Bruins CEO: Jury still out on club pending 'nice playoff run'

Charlie Jacobs isn't prepared to pull his Boston Bruins out of the pressure cooker quite yet.

The club's CEO has seen improvement since calling out management and players for being out of the postseason picture as the calendar turned to 2015. But even as the Bruins hold down the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference with a seven-point cushion on the rest of the field, Jacobs says what matters most is what happens once the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin.

Speaking to reporters at the NHL All-Star Game festivities in Columbus on Saturday, Jacobs offered the following on the state of the team, according to Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe:

Certainly trending better. We still have the odd game where we seem to be a bit uninspired - and I suppose you’re going to have that in an 82-game schedule. Having said that, all the stuff that we've done and the better play has gotten us to eighth place. Do I feel better about it because we're in the playoffs? Yes. Do I wish we were in a better position than we are? Absolutely.

For this team to be even close to missing the playoffs isn't something that we can be happy about. I would hope that this solid play continues for the next 10 and the next 20, the rest of the season, frankly. So we're at where we're at. We dug ourselves a hole. We're starting to get ourselves out of it, but until we do (well) and have a nice playoff run, I think the jury is going to have to be out on this group.

The Bruins have gone 6-1-3 in their past ten and have seen their playoff chances rise through the month of January. But after a disappointing second-round loss to the rival Montreal Canadiens last spring and a relatively poor start to the season, the heat has been turned up and change could be afoot should Boston falter again early in the postseason.