Immediately after a trade is made, people all over want to label the winners and losers of the trade. It is a hockey tradition as old as time. In recent memory their hasn’t been a more perplexing trade than the one made for Tyler Seguin. The rumors surrounding Seguin were rampant and followed him all throughout his time in Boston. Oddly enough those rumors seemed to go away when he was moved to Dallas. Funny how that works, right?
Recently, Cam Neely joined a Boston radio show called Felger and Mazz and the timing was peculiar especially after Seguin torched the Bruins for a hat trick a couple of nights before. As one might expect, the questions soon turned to the handling of Seguin. These are some of the highlights from the interview (transcription courtesy of CBS Boston).
Tony Massarotti asked Neely why didn’t Seguin in Boston work, and does Neely regret the 2013 trade?
“Well, obviously he’s a hell of a player, and he’s got all kinds of skill. He skates really well and he can really rip the puck,” Neely said. “It’s one of those things where you knew he had all that skill, and you knew he would do well in the league, but that’s kind of history now.”
Felger asked if Neely feels like the Bruins “screwed it up.”
“Well, I think you look at any trade. Some you look at and say, jeez, maybe you didn’t get enough, or the return wasn’t quite what it should have been. Some, you’re happy with the outcome,” Neely said. “Every team probably could look at every trade and pick it apart.”
Mazz pushed further, asking Neely if the trade was made based solely on on-ice concerns.
“No,” Neely said. “Not at all.”
“I think looking back, we probably could have done some things differently with Tyler. You’ve got a young kid coming in, maybe we could have handled his living arrangements a little different and stuff like that, that we’ve talked about over the years. It’s something we certainly are addressing currently, and in the future we will continue to address.”
It is nice for Neely to admit his screw up, but it looks like they will continue to keep making the same mistake. They made a similar mistake with defenseman Dougie Hamilton.
Naturally, rumors began to swirl around Hamilton that he had been an unsavory character in the locker room. This is a Boston problem that needs to be remedied soon. You can only say so much, they need to take action or in this case inaction. Boston is now caught in the middle of being a contender and a pretender and they only have themselves to blame.
