Will a coaching change save the Boston Bruins? Don’t count on it

Credit: Oct 8, 2024; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery looks on from the bench against the Florida Panthers during the third period at Amerant Bank Arena. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

The idealistic and, sadly, unrealistic take: this isn’t fair to Jim Montgomery.

Of course it isn’t. In two seasons and change behind the Boston Bruins’ bench, he compiled an incredible 120-41-23 record, including an NHL-record 65 wins in the 2022-23 season, for which he was feted with the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. What he did last season was arguably more impressive, keeping the Bruins among the league’s top teams after an unprecedented roster exodus that included his top two centers, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, retiring.

But the NHL has long been established as a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league. Not only does the average bench boss survive a little more than two years on average, but coach of the year winners barely last any longer. The need to win within the narrow contention windows of the salary-cap era makes the runway shorter than that tiny slab Maverick and Rooster had to navigate in the Top Gun sequel.

Holding onto the gig as Boston’s bench boss was particularly challenging to do given the team is in the midst of a long run of dominance and disappointment. Since their Game 7 loss in the 2018-19 Stanley Cup Final, they have the NHL’s best record but have fallen in the first or second round of the playoffs five consecutive seasons. During that time period, they said goodbye to franchise staples in Bergeron, Krejci, Tuukka Rask and Zdeno Chara. Captain Brad Marchand, another Bruins lifer and the final holdover from the 2010-11 championship team, is 36 and in decline, too.

So whether Montgomery deserved it or not, the Bruins had to act after starting this season 8-9-3, holding their lowest points percentage since 2006-07. It really came down to which foundational pieces of the team could change. It wasn’t going to be superstar David Pastrnak, who is signed six more years after this one at an $11.25 million AAV and should someday retire as the franchise goals leader. Nor was it going to be blueline stalwarts Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm, nor freshly re-signed goaltender Jeremy Swayman. Each is locked up through 2029-30 at the earliest. The Bruins weren’t going to punt on their expensive new UFA additions in center Elias Lindhom and defenseman Nikita Zadorov, either. They were both brought in as part of a clear win-now push.

It’s not like team president Cam Neely or GM Don Sweeney were going to fire themselves, right? Fair or not, the head coach is always the first casualty for a team in turmoil. It’s worth noting every GM has an unofficially finite number of coaches he can churn through before he runs out of rope, too, and Montgomery follows Claude Julien and Bruce Cassidy as the third one pink-slipped since Sweeney became GM, but an early-season GM firing is rare, so Montgomery had to be the one to go. His desperation approach of repeated public floggings of his star players, most commonly Pastrnak, was not a battle he was going to win.

The question isn’t whether the Bruins had to make a move at this point. Watch the footage from Monday of Marchand and Montgomery arguing and it’s clear he’d lost the room.

The question is whether interim replacement Joe Sacco can save this group or if we’ve seen the end of contention for this generation of the Bruins. What if this team just isn’t any good anymore?

We’re just 19 months removed from the record-breaking 2022-23 Bruins’ first-round playoff elimination. The following players from that postseason lineup no longer play for them:

– Patrice Bergeron
– Tyler Bertuzzi
– Connor Clifton
– Jake DeBrusk
– Nick Foligno
– Derek Forbort
– Matt Grzelcyk
– Taylor Hall
– Garnet Hathaway
– David Krejci
– Tomas Nosek
– Dmitry Orlov
– Linus Ullmark

Here’s a look at how the team has trended offensively and defensively in a few key 5-on-5 play-driving metrics from 2022-23 until now:

Season	xGF/60	xGA/60	SCF/60	SCA/60	HDCF/60	HCA/60	SV%
2022-23	2.78	2.44	31.45	27.37	12.86	10.94	.939
2023-24	2.55	2.55	26.55	27.69	11.58	11.41	.930
2024-25	2.47	2.40	26.12	25.39	10.14	9.68	.922

Defensively, the Bruins have held their own and actually improved a little since last year. The reason they allow the fifth most goals in the NHL is largely because their penalty kill has imploded and their goaltending has regressed, with Swayman off to a terrible start. The bigger problem is that this team cannot finish to save its life anymore. No Bruin other than Pastrnak has even reached 30 goals since 2021-22. This season, he and Marchand are the only Bruins on pace to even reach 20 goals. Ultimately, Boston has a personnel problem more than a coaching problem. Montgomery could only do so much with so many crucial pieces removed from his chessboard.

Compounding Boston’s struggles: the lack of incoming help from within. The Bruins’ prospect pool ranks as the NHL’s second worst, according to Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis. They didn’t land a single player inside his pre-season Top 75 NHL affiliated prospects list either. They’ve only picked in the first round in three of their past seven drafts, and with John Beecher topping out as a checking forward and Fabian Lysell struggling to break through as an NHLer, what they’ve “successfully” harvested hasn’t moved the needle. Center Matthew Poitras is the only Bruin in the last four draft classes to have played an NHL game so far. On one hand, a lack of high draft picks coming up from the farm is standard among perennial contenders who trade away picks and prospects in pursuit of the Cup; on the other, the very best of those teams, most notably the mini dynasties in Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, were excellent at developing mid-grade prospects into impactful NHLers. The Bruins have not been able to do that, at least not with skaters. They have unearthed an undrafted gem such as Justin Brazeau here and there, but they haven’t hit anything close to a home run.

Montgomery obviously isn’t to blame for the failings of Boston’s pipeline. Their drafting and developing has been a disaster. They’re smashed up against the salary cap to boot. How can this team get better, then? They can bank on Sacco getting the New Coach Bump, which is a statistically proven phenomenon, but there’s no guarantee it will last. This Bruins team simply isn’t built that strongly anymore. Its best-case scenario might be a surge toward Wildcard contention on the backs of Pastrnak, McAvoy and Swayman, but we can no longer consider Boston a major Stanley Cup threat.

Montgomery took the fall because someone had to. But was this mess his fault? Hardly. It’s just business.

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Will a coaching change save the Boston Bruins? Don’t count on it

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