What Irked Jim Montgomery In Bruins’ ‘Inexcusable’ Collapse Vs. Ducks

Jim Montgomery largely has been effusively positive in assessing the Bruins’ performance over his two seasons as head coach — and for good reason.

Jim Montgomery hasn’t had many reasons to publicly criticize his team over two seasons as Bruins head coach.

Yet, not even the habitually positive Montgomery could hide his frustration after Boston coughed up a two-goal lead in the final minutes Thursday on the way to an overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks.

After the game, Montgomery called the sequence of events that led to the B’s first loss of the season “inexcusable.”

“A lack of poise with the puck,” Montgomery told reporters after the game, per The Boston Globe. “We had opportunities. I thought the game was over twice to convert an empty net. Guys whiffing on pucks. The guys were trying to go for the open net instead of using the walls as an indirect to clear and get off the ice. That was mostly it.”

In a postgame interview with NESN’s Andy Brickley, Montgomery also lamented his team’s attention to detail — or lack thereof — in the waning minutes. Boston wasn’t disciplined enough, and the Ducks took full advantage of the lapses in the Bruins’ end-of-game execution.

On the Ducks’ game-tying goal in the final 20 seconds, three Ducks players crashed the net within arm’s length of Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark. Only Charlie McAvoy and Brad Marchand were there to provide resistance. Meanwhile, Troy Terry was given plenty of room to operate in the left faceoff circle, where he had an opening to put the puck toward the net. He did just that, and the puck deflected off Marchand’s stick and by Ullmark for the equalizer.

“We probably had four or five opportunities to clear pucks and we didn’t,” Montgomery told Brickley. “We need to be a little stronger on our sticks there, and then the goalie pulled situation, we didn’t pressure out the way we’re supposed to. We let them get too close to the top of the circle, and they outnumbered us at the net.”

The Ducks winning in overtime just sealed the deal at that point. The loss ended Boston’s six-game winning streak to start the season and represented an extreme rarity under Montgomery’s stewardship. The Bruins were 50-1-2 last season, including the playoffs, when leading after two periods, and Boston went 57-1-2 in games it led by at least two goals.

The good news for the Bruins is that Thursday’s collapse is fixable, and it could serve as a wake-up call for a team that probably was starting to feel pretty good about itself. The B’s will try to get back on track Saturday night when they welcome the Detroit Red Wings to TD Garden, and two huge tests loom next when they host Florida and Toronto on Monday and Thursday, respectively.