(Photo Credit: John Tlumacki - The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Through their first twenty games of the season, and heading into Thursday night, the Boston Bruins have a record of 8-9-3, and a winning percentage of .475 - 21st in the league. As such, this underwhelming, and slow start has them sitting 5th place in the Atlantic Division, 10th in the Eastern Conference, and 20th in the NHL as American Thanksgiving - an unofficial benchmark assessing potential playoff team trajectory - approaches. Additionally, they're 30th in goal differential (-21), 28th in goals for, 27th in goals against, 32nd in power play percentage (11.7%), and 25th in penalty killing percentage (75.6%). Literally by just about every metric, advanced analytics and traditional analytics alike - Boston is a bottom third team in the NHL - and in many cases bottom five.
These underperforming metrics obviously contributed to the early season firing of now former Head Coach, Jim Montgomery on Tuesday.
But while Montgomery may have ended up the fall guy for Boston's short comings, he's far from the biggest, and only reason.
Management is responsible for roster construction, and the roster is responsible for individual work ethic and performance. At least a handful-plus of relied upon players are vastly under performing from what would be considered their normal pace of production.
The one word to best describe Boston's play so far this season would be "careless". They've been careless with their effort, and careless with their decision making for far too many of their games.
So where has it all gone wrong? Well, it all goes back to the offseason.
Negative publicity started surrounding the team before training camp even began. In late August, Jeremy Swayman made public comments on the "Shut Up Mark podcast" about experiencing resentment towards a 2023 arbitration process (filed by the player), knowing his comparables, and not wanting to ruin the goalie market when discussing his ongoing contract negotiation with the Bruins.
Now on the surface, there was nothing wrong with Swayman's comments - other than the fact it was kind of organizational taboo for a Bruin player to openly be discussing team business for the public to consume. The result, was that talking heads around the city began 'souring' on the player, and driving a narrative that Swayman wants more than he's worth.
Then information of Boston's initial 4-year, $6.2M offer to Swayman was leaked to Ryan Whitney of the"Spittin' Chiclets podcast", and Whitney went on to mention he had heard that Boston hadn't returned a phone call to Swayman's camp in 3.5 weeks.
This information was likely leaked from someone in the player's camp and it didn't show the Bruins in a good light - add to that, Whitney's platform is the biggest hockey podcast in the world.
Needless to say, the Bruins were eager to respond when they had the chance during a pre-season press conference. Avoiding Whitney's rumored report of Boston's initial offer, GM Don Sweeney denounced claims of not returning phone calls saying the nature of that report was "bullshit", and even threw an unnecessary verbal jab at Spittin' Chiclets in the process - referring to the beloved show as the "Spitting Up On Yourself podcast".
Team President Cam Neely then followed that up in managements next media availability saying - when asked about why a Swayman contract hadn't been signed yet - that he can "think of $64M reasons" why he'd be playing right now.
For an organization that historically holds their cards tight to their chest, it was an uncharacteristic, and complete unravelling of emotions that turned into a Soap opera for the hockey world to see. Players who were at training camp - had to hear their teams name (indirectly themselves by association) dragged through the mud during a negotiation that they had nothing to do with.
Eventually Swayman signed an 8-year, $66M deal with the Bruins right before the start of the regular season - but there's no doubt that the drama that ensued in weeks prior left a lingering dark energy over the team. Combine that with a lack-luster training camp, some new-to-the-organization players experiencing injury set-backs, and some key returning players recovering from off-season surgery's, and ailments - Boston simply wasn't ready to go on opening night, and hasn't been ready to go at all this year.
In the wake of Montgomery's firing, players have been taking accountability for their underperformances both as a team, and as individuals. Swayman, Charlie McAvoy, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Elias Lindholm all acknowledged their compete, and details have to come way up going forward, and that they need to reestablish the culture of Boston Bruins hockey.
It's encouraging that they're saying the right things, but until they show it on the ice - it's all lip service. The fact of the matter is that Bruce Cassidy, and Montgomery were both among the most successful NHL coaches during their respective tenures in Boston - and they were both relived of their coaching duties just 2.5 years apart. That's an inditement on the players, and the mutual leaders that have spanned across multiple strong coaches with opposite coaching styles.
Fortunately for the Bruins, Joe Sacco has been on the Bruins coaching staff since 2014. He worked under Claude Julien for two seasons, Cassidy for six, and Montgomery for two-plus. He's seen what makes the team successful on and off the ice under different coaching leadership and has an institutional knowledge that only time can create. His personality appears to be quiet but up-front, honest, and unafraid to "tell it like it is".
Is Sacco the caffeine the Bruins need right now to wake up with 62-games remaining? Or do the Bruins' problems run much deeper than a coaching change?
Stay tuned to find out.
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