Somebody with the Boston Bruins had to walk the plank after a wholly unsatisfying first two months of the regular season, and that person has turned out to be the one most expected to take the fall, Jim Montgomery.
The Black and Gold announced Montgomery had been fired on Tuesday afternoon while the team was off following a Monday night loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, and that associate head coach Joe Sacco would take over on an interim basis. None of this was shocking as the Bruins stumbled out to an 8-9-3 start to the regular season and were playing an uninspired brand of hockey while struggling in just about every conceivable area of play.
Luckily, the Bruins are still sitting in a wild-card playoff spot despite looking like a dumpster fire of a hockey team most of the time, but they are sitting at a minus-21 goal differential that’s third worst in the NHL ahead of only the Pittsburgh Penguins and San Jose Sharks. The Bruins fans were getting restless as they booed the B’s players off the ice at the conclusion of Monday night’s loss, so something really had to give with a wildly underachieving hockey club that had Stanley Cup aspirations ahead of the season.
“Today, I made a very difficult decision with regards to a coaching change,” said Don Sweeney in a statement announcing the coaching change. “Jim Montgomery is a very good NHL coach and an even better person. He has made a positive impact throughout the Bruins organization, and I am both grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to work with him and learn from him. Jim’s accomplishments as the Bruins head coach include a record-breaking and historic season, and I want to thank his entire family and wish him, Emily, J.P., Colin, Ava and Olivia all the success and happiness with their next opportunity.
“Our team’s inconsistency and performance in the first 20 games of the 2024-25 season has been concerning and below how the Bruins want to reward our fans. I believe Joe Sacco has the coaching experience to bring the players and the team back to focusing on the consistent effort the NHL requires to have success. We will continue to work to make the necessary adjustments to meet the standard and performance our supportive fans expect.”
Montgomery ends with the highest winning percentage of any coach in Bruins franchise history (.715 percentage) with a 120-41-23 record, but the results were underwhelming in the Stanley Cup playoffs where he wasn’t a difference-maker from the bench. That was very likely the reason why Montgomery wasn’t extended this summer entering the final year of his contract with the Bruins, and that lame duck status pretty much left the writing on the wall that there was a good chance a coaching change was coming at some point this season.
The lame-duck situation definitely wore on Montgomery as things went on during this regular season, and certainly played a role in the head coach uncharacteristically tearing into captain Brad Marchand on the bench a few weeks ago in an incident that went very public after TV cameras caught it.
"PUMP THE BRAKES!"@spetershockey loses it over Montgomery's "assault" on Marchand 🤪👊🏒 #NHLBruins
— What Chaos! (@WhatChaosShow) October 24, 2024
📺: https://t.co/1GajYcKjBJ pic.twitter.com/Kwhpj2NDWo
Now it’s on the Bruins players to turn things around and reverse course after B’s management shook things up with the coaching change after a struggling offensively, defensively and on special teams this season.
More to come.
