SUNRISE, Fla. — The day before Round 1 of the NHL draft, Bruins president Cam Neely sounded quite confident the team’s fans were going to like what was about to happen. Neely said Don Sweeney, the new general manager, had big things in the works.

“There’s a lot of things that Don has been working on to not only put us in a position to improve on last year, but also for the future,” Neely said Thursday at Fort Lauderdale Beach.

Well, we’re not sure in what alternate universe subtracting Dougie Hamilton and Milan Lucic is going to improve the B’s for next season.

The Sweeney-Neely regime isn’t off to a great start. The trade of Hamilton to Calgary for a first-round pick and two second-rounders was the shocker — still the talk of the draft yesterday.

Critics in Boston aren’t going to want to hear it, but Sweeney and Co. tried hard to engineer a better outcome — either to keep Hamilton (with an annual offer believed to be in the vicinity of $5 million), or by trading him for more value in draft picks or players. They were close on several deals, but in the end they didn’t happen.

“We didn’t want to lose him,” said one Bruins front office source. “We tried everything we could think of.”

As it was, the Hamilton deal didn’t look good — but may have had a secondary cause.

“It was surprising,” said one NHL assistant GM. “It’s obvious there’s something going on that we don’t know about. From what I’ve heard behind the scenes, his teammates don’t like him. I heard he’s a loner and sort of an uppity kid, and that his teammates don’t like him and it was unanimous.”

In that context, the deal makes more sense. Sources also said Hamilton exerted some control in the process, letting it be known which teams he would sign with and which he wouldn’t — maybe including Arizona, with which the B’s tried to trade up for the No. 3 pick.

Regardless, Hamilton’s departure means another talented young player walks away, with not a whole lot coming back.

We knew going in that Sweeney had to pull a rabbit out of his hat to produce a roster to improve on last season’s 96 points. As it turned out, there was no magic this weekend.

Ending up with six of the draft’s first 52 picks and 10 in all, the B’s clearly have re-stocked what had been a slim list of prospects — but Garden fans likely won’t see these kids for 2-3-4 years.

While the Bruins still have much of their core intact — Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Brad Marchand, Zdeno Chara, Dennis Seidenberg — the quality of the supporting cast relies on guys like Brett Connolly, Ryan Spooner, Kevan Miller and Zach Trotman becoming good players.

And the onus is on Sweeney to try and make additional moves.

“We’re not done yet,” said one B’s front office staffer, promising the team will work hard to trade for some much-needed proven NHL talent. The team does have some $12 million in open cap space now — with several players yet to sign.

The departure of Hamilton and Lucic is just the inevitable price a team pays for having had success — for winning one Stanley Cup and producing several other very good seasons.

“When you become an organization that finds yourself at the cap, that means you’ve got some really good players and you’re giving your best shot to win,” said St. Louis Blues president John Davidson.

“The window opens and then you have tough decisions to make. Sometimes the windows close. The windows open and the windows close.

“We’re not a cap (maximum) team now, but we will be. And then we’re going to have to make some very difficult decisions. That’s hockey.

“When you win as a team, your players are going to be paid more. They make a lot more. As management, you have to separate your absolute core and take care of them — because you hope that group continues to help you win. But there are other people you just can’t keep. You want to, but you just can’t. Sometimes people just have to go. . . .

“There’s nobody more passionate than a hockey fan. But it’s the era of the cap. You’ve got hard decisions to make. It’s just the facts of life that you’ll go through cycles. You build, you rebuild and you have very difficult decisions to make. It’s gut-wrenching, but hard decisions need to be made.”

It was a hard and gut-wrenching weekend for the Bruins.