The Athletic Hockey Show - Boston Bruins fire Jim Montgomery

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Mark Lazerus and Fluto Shinzawa discuss the Bruins firing Jim Montgomery after almost three seasons behind the bench in Boston. The guys look at what went wrong this year, after a sluggish 8-9-3 start and what interim coach Joe Sacco can do to get this team back on track.Hosts: Mark Lazerus and Fluto Shinzawa Executive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello and welcome to a special breaking news edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Mark Lazarus, joined by our Boston Bruins writer, Fluto Shenzawa. Fluto, the Boston Bruins have fired their head coach, Jim Montgomery, and replaced him with Joe Sacco on an interim basis. How did it come to this? No surprise, Mark. It's, you can talk all you want about it's early.

It's not early anymore. This is 20 games now. And this has been a pattern of bad games, bad. puck play, bad decisions, and no solutions from the coach. So of course it's not Jim's fault that probably four-fifths of the roster is underperforming, including some big-time players, Posternaut, McAvoy, Swamen, nowhere near fulfilling his contract that he missed all of training camp for. So not his fault, right? But it's what is a coach, what is part of a coach's responsibility is to maximize nice his player's performance, woefully short there. And 20 games of no solutions. Same old

power play, which is dead last. P.K., I think, is 26, 5-on-5 offense, somewhere 25th. Most penalties taken, you go down the line. It is underperformance across the board. The only question was who they would go to to replace Joe, to place Jim, just because Joe's been in place for a he's in charge of the penalty killer that's been struggling. So is this enough of a shock to the system for the players to respond? Because they're up against it in terms of cap. So the GM doesn't have many cards to play in terms of trades. So there has to be team-wide improvement from the players.

We'll see if the coaching change does that. You know, it's pretty wild. I'm based in Chicago. I know what bad hockey looks like. And I know what the Bruins are doing is not what they're used to. But they are eight, nine, and three. They're in the wild card spot right now, not by points percentage, I see, but like they are a wild card team right now. But that 5-1 loss to the blue jackets of all teams, they got a minus 21 gold differential, which I believe is second worst in the league.

Like you said, it felt like this was coming, even though we know what this team's been able to accomplish. Here's what I wanted to ask you this. Two years ago, the Bruins had the greatest regular season we've ever seen. Last year, they had 109 points. Why was Jim Montgomery in the last year of his contract? Why hadn't he signed an extension by now? It's a great question, Mark. I think, based on last year's playoffs, had the Bruins lost in the first round to Toronto,

I think they would have made the coaching change then. Just because of, okay, in hindsight, Florida was not a whatever, eighth seed a couple of years ago. But the fact is, Bruins choked. best team ever in regular season and lose against the Panthers in the first round, not good enough from the coach. And he really bungled the goalie situation. That was probably the biggest reason the Bruins went where they went against Florida, that record-setting year.

Last year, of course, hey, they won. They beat Toronto. Posternak scores in overtime and credit to them and credit to the coach. But I think had that gone the wrong. wrong way. That would have been when because the standards are high here in terms of playoff performance. And Jim had not gotten the job done that first year. And the second year against Toronto in the first round wasn't going so well either. Now, second round against Florida, they're the better team. No question, no discussion. Panthers deserve to win. Bruins did not deserve

to win. But yeah, yeah, you look at it. Year three over a three-year deal. They did have talks about an extension. Obviously, they didn't go anywhere. I don't know what happened if Jim was holding out for more money, if there was no deal in place. But yeah, that's not a good situation. Now, I know it seems like any time a coach gets fired

from a good team this time of year, we think of Craig Baroube, right, when it was five or six years ago that the St. Louis Blues were in dead last. They fired the coach. They go on to win the cup. Last year we see Knoblock in Edmonton take over for Jay Woodcroft, takes them all the way to the Stanley Cup final. Is this a team that still, does Don Sweeney still look at this team and think we can turn this around right now? Or is Joe Sacco just being, you know, set up to just fill out the year and then they figure out a new tacking in the offseason.

The good thing, if you can call it that is that there's such a large cluster of underperformance. So we know that Posternock is not this bad. McAvoy, not this bad. I don't know, maybe why his Linholm is this bad because he's been a. a complete ghost. And that's a seven-year, 54.25 million investment, which is looking all kinds of bad so far.

Now, the similar thing happened with Linholm when he got traded last year from Calgary to Vancouver. It took him a long time to adjust. And he did get better in the playoffs for the Canucks. So maybe that's the thing

that this is just one of those guys that takes a long time to acclimate because he's been a ghost. Nikita Zedora. signed for 5 million a year. That's a third pairing defenseman right now who really has not helped Charlie McAvoy when he's played together on that top pier. Swamen is lost.

