On Nov. 24, the St. Louis Blues hired former Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. This was following the firing of head coach Drew Bannister when the team had a disappointing record of 3-6-1 in their last 10 games. The Bruins fired Montgomery on Nov. 19, which is not too far off from when the Blues hired him. This move shows that the Blues were awaiting the right option for the coaching position.
The goal is to see if Montgomery will fix the issues hurting the Blues the most: goals against, goals for, and winning games. Let’s review those areas and what makes Montgomery an excellent pick for solving the problems that the Blues are having difficulty dealing with.
Montgomery Can Shut the Door Defensively
To understand how much of a difference Montgomery can make, we must look at how the Bruins were before hiring him. From Feb. 2017 to May 2022, the Bruins’ head coach was Bruce Cassidy, now the Vegas Golden Knights’ head coach. Cassidy was still pretty good statistically and got the Bruins’ top three in wins (245) during his time as the Bruins’ head coach and even pushed them into the Stanley Cup Final against the Blues in 2019, the season the Blues won the Stanley Cup.
Cassidy was also able to keep the net closed, as he had the Bruins ranking as the best team (if you don’t count the Seattle Kraken in their inaugural season) in fewest goals against (1,004) between 2016-17 and 2021-22 when he was there. The problem for him wasn’t so much with the regular season, but it was more or less playoffs. He got the Bruins no further than the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs aside from 2019.
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Fast-forward to the 2021-22 offseason. Cassidy is out as the Bruins’ head coach, and in comes the new coach at the time, Montgomery. Montgomery had the chance to start an entire season in 2022-23 and did tremendous defensively and goaltending-wise. During his time as head coach between Oct. 2022 and Nov. 2024, Montgomery kept the Bruins in the top three in the fewest goals against (464). He also made the Bruins the best penalty-killing team in the NHL in 2022-23.
Under Montgomery, Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron won the Selke Trophy for the sixth time in his career. The award is given to a forward who exemplifies the best performance offensively and defensively. Another player achievement under Montgomery was the Vezina Trophy awarded to Linus Ullmark as the best goalie in the NHL in the 2022-23 season, along with the William M. Jennings Trophy for Ullmark and backup Jeremy Swayman as the goaltenders on the team with the fewest goals allowed in 2022-23.
With more defensive accolades under his belt, especially with goaltending, I’d say Mongomery is the right guy for the Blues’ job, as he has a potentially great tandem of goaltending in Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer. As the Blues have a weakened defensive core due to injuries, it will be interesting to see how Montgomery will make something out of nothing with them.
Turning the Blues Into a Scoring Machine
The Bruins ranked ninth in goals per game during Cassidy’s time as coach. Once Montgomery got in as head coach in 2022-23, things seemed to change, as the Bruins were in the top three in goals per game that season. While the Bruins witnessed a decline in goals per game afterward, it may have been because of the retirement of Bergeron following the 2022-23 season. They lost a critical offensive piece to their roster.
That said, the Blues have a lot of offensive talent that Montgomery could work with, like Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Jake Neighbours, and Pavel Buchnevich. It’s evident Montgomery could do great things with it, judging by the results he carried out in his first season with the Bruins.
Montgomery made the Bruins’ power play worse by moving them from the top three in the league on the power play to the last; fixing the Blues’ power play, which ranks 27th in the league (15.7 percent scoring rate), will be a challenging task for him, as this time, he’ll be working with a team that already struggles to move up in that category.
The good thing is that, while goal-scoring was declining, Boston stayed in the top 10 in goals throughout Montgomery’s time there and the team was also better defensively. He brought a mix of good offense and defense, not just striving for one specific part of the team.
Kyrou, Thomas, Neighbours, and Buchnevich may not be at the level of Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and David Pastrnak, but they are guys who will get you a guaranteed 20 or more goals in a season, which is needed by three or more players on a team to be a contending one. In addition, the Blues loaded up their bottom lines, so Montgomery will not have any trouble getting this Blues roster to be where they should be anytime soon.
Montgomery Is a Coach That Knows How to Win
Montgomery knows how to win. After all, he got the 2022-23 Bruins team to become the NHL’s best all-time team in single-season wins (65) and standings points (135), awarding the Bruins with the Presidents’ Trophy as the team with the most points in the league that season. His dedication to winning in 2022-23 also earned him the Jack Adams Award. His all-time coaching record in the NHL is 181-84-33.
With the Blues, so far, he’s won the last two games since entering the role as the new head coach and is already making the Blues look like a solid contender. What kept the Blues from winning was that they struggled to maintain a lead on teams and trailed more than they scored first. Before, they had eight games where they scored first (28th in the NHL) and 12 games where they trailed first (third-most in the NHL). They have jumped up to 23rd in the league for scoring first and dropped to fifth highest in games trailing first.
In his current run with the Blues, he’s already won two games in a row, including a shutout against the New Jersey Devils in his second game as head coach. He is turning up the Blues’ mentality despite not having a contending team like he did on the Bruins.
Montgomery Is the Coach to Get the Job Done
All in all, Montgomery is leading this Blues roster like he was hired to be, and because of that, their goal differential went from minus-15 before he arrived in St. Louis to minus-10. Mongomery is showing that this Blues team is one that can win, needing the proper guidance and expertise to get them in shape to move up in the standings.
The most important thing to look out for with Montgomery is that the Blues are winning consistently and not flip-flopping onto the win-loss ratio like they’ve been doing before his arrival. That said, there is still plenty of hockey and many more NHL-ready prospects to bring up and make this team even more vital for Montgomery.
