Guess what?
All season long, I thought the Boston Bruins had returned to their physicality DNA.
They had plenty of players ready and willing to stand up for themselves, and each other.
It was beauty to watch, as it was when the 2007+ B's began to gel as a team, "all for one, one for all."
Now, I know they ALL played like crap against FLA. There's no denying that. They're professionals, and almost to a man they played poorly and after game 4, without passion or physicality.
What happened?
I don't know.
But I suspect.
And my suspicions have grown after reading multiple times and from multiple sources that the Bruins were determined to "Play within the whistles."
That is, evidently, refuse to engage in scrums and nasty after same and thereby, theoretically, deny the Panthers the adrenaline rush & camaraderie to win the series.
I suspect someone named Jim Montgomery counseled this approach.
As with so many aspects of his coaching in round one, this proved a mystifying, fatal mistake.
Milan can't control a game. But he would not have put up with the shit FLA fed the Bruins without pushback.
It was embarrassing.
Embarrassing.
I posted this thread per Lucic, but I'm sorry, I remain extremely, extremely troubled and upset by Jim Montgomery's disastrous display of.... "stupefying" in Round One.
It's 3 June, and I STILL can't understand the layers of BAD, EXCEPTIONALLY BAD decisions Montgomery made as head coach.
STUPIFIED.
But it wil be coming around again.
Sweeney and Neely better address this, because as badly as they played, this is not on the players. And it's not, for once, on management.
It's on the head coach and his staff.
End rant.
