Jim Montgomery still bullish on the Bruins
Bruins coach Jim Montgomery gives some of his insights on the upcoming challenges for the upcoming season.
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While this team understandably has its doubters as it embarks on a new era of Bruins hockey, Montgomery pointed out that so did last year’s team that set regular season records.
“After our regular season, I think a lot of people forgot all the question marks on our team before last year. I think it’s very similar to this year, that we’re a bubble team, and that’s what people were saying about us last year,” said Montgomery. “What I like is we have tremendous opportunity. I know we have great players, I know we have really good leaders. For me, the exciting part of it is ‘how good can we be?’ I don’t know what our ceiling is yet and that’s what makes this training camp a little more exciting than last year’s, because there’s a lot more moving parts … some people look at it as daunting. I don’t. I look at it as an opportunity for a lot of players to become real good Bruins for us and for us to find our identity as a team and how we’re going to win games this year.”
In our sitdown, Montgomery touched on a number of subjects:
Top lines
Montgomery has his first two lines pretty much mapped out, at least tentatively. He expects to pair Pavel Zacha with David Pastrnak, with James van Riemsdyk most likely getting the first look at left wing on that line. He expects the other top line will be Charlie Coyle centering Brad Marchand and Jake DeBrusk.That’s the easy part. Putting together the bottom six – which is often what gets a team over the hump in playoff series. They have a lot of new players, including Morgan Geekie, Patrick Brown, Jesper Boqvist, Milan Lucic 2.0 and now Alex Chiasson.
“Everything else is going to be a work in progress,” said Montgomery. “The great thing is there’s lots of opportunity for the players that are returning, the AJ Greers, the (Jakub) Laukos, obviously (Trent) Frederic. We think he’s going to be a big part of the third line. But who plays with who? I try not to get fixated on that, even though I might have ideas. I like to see it play out in camp and have the opportunity to see chemistry with each other.”
Feeling centered
Montgomery has confidence his top two centermen, Zacha and Coyle, can do the job.“I think (Zacha’s ceiling) is significantly higher,” he said. “Not only is he physically prepared, more importantly I believe he’s ready for this mentally for the kind of minutes, the responsibility of having to be played in all situations — which he did really well last year — but they’re going to be more important minutes. But I just think he’s mentally ready. He believes that he can do it. That’s the biggest step for a player. I have a lot of confidence that our top two lines will be very good because I believe Charlie Coyle knows he can do the job and will do the job and Pavel Zacha does too.”
While some fans might be waiting for another shoe to drop in the form for another established center coming here in a trade, Montgomery is not.
“In my mind, this is our team,” he said. “Ever since Krech made it official, we’d been thinking that this would be our team. Honestly, we were preparing this way since mid-June.”
Chiasson backer
On Chiasson, whom the B’s signed to a tryout agreement on Monday, Montgomery believes the 32-year-old veteran has the tools to help.“He’s a real smart hockey player who always finds a way to produce and always finds a way to get in the lineup,” said Montgomery. “I thought Detroit’s power play became extremely tough to check the last two times we played them when he was at the net front. So there’s a niche that he could possibly grab a hold of for our team. He’s got the size and hands. His puck possession game is really good. It’s something we feel we need to improve on even from last year, our puck possession game and how much time we spend in the offensive zone.”
Winging it
While there’s been speculation that Frederic could move to center, Montgomery sees him on the wing, most likely the right side.“I think that’s where he’s the most dynamic for us, offensively and defensively,” said Montgomery. “He’s an excellent defensive winger and he also scores most of his goals and gets open the most as a winger. We feel we’re going to need that from him again this year.”
Coaching change
With the departure of assistant John Gruden, Montgomery said another assistant will soon be hired. But Gruden’s responsibilities will be divvied up between remaining assistants Joe Sacco and Chris Kelly. Sacco will handle the defense.“He runs the PK already and does a lot of our D-zone coverage. That’s an easy one for him,” said Montgomery.
Kelly will take over the power play.
“I think he’s really excited about it,” he said.
With Montgomery preferring a three-man bench, the new hire will be a second eye-in-the-sky with goalie coach Bob Essensa. The new coach will also focus on in-season development work.