I think that's a big problem, a bigger problem in the room because I think guys are looking at him and saying, okay, we understand if you didn't sign the camp and you come in in your 925 safe center. Okay, fine. but he's at 880 something. Like I'm sure guys are thinking, you miss all of camp and you're letting in goals that we've seen you pull off the board. So he's got some work to do in terms of reacclamating to the room and being a number one,

which I'm sure he's going to be. But that's a long ways in the future. And the meantime, Corpusalo is what he is as a goalie, versus the position of strength that this was for the Bruins for the last two years, which Montgomery, this didn't cost him a wink asleep, going Swamen, Allmark, Swam and Allmark, and that's gone. And now you have, who knows, on a nightly basis in goal. So there's so many problems that you figure,

or you have to assume if you're the manager, that are going to uplift and just say, such a large percentage of the roster has to improve, but time's ticking. It's, yeah, second worst goal differential in the league after Pittsburgh. So that 8, 9 and 3, and being in a wild car position, complete illusion. It's the old sports cliche. Can't fire the players so you fire the coach.

Swamen's the one that really interests me. Anyone who watched that Amazon Face Off special, there was like a whole episode that was basically Jeremy Swamon saying, I'm the man, I'm awesome, give me all the money, I'm the greatest. Guys won one playoff series, and he was really talking to big game. and then he comes in and he basically gets his coach fire. Anytime a coach gets fired, you usually trace it back to the goaltending.

Absolutely. You kind of alluded to this. How much are the Bruins themselves, the players, are they mad at swimming? Are they genuinely mad at him? Or is it, you know, hey, go get your bag? I don't know. I haven't taken the temperature of the room since.

But I found a very telling last night after 5'1 against Columbus, he lets in a super soft, short-handed goal. And he says, because the question was, okay, missing camp, is that contributing to why you're playing poorly? And Jeremy said, no, I think I'm all caught up. But he did say the extent of his comment after that was that what he missed was being in the room with the guys. So that to me says, okay, at least from his perspective, he feels like he's, he feels like

he's letting guys down and he has work to do to regain their trust. So on the flip side are guys looking at him and saying, geez, why did you, why did you risk having the team start poorly only to, you know, because you wanted your money and you deserve every penny, good for you. But if you're going to be like that, then you've got to perform and you've got to live up to the contract. It's not even close to being 8.25 million goalie. So yes, I think there's guys, I'm sure they wouldn't say it, but I think there's guys looking at him and say, come on, man, you've got to be better. You got to be better. So Joe Sacco, he's been on the staff for multiple

coaches in Boston, been there about a decade, I believe. He was a head coach a long time ago with the avalanche, missed the playoffs a few years, made the playoffs once, lost in the first round. What do you know about Joe Sacco? What do you expect to be different? under him. He's been around for a while since 2014. So in that sense, he deserves an opportunity. He's been assistant to Claude Julian, Bruce Cassidy, and now Jim. So he's, he's been there in place for a long time. So he's, he's been patient. Now, the question is, is this enough of an adjustment? Well, he's been in charge of the penalty kill, which has been lousy this year. Now, in previous years, it's been very good.

So where is it probably somewhere in between? In terms of who he is, strategically, I don't anticipate that big of the systems change. Like, they're not going to, I'm assuming they're not going to go man-to-man defensively versus the zone system that they've been playing for so many years. Maybe there'll be some adjustments in terms of ice time and deployment, maybe. But that was always the big question is, okay, we know there's going to be a change. But who will it be? Because that's what we don't know.

Is this enough of a jolt, a change in direction? Because they also brought back Jay Leach as an assistant coach from Seattle. And Jay has head coaching experience in Providence with some of these guys. So maybe Jay is in place for down the road. But yeah, this is this is wait and see. He's interim. Joe is interim for a reason. We'll see how he does and how quickly he can get this back on the tracks. And as for Jim Montgomery, I mean, he was the darling of the coaching industry just a year or two ago. He came back from his own personal hardships and was on top of the coaching world. There's going to be more firings. I mean, we're looking at Detroit. We're looking at Pittsburgh. I mean, there's other cities that this could happen soon. Could you envision a scenario where he's back coaching again this? This. season? 100%.

Maybe within the week, depending on how quickly Pittsburgh. You call that the Bruce Boudreau, I believe.

Yeah, he's no dummy. But what the issue here was was that it wasn't just one issue. It never is. It's layer upon layer

of issues and they all compounded. And one thing where I think it didn't really mesh here is that Jim, he's such a positive

guy. half glass full, half, have totally full in that regard. And then to have to turn when things aren't going well and things aren't starting well and then to be a hardliner, I don't know if that works. Like guys, you know, if he's just been sunshine and rainbows and valentines for two seasons, which he had no reason to be otherwise. And then all of a sudden he's in your ear, then you're like, I don't know if this is genuine.

So I think there was some friction there in terms of the style and being more firm. It's just not who he was or who he had to be his first two seasons. But it is what it is. Like that's got to perform. And the coach's job is to get guys going. And he thought a kick in the rear for a lot of these guys was the way to go. It didn't work. All right, Flut.

I really appreciate you taking a few minutes during what I'm sure is going to be a a long afternoon for you to show your insight. Thanks for listening to this breaking news episode of The Athletic Hockey Show. Jesse Granger and Michael Rousseau have the next episode on Thursday morning.