They're on thin ice with Jacobs
Jeremy Jacobs doesn't know what the fix is, or where it will come from, or how it will be implemented, but he has a businessman's eye that tells him something is wrong with his hockey team and it needs a remedy.
The Bruins owner has never pretended to know hockey -- the playing of it -- from a tactical or strategic point of view. But, much like his team's fan base, he knows one part of the game inside and out.
''Let's be clear, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- subjective about the final score," said a chagrined Jacobs, reached by telephone late last week. ''It is very objective. It's a results business. Every time you lose, you lose, and that's it. I don't care about how artistic it is; the score tells you how you've done."
Those scores, too many of them with the Bruins on the losing side thus far, have Jacobs concerned, disappointed, and sounding as if he is ready to pound the table for significant change.
Asked if everyone in his organization should feel on notice, Jacobs said he was unwilling to discuss significant organizational changes ''in a newspaper environment." To do so, he said, when asked specifically about the job security of the club's general manager (Mike O'Connell) and head coach (Mike Sullivan), would be unfair because it would mean ''talking about lives and careers" in a public forum.
Nonetheless, said Jacobs, the possibility of such significant changes is ''clearly out there," and at one point he said ''every player and every part of the organization" must be scrutinized within the framework of a very disappointing season.
''And now," said Jacobs, ''it's between Harry [Sinden, club president] and myself. We have to come up with the answers."
Jacobs, who was here for last Monday's matinee loss to the Flyers, plans to be back again this week, either for Tuesday's game against the Sharks or Thursday against the Kings. He will continue his talks with Sinden about what to do. He has bellowed in bad times before, once a couple of years ago when he said, ''I wouldn't want to be Mike O'Connell right now," but his edge softened considerably when the club's performance improved.
For the three-plus decades that Jacobs has stood as the club's owner and No. 1 check-writer, little has changed on Causeway Street. The employee base, both on the team side and building side, often took comfort in the fact that, though the boss may bellow, no one ever lost his or her job. The place, for better and worse, has been State House-like in its layers of protectionism, job security, and underperformance.
In some ways, especially since the early '90s, the hockey operation has resembled the one in Toronto, with Maple Leaf Gardens, during the Harold Ballard regime, faithful fans forever supporting a flat-footed franchise.
A big piece of that culture was shocked last month when Rich Krezwick, a club executive vice president and the astute director of the building, was summarily canned. For three-plus years, the senior Jacobs has had one of his sons, Charlie, surveying operations on both sides, and reporting back to Delaware North headquarters in Buffalo. With family eyes on site, and one charismatic leader discharged, it could be a sign that similar significant changes will be forthcoming on the hockey side.
''I know that there are no easy answers, and I know that I'm very disappointed," said Jacobs. ''Now, that said, I've been encouraged the last couple of weeks, because I think we've played better, even if the results haven't been there.
''But do they have enough to pull them out of it? I don't know. I can tell you that I don't see a radical change, a magic wand, that's going to make this change in a hurry. It looks to me like the improvement, if it's going to come, has to come from within, from the players we have.
''Everyone connected to this has to feel the pressure to perform. If you haven't performed, you have to find a way to win -- or we find someone who can win. This is a great market, a market that responds to winners -- and we have to give them winners.
''If I had an easy answer, I'd do it in a second. But I don't. If fans feel baffled, well, I'm right there with them. If you look at our history, we haven't performed, and I am very discouraged."
Discouraged to the point of doing something about it? It's a whole new NHL, and from a results point of view, nothing much has changed on Causeway Street. At least not yet.
Scissor move is a sharp one
Boston netminder Hannu Toivonen, sidelined now with a bad ankle, began working on his trademark flexibility as a teenager. There isn't an NHL goalie who can match the rookie's ability to do the splits, his sensational scissor move that makes old men wince in their press box seats.
''It's just the way I think about the game," Toivonen said Thursday morning, just hours before he wrenched his right ankle at the end of the second period against the Senators. ''I want to stop the puck at all costs. That move is a good one to have in your bag of tricks, but I don't think it's something where you're going to see a lot of guys doing it."
In fact, said Toivonen, if he catches himself scissoring too much, he takes it as a sign that he's ''not doing something else right." He is so adept at splitting his legs, the way an Olympic gymnast flops to the mat during a floor routine, it has turned into a reflex more than a plotted, executed stop.
All of it goes back to his boyhood days in Finland, where he first began to play net at age 4.
''I was something like 12 or 14 years old when I began to work on it," he recalled. ''I thought, if I want to play this game seriously, I have to be more flexible. And it's easier to do that as a kid, you can bend and move easier. Now, all I have to do is maintain it, with playing and stretching."
Meanwhile, back home, there is another Toivonen carrying on the family netminding tradition. Hannu's 18-year-old brother, Juha, is playing for the HBK Hameenlinna organization, splitting time between the junior club and the elite-level squad. Juha Toivonen was eligible for the draft last year but went unselected.
''We're totally different styles," noted Hannu. ''He relies on his reflexes, and he's far more sparkling in the net than I am."
Juha Toivonen recently was called up to HBK's top club, for whom Hannu went 16-2-4 in 2002-03, and Hannu was listening on the Internet and in telephone contact with his father throughout the game.
''I'm rooting for him every day," said Hannu. ''And to tell the truth, I feel more nervous when he's playing than when I'm playing."
Old friend tries to stir up Beanpot honor for Cunniff
John Cunniff, the former Boston College star and Bruins assistant coach, died of cancer less than 90 days after assisting Herb Brooks behind the Team USA bench at the 2002 Olympic Games at Salt Lake City.
Joe Barrett, an old friend of the Cunniff family from their Southie days, would like to have Cunniff memorialized by having the Beanpot's MVP award named in his honor.
''I can't believe anyone would be more deserving," said the 45-year-old Barrett, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, ''especially in this era when it seems every award is named after someone. He was the first to win it twice [1964, '65], and the kids he helped to get in the game, the kids he helped improve their game . . .
''I'd just love to see it happen."
Steve Nazro, the tournament's longtime director, said the Beanpot committee, comprising Nazro and the four schools' athletic directors, would be open to considering such a motion. Barrett, said Nazro, need only write a letter to the committee. This year's Beanpot will be held Feb. 6 and 13 at the Garden, and the committee is scheduled to meet again in April or May.
Cunniff, who would have turned 62 this year, became a career coach after a brief playing career with New England and Quebec in the WHA.
Etc.
Kevin Paul Dupont's e-mail address is dupont@globe.com; material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report. 