Harkins has been on our radar on this board for at least a year now for his idiotic, lowest-common-denominator tweets. from the first time I saw what he was putting out there and learned his role in the org it seemed like he didn't fit the culture of professionalism that they'd built over the last decade+. Whether or not you agreed with any particular position he held, the way he conducts himself on twitter is crass and unprofessional.
It has seemed to me for a while that it was only a matter of time before this guy did or said something stupid to draw negative attention to the Bruins org, but I never imagined it would be something this catastrophic.
I figured he would eventually tweet something offensive and quietly get fired or whatever. Instead he got promoted in the last year and then seemingly carried enough weight in the org to guide Neely and Sweeney to one of the most explosively bad PR failures in Bruins history. I always assumed the leadership in the Bruins FO had enough sense and structure in place that a guy like this, functioning only as an amateur scout couldn't do any real lasting harm to the org, but that has obviously proven to be false.
I think that's one of the biggest pieces of fallout from this: it has exposed how fragile the organizational structure in the Bruins org really is. They've done such a tremendous job building a culture of integrity and accountability in the locker room, and immediately around the team, but that culture clearly doesn't currently extend into the front office. IMO that's a massive problem and something that they need to work to address immediately. We've seen with the Blackhawks failures just how destructive it can be when you let a poor culture permeate your org and I hope as a life-long Bruins fan that they recognize the problem and work to fix it.
