We can question Montgomery’s cooking, but as they’ve been wont to say for years now in Foxborough, he didn’t buy the groceries.
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Yes, indeed, something had to give, and
on Tuesday that was Jim Montgomery, another Bruins coach kicked down Causeway St., leaving it now to Joe Sacco to cobble together what he can from the misfitting, misfiring parts he’s inherited here a quarter of the way into the season.
No one should be surprised. Montgomery, following two brilliant regular seasons as bench boss, including a record-setting run of 65-12-5 in his first year, clearly couldn’t come up with an answer to shake the club out of an 8-9-3 death march.
Coaches are paid for wins and providing solutions. When out of both, the unemployment bell tolls.
So much of what we have witnessed this season, though, is more about roster composition than how Montgomery failed to deliver, come up with solutions. We can question Montgomery’s cooking, but as they’ve been wont to say for years now in Foxborough, he didn’t buy the groceries.
GM Don Sweeney and team president Cam Neely forked out
$84.25M in July for free agents Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, positioning them as the featured members of a roster sprucing up that could make the Bruins capable of slipping by the Panthers if they should meet for a third consecutive time in the playoffs.
Not . . . even . . . close. It looked like the Panthers, faster and tougher and more driven from the puck drop, were playing in another league last spring. Winter is upon us. That has not changed, the sun rises and sets in Sunrise and not the old West End.
To date, both Lindholm and Zadorov have not returned even pennies on the dollar. They have been painful reminders of unrestricted free agent busts of the past, such as Neely-Sweeney hires Matt Beleskey and David Backes . . . and if we want to go way back, prior to the Sweeney-Neely administration, the risible, worn-out, no-hope likes of Paul Coffey and Alexei Zhamnov.
The Monty magic was gone. He is outta here, not without reason. He certainly looked overmatched at times in the three playoff series (1-2) he oversaw. For the better part of the last two weeks, his team turned into the Stepford Black-and-Gold, a shapeless, unfocused bunch that Monday night, against the bottom-feeding Blue Jackets, again looked flat-out in a trance, dead on double runners.
The low point, the one that tied the toe tag on Montgomery, was the pair of shorthanded goals the Blue Jackets stuffed down their sweaters en route to
a humbling 5-1 defeat. It was the third straight loss on home ice (0-1-2), their faithful left booing at the first intermission with the motley CBJ already in control of a comfy 3-0 lead.
Here’s the thing about those boos. They’re heard loud ‘n’ clear 450 miles west in Buffalo, where team owner Jeremy Jacobs knows the perils of not keeping the customer satisfied. The boos can convert overnight to empty seats, a devalued product.
A quick look on line Monday afternoon had Loge 8 tickets for the CBJ game being offered up at $20 a pop–upward of a 90 percent discount from what season ticket holders pay when investing in their full-season package. It’s also about what Jacobs charges for a draft beer at Garden concessions. Painful Jacobsnomics.
The Bruins, the Garden, and surrounding real estate development, including the $65 charge to park at Bruins-Celts game, have become a Jacobs/Delaware North diamond mine through the decades. Bruins hockey has been the gemstone at the center of it all. In the scheme of things, tossing the coach overboard to help preserve that core is a mere bottle cap removed from another pricey tallboy at the concession stands
It’s now on Sacco to find the answer and in a hurry, lest the ex-BU forward, and faithful assistant, is the next to get the heave-ho. At the current pace (pay no attention to the whacky math of the NHL standings), that 8-9-3 will leave the Bruins with 78 points at season’s end. That’s a dog that doesn’t hunt for the Stanley Cup in the spring. It’s one designated for a water bowl and cage across town at Angell Animal Medical Center.
If Sacco is equally stymied to find an answer, which is the challenge Bruce Cassidy met and overcame when he took over the bench from Claude Julien in February 2017, it will point hard truths the way of Neely and Sweeney.
Because if a new coach can’t find an answer, we’ll be left to conclude it’s the parts that are at fault —the parts put in place here in the wake of the departures of Tuukka Rask, Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, and David Krecji. Those four provided elite skill and talent at the three key positions: goal, defense, and center. They defined Bruins culture.
Now, going on six years since that core and culture led to Game 7 of the Cup Final, the talent level is many degrees south of a bona fide Cup run.
Maybe Jeremy Swayman can be a franchise tender. But he’s not there yet. Thus far this season, he’s been more backup than cornerstone.
Charlie McAvoy, paid and touted as the franchise defenseman, again this season has remained short of the billing. How long is it going to take? McAvoy can skate. He can move the puck. He can hit when the spirit moves him. But, boy, he has trouble figuring out when and where to shoot, and that critical offensive piece is a big part of filling the No. 1 D’man role that’s been defined for him.
If Sacco can get that out of McAvoy, that could get the coffee pot perking. Montgomery never got him there. He also needs to help David Pastrnak restore some lightning in his stick.
In the Bergeron/Krejci spirit of things, looking for at least one pivot to help define the top-six forward assembly, there’s no there there right now.
Many nights it has been hard to tell if Elias Lindholm is in the lineup. Pavel Zacha is not the guy. Charlie Coyle was the league’s best No. 3 center when Bergeron and Krejci were still in house, and he did an OK job moving up last season, but he is best suited as the No. 3 workhorse who can move up in a pinch.
It is a franchise, having lost 12 of 20 games to date, certainly in need of a new approach right now. McAvoy and Pastrnak need reframing. Sacco might have the secret sauce. We’ll find out soon enough.
If not, then we’re left to say Neely and Sweeney, along with Executive Son Charlie Jacobs, equally failed to reshape and fortify what was an excellent, entertaining product across the years 2010-20. It will be left for them to answer for what’s happened since.
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