Boston Bruins Left Feeling 'Empty', Accountable
It was an appropriately somber End of Season note sounded by the Boston Bruins organization after their playoff crash-and-burn
BOSTON -- When it came to Jim Montgomery’s demeanor and decision-making in the Stanley Cup playoffs, there were obvious problems right out of the chute.
The Boston Bruins, by their own admission, weren’t ready to go against a fast, aggressive Florida Panthers team in Game 1, and all series their defense and goaltending were under siege far more than they had been during a 65-win regular season. But the biggest issues came in the middle of the series during a turning point Game 5 when the Bruins lost on their home ice in overtime, and that led to blown leads in both Game 6 and Game 7 before ultimately falling in an OT where their season ended with their best players getting outworked in the defensive zone.
Montgomery completely went away from the goalie rotation of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman that had been the backbone of the team all season and missed a golden opportunity to play Swayman in a Game 5 closeout game on home ice. He also jumbled up the forward lines while separating Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand to start that fateful Game 5, and those mismatched forward combinations contributed to a sluggish start in a massively important playoff game for the Black and Gold.
Then in Game 6 there was inserting Connor Clifton into the series for Matt Grzelcyk in a move that backfired tremendously for Montgomery and the Bruins, a game that Don Sweeney said he was “uncomfortable” watching his team on the ice given how poorly they executed all over the ice in a chaotic back-and-forth playoff match.
Perhaps even worse, after the game Montgomery sounded like a college hockey coach waxing about what “a great playoff hockey game” it had been and the wonderful opportunity they had for a Game 7 on home ice.
It was the completely wrong tone after the B’s had blown two chances to close out the Panthers, and it sounded like somebody that perhaps got a little lost in the moment. It’s all understandable given it was Montgomery’s first time dealing with those kinds of expectations at the NHL level, and he was far from the only person associated with the Boston Bruins that struggled with the expectations and pressure on them.
Given a couple of weeks to digest it all, Montgomery came away feeling three things at the TD Garden dais on Tuesday afternoon while picking apart what exactly happened to the B’s during the playoffs.
“Mad. Frustrated. Accountable.”