What Advice Bill Belichick Gave Jim Montgomery After First Bruins Season

Bill Belichick certainly has enjoyed plenty of triumphs on the field by guiding the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles. But the legendary coach hasn’t been spared heartbreaking defeats, either.

It’s those crushing losses that allowed Bill Belichick to relate to Jim Montgomery, who wrapped up his first season as head coach of the Boston Bruins in unfathomable fashion. After a historic regular season the likes of which the NHL has never seen before, the Florida Panthers ousted the Bruins in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs in seven games.

The gut-wrenching defeat will undoubtedly stick with Montgomery. But when he attended a Patriots practice session recently, Belichick offered Montgomery some advice on how to move on from it.

“He said to me, ‘What’s next? You know, once the season’s over, whether I won the Super Bowl or we lost out, it’s what’s next,'” Montgomery recalled Belichick saying, as transcribed by The Boston Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont. “And that’s where I’m at. Next year. How are we going to be better?”

That question will be on Montgomery, who is on hand in Nashville for the NHL awards ceremony and up for the Jack Adams Award, and the Bruins’ brass to answer. The Bruins already got to work reshaping the roster Monday by executing two trades, including dealing away Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno.

But how will the Bruins improve will be far from the only question dancing in Montgomery’s head after his team’s major shortcoming in the postseason.

“What did I not do to be able to help our players push through? That’s my job. Like that’s how I look at it, right? Because, obviously, they didn’t seize the moment,” Montgomery told Dupont. “Florida’s players seized the moment, and so what did Paul Maurice do that I and my staff did not do, right? And this is not me saying our players didn’t play to their capabilities, but . . . what did I do that didn’t help them execute?”