Bruins fire Jim Montgomery, name Joe Sacco as Interim Head Coach

A tenure of staggering highs and terrifying lows comes to an end.

Well, if you think the Coach was the problem, you got what you wanted.

The Bruins announced today at 4:19pm that they have relieved Head Coach Jim Montgomery of his job, effective immediately. This has come off of a deeply disappointing start to the season, in which the Bruins are 8-9-3, are on a three game losing streak, have one of the worst goal differentials in the Atlantic Division, and have of course, lost 5-1 in an absolute drubbing by the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Assistant Coach Joe Sacco will take on the job as interim.

Montgomery was hired on the heels of firing Bruce Cassidy; who previously led the team to six seasons of impressive regular season records, and inconsistent playoff performances, leading to concerns of his style rankling against the squad playing. In year one, Monty seemed to give purchase to that idea; bringing the Bruins to a record breaking 135-point season that ended in heartbreak in the first round. Undeterred, Monty’s style seemed to work it’s magic once again as the Bruins had another 100+ point season, even more impressive given that he was now without Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, and that his team was, to put it lightly, cratering when it came to possession. His solution was simple; mix lines near constantly, and use those snap chemistries to hammer the net. To his credit, this worked very well! Unfortunately, it was pretty convincingly rinsed by the Florida Panthers again in the second round of the playoffs.

Then we come to this year. To put it simply; nothing has gone right for Boston.

The team’s offense is in the toilet, almost no skater is having a good year, and if they are having a good year…they’re injured (get well soon, Hampus). The Swayman debacle has resulted in a deeply disappointing season for the goaltender, and while Korpisalo has been stronger recently, the skaters being so miserable has resulted in performances in net being completely and utterly wasted, and so now both netminders hover precarious above or below .900 in SV%. None of the players brought in have been even close to what they were expected to be, and the special teams have completely bombed out to being some of the worst of the entire league.

Naturally, all of these things happening at once meant it all had to fall on someone, and Montgomery was it.

To his credit, it genuinely seems as though Monty was both deeply concerned and exasperated with how the team was playing. He’s made it clear through quote after quote that he does not get why the act of playing hockey had become such a challenge, and knew that the team was off it’s game from day one. Thus, he tried everything he possibly could to end up getting them back on track. He cancelled practices, he set up practices around specific elements of the game that they were struggling with, he called players out, he’s asked us about it and we wrote a novella about what it could be, he even admitted sometimes they just didn’t have it some nights. Nothing stuck long enough to work.

Why not call people up? Well, as multiple people have made clear, that’s not his job; it’s a certain person who has gone completely unremarked upon to this point’s job, but they’re not the ones getting canned right now.

The only thing he could do, is change is the lineup. And that’s precisely what he did. Over and over. He’d been doing this during the previous season, but it got the most drastic over this season. Sometimes it would work, but most of the time…it just frustrated fans as this new-look lineup continued to frustrate. Eventually, those little returns stopped being enough to get them over the hump. Eventually…it just stopped working. He didn’t have an answer.

Montgomery finishes his time as a Bruins head coach with a regular season record of 120-41-23 and a playoff record of 9-11-0.

As for what happens next? Difficult to say. As far as his replacement goes…Promoting from within feels like a tremendously lateral move when the Bruins need to set some form, any form, of direction for themselves going forward; Sacco, Leach, and Kelly have all contributed in some form to the team being as bad as they are right now. One hopes that all three of them are aware that from now on; they are effectively coaching for their lives. I really hope this is just step one of a much more comprehensive plan to improve this team, because I’m gonna be real…I don’t know if anybody could coach this team out of such a funk with the issues they have.

It’s up to Sacco to try. I don’t envy him.

For what it’s worth, we at SCoC wish Jim Montgomery all the best, and hope he lands on his feet quickly.