It was a desperate move from a desperate coach of a desperate team. Jim Montgomery broke up the one good line he had – the fourth line of Johnny Beecher, Mark Kastelic and Cole Koepke – and sprinkled those three players throughout the lineup in the hopes of forcing other more talented players to play the same way the grinders were.
In the most glaring example yet that everything that can go wrong for the Boston Bruins this season will, it was ironically those three players who led a black-and-gold parade to the penalty box in a disastrous 8-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes Thursday night.
The Hurricanes opened the scoring during a delayed call on Beecher for goalie interference. They took a 2-1 lead while Koepke was in the box for regular interference. Kastelic watched from the box as the deficit reached 4-1 after a high-sticking penalty. After the Bruins cut it to 4-2, Beecher set up Carolina’s third power-play goal of the game with a high-stick of his own.
Montgomery tried a couple more longshots in the second period, shaking up his lines again and then pulling Jeremy Swayman from the game once it got to 6-2.
None of it worked. None of it sparked anything. This game was every bit as ugly as the score suggests. By the time it was 6-2 halfway through the game, shots on goal were 24-6 for Carolina, and 14-1 at 5-on-5.
Nothing Montgomery has done all season has been able to shake the Bruins out of this early-season stupor. He is seemingly out of ideas, and he may be out of time very soon.
It is impossible to ignore the heat coming off Montgomery’s seat right now. WEEI’s own Rich Keefe reported on-air Thursday that he has heard Montgomery is indeed “on the hot seat” and in danger of being “the first casualty of a really slow start” if things don’t get turned around – and that was before Thursday night’s disaster.
Montgomery is not signed beyond this season. His team is now 4-6-1 and has lost five of the last six games. They are in last place in the Atlantic Division. They lead the league in penalties and rank in the bottom quarter of the league in offense. They look disjointed, disconnected and disengaged.
Is all of that Montgomery’s fault? Of course not. The roster assembled by general manager Don Sweeney and his staff is at least one, probably two top-six forwards short. Sweeney, bizarrely, has not yet altered the roster in any meaningful way, not even by signing veteran forward Tyler Johnson (who remains with the team but without a contract) or calling up a top forward prospect like Fabian Lysell.
The vast majority of players who are on the roster have drastically underperformed. Elias Lindholm had gone seven games without a point before notching an assist Thursday. Charlie Coyle has one point in 11 games. Morgan Geekie has one in nine. Pavel Zacha has one in his last nine. Trent Frederic hasn’t scored a goal since opening night. Charlie McAvoy has gone nine games without a point.
Sweeney can’t fire the roster, though. Even if he could, doing so would just be an admission of his own shortcomings. What he could decide to do is the same thing general managers in his situation have done all throughout NHL history: make a coaching change.
Sweeney would need to have unwavering faith in Montgomery to stick by him amid the team’s ugly play. The fact that he did not sign Montgomery to an extension before the season already indicated he does not. There have been no public votes of confidence since the start of the season, either.
Montgomery has thrown his Hail Mary, and there was no magical Jayden Daniels-to-Noah Brown connection to be had. It feels like only a matter of time at this point before Sweeney throws his.