As a fan of the Bruins for over 50 years, I’ll agree with this. I think many here might be too young to legitimately comment, but everyone’s entitled to their opinions. I’ve been both happy and not-so-happy with Harry over the years, but IMO some of the takes about him in this thread are a bit over the top and seem to pile on, which I’ve come to understand is hallmark of today’s social media impacted discourse.
Harry had a complicated record, and doesn't deserve universal loathing, IMO.
His drafting was mediocre overall, although he had some good picks. He made a number of excellent trades, but had many poor trades. He failed to make the big trade to get the team over the top, and he was too eager to blame someone else and send them packing (e.g., Bowness and Moog).
I think his low point was the weekend at the draft in 1996, when he traded for two 4th line players from the two worst teams in the league and then presided over a disastrous draft (although it was a poor draft year overall). He set the stage for the last place in the league finish the next spring, leading to the drafting of Joe Thornton.
Things I liked about him were that he was an superlative coach. Although somewhat ruthless, he was quick to trade a player he thought was starting to slide in performance and trading them before their performance slipped so much that they didn't get maximum value for them (e.g., Esposito and Barry Pederson). These two players' performance did NOT fall off a cliff, but did drop somewhat, and he got max value for them.
I think that Milt failed to do that, keeping the same lineup too much. That team had a large core that stayed together for 5 years (1967-68 through 1971-72). The core was Cheevers, EJ, Orr, D Smith, Ted Green, Awrey, Esposito, Hodge, Bucyk, Stanfield, McKenzie, Sanderson, and Westfall. That's 13 players. Hindsight is always 20/20, however. Bill Torrey had the same failing with the Islanders, perhaps much worse. At LW on the first line, Ron Murphy was replaced by Cashman; at LW on the 3rd line, Shack was replaced by Carlton, then Walton. On D, it was Rick Smith, then Vadnais. Doak was drafted by Vancouver in 1970.