Neely sees Bruins making 'tweaks'

President Cam Neely was part of a Bruins end-of-season press conference Tuesday, which included team owner Jeremy Jacobs and principal Charlie Jacobs.

On the game trending away from fighting and if the Bruins need to alter their approach:

"Well, I still believe that we like a physical game and physical play, which, at times, leads to dropping the gloves. But there's always been a lot of talk, primarily with the media, about is fighting still necessary in our game and I think with the way the game's played and how it's played and how physical it is, I still feel it's part of the game.

"But where it goes - you see from 70s, 80s, 90s - it's a little different and it'll probably still trend that way, yes."

On what Neely would like to see Peter Chiarelli accomplish this off-season:

"I think we really just look at tweaking our team. We did have a great regular season. We fell short in the second round, which disappoints everybody, so we want to reevaluate where we think we can improve upon and look at that, as opposed to a major overhaul, so to speak.

"When you have the regular season we have, especially that stretch from March to April, you know - that wasn't luck. We were a good team and we still feel we have a good team and maybe need a few tweaks."

On if there were any regrets about not getting a veteran defenseman at the deadline:

"I can speak to what we tried to do at the deadline. Not in detail, but...

"With what was available and how we thought we wanted to add as opposed to add and subtract; we thought we had something in place, but it was predicated on another team making a deal and it didn't pan out. But again, we were going through that really good stretch of hockey and we felt we really just needed to add some depth and if a player with term became available like the one we were trying to acquire, it would have been a bonus for us.

"But obviously, I don't think that's the full reason we didn't get past the second round, to be honest with you."

On if the new playoff format makes it easier to target what you'd like to add and subtract in the off-season, knowing which teams you may face:

"Yeah, I think you look at the teams you're going to face in your division and the playoffs in the first couple of rounds. You look at their teams, you look at your team and I think that's been done prior to going one through eight and re-seeding.

"Again, we built a pretty good team. A successful team. This year is probably especially disappointing because of the regular season we had and how we felt we could be more successful in the playoffs"

On the season Jarome Iginla had for the Bruins and looking ahead:

"He started off a little slow, but he came on late and he came on strong. Obviously he's a leader, he was a captain with another team for a long time and he came in and added an element to our group. Especially our forward group. Ended up scoring 30 goals, which is not easy in this league anymore. We'd like to see if we can try and figure something out moving forward with him, but we'll see where that goes. But I thought he fit in really well with our team."

Source: Bruins' web site