.’’
Sweeney inherited his job from Peter Chiarelli, the GM who made him one of his first hires when arriving here in the spring of 2006 as Mike O’Connell’s replacement. Under Chiarelli, a fellow Harvard alumnus, Sweeney came aboard as the club’s director of player development and quickly engineered and ran the club’s July development camp, bringing in all prospects for a week’s worth of Spoked-B indoctrination.
Development camp, now a staple among the NHL’s 31 clubs, remains a critical piece of franchise architecture for Sweeney. Every kid who makes it to the varsity roster is virtually guaranteed to have been to at least one camp. Donato, drafted in his senior year of high school at Dexter, was a graduate of five camps before he took the ice March 19 for his NHL debut.
“I think he is one of the top general managers in the game,’’ said Matt Keator, agent for both Donato and Chara. “He’s more prepared than almost all of his peers. His valuations are right on. He vision for the team is excellent. He has been outstanding to deal with.
“Really, I think he’s done an awesome job.’’
Sweeney had graduated to assistant GM when Keator, then representing the promising Blake Wheeler, went up against him in the forward’s salary arbitration case in the summer of 2010.
“I could tell then he was going to be great at this,’’ said Keator. “He’s an intelligent, communicative, analytical guy. In Blake’s arb case, he was spot-on with every point he made. Very well-prepared.
“And that’s what he’s brought to managing. Knows the marketplace. Now, there are other guys in the business that are smart guys, but they don’t put the time in. This guy puts the time in; that is where it separates him.’’
Not a self-promoter
Sweeney was reluctant when asked to share in detail some thoughts about his GM tenure. He repeatedly credited his coaches and players for the season they’ve had, noted the arduous 82-game schedule, and overall made it clear that he would prefer almost anything other than talking about himself or the club’s snap-back under him.
“We’ve had a recommitment to a draft-and-development model and implementing some younger players,’’ he said. “This team had taken a great run, and we had a great core. We felt we would be competitive and right in the hunt.’’
Sweeney, in lockstep with predecessors O’Connell and Chiarelli, isn’t in it for the headlines.
“A reserved guy,’’ said Brian Burke, a longtime GM and these days president of the Calgary Flames. “He’s never going to take any bows. So it’s nice to tell you what a good job he’s done.
“That’s Don Sweeney. That’s how he was as a player, and that’s how he is as a GM. He doesn’t want the applause, he just wants to win.’’
Sweeney, said Burke, has done a masterful job of managing the salary cap and incorporating young players who have thrived under Cassidy’s system. The former point took some quick footwork on Sweeney’s part, having inherited overpaid roster parts, including fan favorite Milan Lucic, when he took the job in 2015.
Dealt to Los Angeles by Sweeney, Lucic ultimately brought back assets that included Sean Kuraly, now the anchor to the club’s dynamic fourth line, and high-end forward prospect Trent Fredric, expected to make a strong bid for varsity work in September.
“I think the most impressive thing is how well their veteran group has played and how well Butch [Cassidy] has incorporated these young kids,’’ noted Burke. “It has been seamless.
“They drafted well, they gave the kids defined roles, and they have all played well. So both Don and Butch deserve a big pat on the back.’’
Savvy roster-building
Along the way, Sweeney also amended his approach to free agency, though at a price.
In 2015, just weeks on the job, he rolled out a five-year, $19 million contract for Matt Beleskey, who turned into a huge disappointment and ultimately was unloaded on the Rangers in the recent Rick Nash trade.
The following summer, he hired on David Backes for a whopping $30 million over five years. Backes is a presence, a polished pro on and off the ice, but he has yet to deliver to the value of his deal.
Last July, keen on giving young players the chance to seize jobs, Sweeney only dabbled at the edges of the free agent market, signing only defenseman Paul Postma and forward Kenny Agostino, each getting a one-year deal at a budget-friendly average of $800,000.
“I know people say, ‘Oh, wow, can you believe they signed David Backes?’ ’’ said Craig Button, the former GM in Calgary and now a frequent NHL Network and TSN commentator. “To that end, I look at the Bruins now and I say, you have that top line [Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-David Pastrnak], followed by Krejci and Backes.
“Well, after that, every other forward now coming in only has to be the sixth-best forward. Rick Nash, Jake DeBrusk, Ryan Donato — all of them — only have to be the sixth-best forward.’’
The Bruins and Nashville Predators, in Button’s opinion, enter the playoffs as the best teams in their respective conferences. Like Milbury and Burke, he credits Sweeney for the vision to hand Cassidy the kids to fortify a talented, older core of veterans. Also knowing, said Button, that there could be hard decisions to come when some of those kids demand big raises.
“I think Don has — and I use the term because of [Bill] Belichick — the ability for dispassionate assessment,’’ said Button. “You’d like to keep everybody, but you can’t have the highest-paid player at every position or you are not going to have a team. And I think Don has that in him, dispassionate assessment. He’ll be able to go in and say, ‘We love ya, but we can’t keep ya.’ ’’
It’s April, the Bruins are on the upswing again. As a dispassionate Belichick would say, we’re on to the playoffs.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeKPD.
