Why is Jim Montgomery out of a job just 20 games into the Boston Bruins' season?
That question was posed to Bruins general manager Don Sweeney on Wednesday after his club fired Montgomery as its head coach Tuesday. And while Sweeney insisted there were several factors at play, he noted the issues for Montgomery's 2024-25 squad started before the regular season even began.
"I just felt our camp was just flatline across the board," Sweeney told reporters. "To me, that was the first troubling sign. We were flat all the way through training camp."
The Bruins began camp shorthanded with goaltender Jeremy Swayman holding out for a new contract and team captain Brad Marchand still working his way back from offseason surgeries. But even after Marchand returned to the ice, Sweeney didn't like what he saw in the team's effort level, singling out star forward David Pastrnak as one player who "didn't have a very good training camp" and "might not have had the offseason he wanted."
"Whether or not they thought it was going to be easy and the guys that had a really good last year came out and that it would just fall in place -- this league is incredibly humbling if you have that approach to the game, and it'll expose you in a hurry," Sweeney said. "That's sort of what's happened to our group in that it doesn't come easy and you have to work harder as a result of it."
Montgomery took the fall Tuesday after Boston's sluggish 8-9-3 start to the season, and perhaps this team needed a new voice after back-to-back seasons of regular-season success followed by postseason disappointment. But it's clear the players deserve their fair share of blame as well.
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"You feel a big part of the guilt," Pastrnak told reporters Wednesday. "Because at the end of the day, as players, we are the ones performing out there, and we weren't getting it done. And because we weren't getting the job done, we lost a great coach and an amazing human being. So, it's tough."
"If we would’ve done our job in here, he’d still be around," Marchand added of Montgomery. "You feel terrible as a group, individually, that we let a really good coach and really good person down."
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Interim head coach Joe Sacco is Boston's fourth head coach in the past eight years. While the Bruins reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2019, they haven't made it out of the second round since despite multiple coaching changes.
You could argue part of the burden falls on Sweeney, whose recent track record in the NHL Draft has been spotty at best. But if this team wants to get over the hump, the onus ultimately falls on the players -- specifically team leaders like Marchand and Pastrnak -- to elevate their game.
