BOSTON — He’s on the list, and there’s no way to get off it. Cam Neely will always be one of the unfortunate Hockey Hall of Fame honorees who never won a Stanley Cup as a player.

Neely’s name is on the Cup as an executive, though, and if the Bruins can beat the Blues in the Cup final that finally gets underway on Monday night at TD Garden, their team president will have had more influence on a 2019 championship than he did in 2011.

Brought into the [...]

BOSTON — He’s on the list, and there’s no way to get off it. Cam Neely will always be one of the unfortunate Hockey Hall of Fame honorees who never won a Stanley Cup as a player.

Neely’s name is on the Cup as an executive, though, and if the Bruins can beat the Blues in the Cup final that finally gets underway on Monday night at TD Garden, their team president will have had more influence on a 2019 championship than he did in 2011.

Brought into the front office as vice president prior to the 2007-08 season, Neely took over for predecessor and mentor Harry Sinden just in time for 2010-11, and the franchise’s first Cup since 1972. That team had largely been constructed by Peter Chiarelli, the general manager Sinden hired in 2006-07, and whom Neely fired after 2014-15. Neely replaced Chiarelli with a former Bruins teammate, Don Sweeney, who had been Chiarelli’s assistant for six years.

The 2018-19 Bruins are a Neely-Sweeney production that began by stripping down much of what was left of the ’10-11 championship team — and by remembering the fate of the 1987-88 and ’89-90 editions that fell short.

Neely played for both; Sweeney played for the latter. Each team lost the Cup final to the dynastic Oilers — even though legend Wayne Gretzky had been traded by 1990 — because it couldn’t match the champions’ depth.

It’s no accident, then, that the 2018-19 Bruins were built with depth in mind.

“You get to be an age after you played, when you’re retired, and you have these ‘What ifs?’ ” Neely said on Friday. “There’s no question, we look at the years ’88 and ’90 … I thought if we had a little bit more depth we might have had a better chance to win.

“Those are things that stick with you, for sure.”

Neely had a spectacular playoff in 1990, finishing third in the league in scoring with 12 goals and 28 points over 21 games. His center, Craig Janney, ranked ninth with 22 points (19 assists); Ray Bourque led all defensemen with 17 points. But five of that playoff’s top six scorers, and eight of the top 20, were Oilers. The story had been the same in ’87-88, when the Oilers claimed the top-four and five of the top-six spots, and only Ken Linseman (fifth, 25 points) and Bourque (eighth, 21) cracked the top 10. Neely was third on the Bruins’ scoring list at 9-8 — 17, which was good for only 16th in the NHL.

Roughly 30 years later, goals are much harder to come by, so depth is even more prized. While Tuukka Rask’s goaltending (1.84 goals-against average, .942 save percentage) is a primary reason for the Bruins’ reaching the final, the B’s are also alive because all four lines, along with the defense corps, have generated enough offense to make Rask’s work stand up. Their top-five scorers are spread over three lines. Defensemen Torey Krug and Matt Grzelcyk rank sixth and ninth, respectively, in scoring. The fourth line has seven goals in 17 games.

“It’s impossible, it really is,” to contend for a Cup without depth, Neely said. “When you get in a position like we’re in, to craft a lineup, you talk about depth, and how do we get that depth?”

Under Sweeney and Neely, depth has been added in every way imaginable. While much of the Bruins’ core players are holdovers from previous eras, six current B’s (David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, Jake DeBrusk, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk, Danton Heinen) are recent draftees whom they’ve developed. Sean Kuraly (trade) and Connor Clifton (free agent) were drafted by other organizations, but the B’s added and developed them, too, along with unsigned college free agent Noel Acciari. Chris Wagner, Joakim Nordstrom and John Moore were low-profile, low-cost free-agent additions; linemates Charlie Coyle and Marcus Johansson were acquired at this year’s trade deadline.

Winning a Cup as a member of management will never be the same as winning one as a dominant power forward would have been, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be immensely satisfying.

“Obviously, as a player … you want to win a Stanley Cup,” Neely said of himself and Sweeney, “and we had a couple of opportunities. Unfortunately, we fell short. So, you learn from those experiences, and hopefully take some of that experience and apply it in the jobs we have now.

“If you can’t win it wearing skates, it’s OK in a suit.”