Jim Montgomery had a regular season to remember in his first campaign as the Boston Bruins head coach, but his playoff run is one he’d like to forget.
The Bruins shattered NHL records and were the initial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, but the Florida Panthers played spoiler with a stunning first-round series win in seven games. It was a grim reminder that regular season stats mean nothing and that everyone starts fresh when the playoffs begin.
Montgomery, for as good as he was all season, made some interesting decisions when it came to his lineup including not going to Jeremy Swayman before Game 7 and switching up the lines to the point where it didn’t look like it made a lot of sense on paper. And even though it made sense in Montgomery’s mind, the results were anything but what he wanted.
After all was said and done, there were a few lessons he took away from a historic, yet disappointing season.
“The overriding one is that it’s my job to own the moment and seize the moment, and that didn’t happen. That falls on me,” Montgomery said Tuesday at his end-of-season media availability at TD Garden. “I think with the hard times we went through, we have to learn from them. If we don’t learn from them, how are we going to grow? We’ll just repeat the same thing next year. For me, it’s being able to connect with the players over the summer and build through training camp about what we have to do to make sure we don’t have the same energy level (in the playoffs) because we didn’t have the same energy level we had in the regular season. We didn’t have the same puck confidence that we had in the regular season, and it hurts.
“Right now, I’ve talked to our players, and it’s hard right now. It’s hard for our fans, it’s hard for us. The price we pay is we have to learn from it so we move forward. Hindsight, you can go back and look at everything, but the two things that come to mind would have been the toll on the goaltenders and going to Sway a little earlier — what game that is, is debatable, that’s hindsight. Not starting with my normal lines for Game 5. I have my logic for why it made sense, but it didn’t help us with our start, obviously. So, that I learned from. I think I could have switched the D pairings on who the matchups were a little bit quicker. … Those are the things that really stick with me, but the No. 1 thing is my job is to get the players to elevate their games, and I didn’t do that.”
Montgomery revealed he had an “honest conversation” with Linus Ullmark but the goalie gave him every reason to believe he was ready for Game 6. Ullmark, who had a Vezina Trophy-worthy season, did not look like his usual self in Games 5 and 6. He was giving up a lot of rebounds, looked out of position and appeared to be dealing with some sort of injury. Ullmark later revealed he was “hurt not injured.” But it was too little too late by the time the decision to go to Swayman rolled around in Game 7, despite his best effort between the pipes for the Bruins.
You can’t go back and change the past, but you can grow from it. And that’s what Montgomery intends to do.
The Bruins have what’s sure to be a busy offseason ahead of them filled with questions surrounding their roster and salary cap and whether they can contend for a Stanley Cup again.
