Graduation season is nearing its end across New England.
With May and June comes soon-to-be graduates at local high schools, colleges and universities eagerly awaiting their final marks and calculating their GPAs. Usually, there are Bruins and Celtics playoff runs to latch onto as the summer awaits, the Red Sox get into the thick of Major League Baseball's slog of a schedule and the Patriots continue offseason programs.
The Celtics crammed the night before but passed their midterm exam against the Philadelphia 76ers, and the same strategy let them down against the Miami Heat. The Bruins, however, did not graduate to the conference finals or the second round, flunking a seven-game pop quiz in the first round after passing the regular season with flying colors.
After assessing Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman in Part 1, examining the defensemen in Part 2, breaking down the bottom-six forward group in Part 3 and looking at the top-six in Part 4, let's see how the Bruins graded out this season, finishing with management and the coach.
Jim Montgomery – Regular Season: A+ / Playoffs: F
Montgomery could not have had a better first regular season at Boston's helm.
His system led to the second-best offense in hockey, finishing second in the league with 301 goals and 3.67 goals per game behind only the juggernaut attack in Edmonton. In their own end, the B's allowed the fewest goals by a significant margin, giving up 174 in total and 2.12 per game (the Hurricanes were second at 210 and 2.56). Stellar play from Ullmark and Swayman certainly aided the cause, but they also faced the eighth-fewest high-danger chances (718) in the league, per Natural Stat Trick.
Defensemen were encouraged to activate more both in transition and the offensive zone as the Bruins got more production from the blue line, something that had steadily dried up. The B's got 205 points (159 at even strength) and 39 goals (32 at even strength) in 2022-23, as opposed to 150 points (113) and 31 goals (23) in 2021-22.
The power play started strong before staggering but still finished above average at 22.2 percent. Meanwhile, his penalty kill was well atop the league at 87.3 percent (Carolina was second at 84.4).
Pavel Zacha and Trent Frederic broke out for career seasons under Montgomery. Nick Foligno found the Fountain of Youth. Hampus Lindholm had a regular season worthy of a Norris Trophy, and Charlie McAvoy would have as well if he were fully healthy for the entirety. Brandon Carlo had likely his best season in a few years. Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci opted to run it back, and both had strong years as well.
In short, with the breath of fresh air from Montgomery, everything went right for the Bruins in the regular season.
The postseason, as we all know, was a completely different story.
The Florida Panthers obviously deserve some credit. Their first-round win was no fluke as they're headed to the Stanley Cup Final.
Even then, Montgomery and the Bruins completely got in their own way, failing to put the nail in the coffin after taking a 3-1 series lead.
Montgomery and his staff completely scrapped the goalie rotation for seemingly no good reason. Ullmark was cooked by the time he made a sixth straight start for the first time all season and allowed six goals for the first time all season in Game 6. It was too tall of an ask of a cold Swayman in Game 7. He initially threw Bob Essenza under the bus when asked about the decision-making on the goaltenders before later clarifying he has the final say.
Hindsight is always 20/20, had Montgomery and the Bruins known Bergeron would have sustained a herniated disc in the meaningless regular-season finale in Montreal, he wouldn't have played, rather than risking injury in a very much planned final tune-up. When the compromised captain returned for Game 5, Montgomery put his forward lines into a blender, again for seemingly no good reason. It was a disastrous move that Boston quickly went away from, but in Game 7, the Tyler Bertuzzi and Bergeron combination remained, even if it clearly hadn't worked days earlier.
"I mean, hindsight, you can go back and look at everything, right?" Montgomery said after the season. "But the two things that come to mind would’ve been, what I’ve learned. I’ve already talked about the toll on the goaltenders and going to Sway a little earlier, what game that is, that’s debatable — again, that’s hindsight. Not starting with my normal lines for Game 5, I have my logic as to why it made sense, but it didn’t help us with our start, obviously, right? So, that I learned from. You know, I think I could have switched the D-pairings on who the matchups were a little bit quicker. We were shutting down one line really well, we weren’t shutting down another line really well, we did for two games, and we didn’t for five. Those are the things that really stick with me, but the number one thing is my job is to get the players to elevate their games and I didn’t do that.”
The Bruins and Montgomery failed to adjust as turnovers and self-inflicted wounds abounded at the hands of a tenacious Florida forecheck. While Montgomery's positivity and sunshine were refreshing and needed over the course of a long regular season, it came across as brazen hubris as the B’s quickly backed themselves into a corner as the first round drew along.
He said, "The mistake I made is — I try to put our players in the best situation to excel. There is an added mental grind in the playoffs, and it takes a toll, right? That’s what I’ve learned through this grind is, the expectations that were put on our team going into the playoffs, there is a price you pay. Everybody does and I think we are going to learn from this, everybody. The players, especially me, I’m going to learn and I’m going to have to help the players push through, which I didn’t do this year."
Don Sweeney and Cam Neely: B