The death throes of a coaching tenure tend to look similar in nature, as they try all manner of button-pushing possible to inspire better results. That almost always includes the calling out of a team’s best players, it includes some coaching-through-the-media, and a few surprising lineup decisions. Like with technology, when nothing works, sometimes we just mash the buttons and hope, and let’s be real, that’s kind of what it looked like for Jim Montgomery at the end with Boston.
What that does speak to though, is how that roster as currently constructed didn’t leave him with a lot of options (nor does it new interim head coach Joe Sacco).
The 2023 Jennings Trophy duo of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman saw the former traded, and the latter dragged through contract negotiations until he missed all of training camp. They paid Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm to be Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron (or at least David Krejci?), which they aren’t and simply can’t be. And then they had some unfortunate health luck with guys like David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand, who weren’t able to train properly in the summer, as they were instead rehabbing injuries.
When you step back and look at what the Bruins roster is at this point, it’s built on a single premise: they require David Pastrnak to be one of the league’s best, Charlie McAvoy to be the same, and Jeremy Swayman to be Vezina calibre. Otherwise, they’re just another team in the mushy middle, which would be a generous review of their play to date.
Pastrnak got hurt at the World Championships, and his resulting slow start leaves him on pace for 70 points. Swayman has been at the bottom of the league in goals saved above expected, giving up far more than an average goalie should. Meanwhile, McAvoy simply never clicked with Zadorov.
To top it off, nobody has picked up the scoring with Pastrnak’s drop, as Brad Marchand is on pace for 54 points, with Lindholm third, tracking for 37.
All this brings me to what was Jim Montgomery’s reality: when your stars aren’t going, and your next layers of offence simply don’t exist, what’s left aside from publicly taking the taser to your best players? He’s a smart guy and would’ve recognized that’s the only real path back to competitive hockey for this Bruins team.
If you zoom out and look at teams who win in the post-season, you almost always need to be able to play the game multiple ways. Brian Burke likes to say you need to be built to handle teams in four different ways, you might need to be faster than one opponent, more skilled than the next, bigger than one, and smarter than another.
The Florida Panthers have played in eight playoff series over the past two seasons, winning seven. We’ve seen them go toe-to-toe with teams physically, which is their bread and butter, but we’ve also seen them win in a variety of different ways. It’s the reputation my Dad’s Islanders teams had back in the 80s, that they were willing to hang in there any way their opponents wanted to compete.
For Jim Montgomery’s Bruins — or should I say, Don Sweeney’s Bruins — when the stars started slowly, the next option they tried seemed to be to act like the Bruins of old — a tough team — which isn’t great when you can’t get a penalty killed. They have the most PIMs in the NHL, with the 25th-ranked PK.
It’s tempting to give Jim Montgomery a pass for the performance of his team, particularly given that he just won the Jack Adams Trophy for coach of the year in 2023. That year, the B’s set the NHL record with a staggering 135 points.
But a full pass is not quite what we’re offering. That same year, they were eliminated in the first round in heartbreaking fashion by the aforementioned Panthers.
The next year they snuck by the Leafs in overtime of Game 7, but couldn’t go any farther that post-season either.
And this year, it’s not like the numbers reflect a slightly undertalented team getting the most out of what they’ve got. So far this season, they are:
• 31st in Goals For
• 28th in Goals Against
• 32nd in Power Play percentage
• 25th in Penalty Kill percentage
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In a world where we associate special teams and defence with coaching, you simply cannot trail Anaheim and Montreal and San Jose and Columbus in several categories and claim the coach has the team “close.”
When he benched their stars and called them out and got no response — followed by losing by four to Columbus, which by the way was the fifth time they’ve lost by four-plus goals — you can’t blame the organization for wanting a fresh start.
And so the lateral toss of the ball goes to Sacco, who’s now faced with the same challenges as his predecessor, with presumably no new answers. As I often say in these situations, if Sacco knew the solution, it would’ve been real cool for him to have shared them already with Montgomery and the team.
Now that being said, I understand teams need a leader in the transition to a new coach, which I hope is the case here. I say “I hope” not because of Sacco himself, but because to me, naming an assistant coach as “interim” for the year is a punt on a season you’re not serious about turning around.
The only case where I’d waver on that: if an assistant coach was adamant about his ideas, but the previous coach wouldn’t allow him to implement any of them. But even that is, to some extent, a failure to win people over, which is a big part of coaching.
And so we wait to see if Boston makes any successive moves to turn this ship around. To make playoffs now isn’t all that far-fetched, but they’d have to play their remaining schedule at what would be a 100-plus-point pace, which is a big ask for a team relying so heavily on a few players playing great.
That said: Jeremy Swayman’s shortcomings to date are likely mental, and tied to the contract negotiations. He can certainly find his game, and be great again.
Pasta is still in his prime. McAvoy too. Even Brad Marchand should be finding his game after a summer of physical healing, and can hopefully come around some.
If those great players are great from here, it would take the heat off the next line of players, who would benefit from a little more breathing room. You’d get more from them as a result.
But when the tough gets going, so far the Bruins have been in trouble — they haven’t had a second game plan. But a new leader has the pen at the whiteboard and has the chance to draw up something different.
