Bruins’ Jim Montgomery Preaches Importance Of Teaching, Not Punishing Rookies

The Boston Bruins may be off to a 10-1-1 start to the season but the depth of the franchise has already been on display — especially on the blue line.

Injured Matt Grzelyck and Derek Forbort remain out of the lineup. With Charlie McAvoy in the midst of serving his four-game ban on an illegal check to Florid Panthers defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, the Bruins have had to rely on Parker Wotherspoon, Ian Mitchell and Mason Lohrei to help man the back end of the ice.

In each of the three games against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings and Dallas Stars, Wotherspoon and Mitchell have combined for Boston’s third defense pairing while Lohrei has mainly seen time with veteran Brandon Carlo.

Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery explained why being an NHL defenseman is more difficult than skating in the AHL or juniors.

“I just think it takes a lot more experience to understand how important your positioning is and decision-making,” Montgomery told reporters after practice at Warrior Ice Arena on Wednesday, per team-provided video. “Just because when things go awry as a defenseman you usually don’t have two layers of defensemen to back up maybe your poor decision-making or poor positioning I just think that’s the biggest thing; results can happen a lot quicker the wrong way.”

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Lohrei has gotten the most minutes out of the three young defensemen, averaging 19:27 minutes per game, with the exception of Monday’s win over Dallas where he missed a few shifts and only skated in 15:33 of game action. The message from Montgomery was meant to be a learning one for the 22-year-old.

“What we want him to lead is two-nothing, we’re in control of the game,” Montgomery explained. “We’ve done really well the first four, five minutes of the third and it’s about learning how to manage the game. You’re on the road, playing a good team, you can’t take those chances at the offensive blue line. There’s no need to. We can wear out the back of the net. We can make them come 200 feet. You have time and space, you make good plays.”

Montgomery added: “We don’t want to take anything away from his god-given ability to make plays ’cause he has that god-given ability, but you gotta know when you don’t have time and you don’t need to force offense. If it’s we’re losing 2-nothing, you might want to hold on to that puck and force something. I think what goes into the decision-making is … I only think he missed a couple of shifts and we talked to him, ‘you’re gonna go back out there and we need you to be firmer, need you to be stronger.’ I think it’s just part of the learning curve.”

The Bruins bench boss compared Lohrei’s development to that of rookie forward Matthew Poitras who made a costly turnover in Boston’s overtime win against the Florida Panthers the week before.

“We don’t want to take away from a young man’s ability to make plays,” Montgomery said. “Just like Poitras against Florida. There was a turnover against (Aleksander) Barkov. You give him a chance to go right back out there. You talk to him about it, but it’s a teaching moment and it’s not so much of a punishment.”

Montgomery added that Forbort, who skated in practice on Wednesday, was still questionable for the Bruins game against the New York Islanders on Thursday night. Puck drop from TD Garden is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, and you can catch all the action, plus an hour of pregame coverage, on NESN.