Bruins general manager Don Sweeney has tried to be patient and give his floundering team time to right themselves. That patience might finally be running out following Boston’s third straight loss Monday night, this one an embarrassing 5-1 beatdown at the hands of the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets.
The reports that Sweeney is looking at ways to shake things up were already getting louder even before Monday. Now they will be about as loud as the boos that were raining down on the Bruins from the TD Garden crowd Monday night.
Maybe that shakeup will be a big trade, but those are not easy to pull off at this point in the season, especially in the age of nearly every big-name player having no-trade protection. The more likely shakeup in any situation like this is a coaching change.
Jim Montgomery may very well need to go. No matter what he tries, he has not been able get this team on track. They keep making the same mistakes and running into the same problems. They have taken the most penalties in the league. Their power play (dead last in the NHL) and penalty kill (25th) have both been a disaster. They rank 31st in goals scored and 28th in goals allowed, and are now tied for the second-worst goal differential in the NHL (-21).
Montgomery does not have the answers, and a coach without answers and without a contract beyond this season is a coach without job security.
(UPDATE: WEEI's Rich Keefe reported on Tuesday that the Bruins are indeed firing Montgomery, with assistant coach Joe Sacco taking over. An official announcement is expected to come before Thursday's home game against Utah.)
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Whether a new coach would have some answers remains to be seen, but the reality is that the Bruins’ problems run deeper than their coach.
Players know they need to bring a better, more consistent effort on a day-to-day basis, in practices and in games. They don’t, or shouldn’t, need a coach to tell them that. They keep getting reminded of it every time they follow up a potential step forward with two or three steps back.
“I think it starts in practice,” Charlie Coyle said Monday night. “That’s the mindset we have to have, is play the way you practice. You have good habits there, you execute, you have good practices, more times than not you’re having good games.”
The stars on the top power-play unit – specifically David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy and Elias Lindholm – shouldn’t need a coach constantly in their ear telling them that they need to play with more urgency, move pucks quicker, be more shot-ready, etc. And yet, that unit has gotten worse, not better, as the season has gone on.
Is part of that coaching? Sure. It absolutely reflects poorly on Montgomery, especially since he and assistant coach Chris Kelly are the ones running the power play. But it’s not like Montgomery is ignoring the problem either. A good chunk of Sunday’s practice was spent on power-play work, apparently to no avail based on the results Monday night.
He has made changes, only to have them immediately blow up in his face. When he replaced McAvoy with Hampus Lindholm on the top unit last week, it lasted one period before Lindholm suffered a knee injury that is expected to keep him out until the end of December. When he benched the top unit and decided to start a third-period power play with the second unit on Monday, Mason Lohrei promptly committed a turnover that led to Columbus’ second shorthanded goal of the game.
The bigger problem is the players. No matter what shortcomings the coaching may have, a power play with as much talent as the Bruins’ top unit should not be a meager 11.7% on the season. It should not have been mired in an 0-for-24 drought before the second unit finally broke through with a goal in the second period Monday. Pastrnak should not have zero shots on goal in a gotta-have-it game, as he did Monday night.
“We need to be a lot better,” Marchand said. “It’s costing us a lot of games, a lot of points right now. To have success in this league, your special teams have to be really good. Power play has to be able to come through in big moments. We just haven’t done that at all. Every one of us needs to be much better out there. We have to be excited about the opportunity. It’s a privilege to play on the power play. That’s not a given right. We need to be much better. We need to be way better than what we’ve been. Accountability hasn’t been there in that area. There’s no excuse. We’ve got to be better.”
Marchand and his teammates continue to say the right things. He continues to preach accountability. Yet, it continues to not translate to better performances on the ice.
That theme carries over to the net, where Jeremy Swayman’s poor start to the season continues no matter how often he says he needs to be better. He gave up five goals on 29 shots Monday. He is now 5-7-2 with an abysmal .884 save percentage, which ranks 46th out 54 qualified goalies.
“I think it can only go up from here,” Swayman said bluntly when asked how he feels about his game right now.
As rumors swirl courtesy of Elliotte Friedman that there are lingering hard feelings over Swayman’s prolonged, public contract negotiations, Montgomery acknowledged Monday night that, “I don’t think missing training camp helps anyone.” He went on to say that Swayman missing camp is not the reason the Bruins lost 5-1 on Monday, though.
Swayman agreed that he has had plenty of time to get on track at this point.
“I think I’ve had enough time now to adapt and get back to things,” he said. “I think the biggest thing that I lost out on was this group. I’m really trying to engulf just being in the room again and being a leader. I want my play to speak for that. So, I need to step up, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
There is only so much Montgomery, or any coach, can do about Swayman not playing like a No. 1 goalie. There is only so much he can do about his best players refusing to play with enough urgency on the power play. There is only so much he can do about the team being incapable of stringing together good efforts on a game-to-game, period-to-period or even shift-to-shift basis. There is only so much he can do with a roster that has looked too slow all season.
There may be nothing left that Montgomery can do to save his job, because at some point, probably very soon, Sweeney is going to need to pull the trigger on that rumored shakeup.