It’s been abundantly clear from the very start of this season that Jim Montgomery was going to take a different coaching approach with the Boston Bruins.
Some of it was about adjusting to what he saw from his hockey team when the proverbial crap hit the fan against Florida in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and some of it was the inevitable attitude change required with the retirement of de facto coach and captain Patrice Bergeron.
Last season, Montgomery was more of a hockey version of Mr. Rogers, the kindhearted paternal figure where nary a discouraging word was uttered about a group of hockey players that had been chafing under the hard edge of Bruce Cassidy. This season, that version of Montgomery is gone and instead has been replaced by an honest-to-goodness, hard-driving hockey coach picking his spots with praise and more apt to crack the whip when things need to be crisper, faster and more connected from a team standpoint.
Earlier this season at the start of their West Coast trip through California, Montgomery clearly didn’t like what he saw at practice and challenged his team verbally. That led to the Bruins going a perfect 4-0-0 on the road trip and getting off to a strong undefeated start in a season with so much uncertainty for them.
Montgomery picked another spot this week on the heels of a sloppy overtime loss last weekend in Montreal where he thought his team exhibited mental and physical fatigue. This time it was a “bag skate” at the end of Monday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena, a conditioning stint without pucks that’s traditionally been a hockey coach’s punishment tool when he doesn’t like what he’s seeing on the ice. It was the perfect time to do it as the Bruins had one game on Tuesday night vs. Buffalo, and then had a stretch of idle time before a home rematch against Montreal this weekend.
It wasn’t more than 10 minutes on the ice and it wasn’t exactly Herb Brooks screaming “Again!” over and over to Team USA in the “Miracle” movie.
But it was sending an unmistakable message to the Boston Bruins players that their play was slipping, and that wasn’t acceptable even if they had leaped out to an 11-1-2 start to the season while setting the standard in the Atlantic Division. Montgomery tried to couch what it was by giving an explanation that there was some sports science rationale behind the move, but the Bruins players know a punitive bag skate when they’re in the middle of one.
“He called a drill off and didn’t like the way it was going,” admitted Bruins captain Brad Marchand after the bag skate happened on Monday morning. “I’m sure there were a couple of things that he wasn’t too happy about at practice that led up to that. He understands and knows the pace that we need to practice at every day to be a really good team, and he expects that. If we’re not pulling our weight, then he’s going to let us know it. That’s all that was.
“It's the accountability piece Monty upholds every day. He wants us to be good. It's a good message to send when he feels like we're slipping a bit. Definitely it gives us a bit of a wakeup call and we need to realize every day that we’ve got to get a little bit better, and make sure we show up ready to practice and compete hard. Guys will respond.”
Well, message received, absorbed and reacted to appropriately in Boston’s 5-2 spanking of the Buffalo Sabres at the KeyBank Arena on Tuesday night. The Black and Gold absolutely did respond, as their leader correctly predicted.
Hampus Lindholm, Brandon Carlo, Oskar Steen and Danton Heinen all scored their first goals of the season, and the Bruins looked like a dangerous unit intent on making a point from the opening drop of the puck. And Linus Ullmark was outstanding in net making 13 saves in the first period at the other end while Buffalo struggled to stay in a game where they were down 3-0 from the game’s opening minutes.
It all finished with the Bruins tying their season-high for offensive output with the five goals scored, and finishing off one of the few games this season with true breathing room in the latter moments of a game they led wire-to-wire.
“It’s what everybody strives for,” said Ullmark, who made 32 saves and continues to be unbeaten when facing his old Buffalo Sabres team. “You want to be in a winning culture, you want to create a winning culture and you want to carry on that winning culture. And Boston has been so good through many years of doing that and now, we’ve got to pick up the torch and keep the flame burning as bright as it has been.”
There were superstar moments as well. David Pastrnak scored early in the contest on a slick one-timer feed from Pavel Zacha, as those two players continue to develop chemistry, and finished with three points to become just the 10th player in Boston Bruins history to tally at least 300 career points on the road.
A classic serving 🍝 pic.twitter.com/ZPzeiDtXSa
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) November 15, 2023
It was arguably the best top-to-bottom effort from the Boston Bruins this season with all corners of the team heard from offensively.
If that’s a trend that can continue then the Bruins can make that next step to NHL juggernaut status, but for now most, including this humble hockey writer, will chalk the result up to equal parts good Bruins effort and a Sabres hockey club that once again doesn’t look quite ready for prime time with young players like Owen Power struggling to keep up.
Certainly, the players on the ice did the scoring and the playing in the one-sided win, but credit also must go to the coaching staff for pushing the right button at the exact right time. It’s a sign of a hockey team that’s in lockstep buying what their head coach is selling right now, and willing to step up their game when a challenge is presented in front of them.
Montgomery is changing things up as he needed to in his second year as Boston’s bench boss, and in many ways is doing an even better job than he did last season while capturing the Jack Adams trophy at the end of the season.