6 Potential Landing Spots for Fired Bruins Coach Jim Montgomery

The Boston Bruins made the first coaching change of the 2024-25 NHL season on Tuesday, firing Jim Montgomery after a disappointing 8-9-3 start.

That start includes the Bruins' current three-game losing streak, which was extended on Monday night with an ugly loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Montgomery coached parts of three seasons with Boston and had a 120-41-23 record, including a record-tying 65-win season in his debut campaign with the team.

Firing a coach with that record seems tough, especially when the roster is flawed and general manager Don Sweeney has been in charge of three coaching changes in eight years.

However, the team had been regressing, and the early part of the 2024-25 season was so bad that the Bruins decided to explore a coaching change.

Montgomery will be back at work soon, mostly because NHL teams always keep hiring and rehiring the same people. He also has a strong track record of success in the NHL and a .659 career regular-season points percentage as an NHL coach. That averages out to 108 points per season. Somebody in the league is going to want that.

Let's explore some potential options for the 55-year-old.

Derek Lalonde was hired in Detroit at around the same time Montgomery was in Boston, and he has not had anywhere near the success the outgoing Bruins coach had. And it only seems to be getting worse.

The pressure has to be mounting in Detroit for general manager Steve Yzerman because the Red Wings have already missed the playoffs eight years in a row and seem to be headed for a ninth this year. Six of those seasons will have been under Yzerman's watch.

That is a problem.

Also, a problem is the fact that this year's Red Wings team seems to be worse than either of the past two under Lalonde and isn't really doing anything right.

The roster isn't particularly good, the defensive approach is bad and the team isn't showing any real signs of progress despite a lot of money spent by the front office. The defensive shortcomings have been a problem for a couple of years now, but they have taken a huge step backward offensively this season and are also one of the worst offensive teams in the NHL.

A coaching change here seems inevitable at some point, and Montgomery would be one of the top names available.

There is nothing to suggest Nashville Predators head coach Andrew Brunette's job is in jeopardy at this point, other than the team's record and the fact that general manager Barry Trotz is upset with where the team is.

As he should be.

Expectations were sky high for the Predators coming into the season, not only for the way they finished the 2023-24 regular season but also because the team spent big money this offseason on Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei in free agency, while also re-signing star goalie Juuse Saros.

There was every reason to believe this team was capable of something big this year.

The Predators were one of the best 5-on-5 teams in the NHL during the second half of last season, they added high-end finishers in Stamkos and Marchessault to that roster, and there was reason to believe Saros could bounce back from a pedestrian (by his standards) season.

Instead of doing something special, they find themselves with the second-worst points percentage in the NHL (.395) through 19 games, ahead of only the Chicago Blackhawks (.342).

That is not where anybody wanted or expected this team to be.

Trotz has already threatened potential changes to the roster if things do not turn around (and they haven't since he made that declaration), but it is difficult to change 23 players. It's far easier for an underachieving team to try a new coach.

And now there is a high-profile and successful coach available.

The Pittsburgh Penguins are off to a brutal start this season, and it's kind of surprising they weren't the first team to make a coaching change.

Mike Sullivan has two Stanley Cup rings with the Penguins, but he hasn't led them to a playoff series win since the 2018 season, has missed the playoffs two years in a row, and is now overseeing a team that is 7-10-4 and has already allowed eight multiple-goal leads to slip in its first 21 games of the season.

Pittsburgh has lost five of those games in which it allowed the multiple-goal lead to slip away.

The defensive-zone play is some of the worst in hockey, and the message no longer seems to be getting through to the players.

Had it not been for the two championships, the Penguins would have probably already made a coaching change long before this season's poor start.

The only potential hurdles here are the fact that a coaching change may not be all that can fix this roster, and Montgomery might not want to jump to a team in the early stages of a rebuild when he could have better options in front of him if he has a bit of patience.

The Montreal Canadiens took a big swing by hiring Martin St. Louis in the middle of the 2021-22 season when he had no real head coaching experience at any level.

While the 49-year-old has had some success in helping to bring along some of the Canadiens' young offensive players, it's fair to wonder if maybe they need another coach to really help move this rebuild along.

As hard as it might be to believe, St. Louis is the sixth-longest tenured coach in the NHL and hasn't had much team success, and there is not much progress in the standings for the Canadiens as a team. That is especially true with the defensive play, where Montreal continues to be one of the league's worst teams.

It is allowing 3.04 expected goals per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time, per Natural Stat Trick, which is the second-worst mark in the league ahead of only the Anaheim Ducks. The team might need a change to start making serious progress.

Montgomery is also from Montreal and speaks French, which is always a huge factor in the Canadiens' coaching searches and hiring processes.

Like St. Louis in Montreal, André Tourigny is shockingly one of the longest-tenured head coaches in the NHL having been behind the team's bench since the start of the 2021-22 season.

The first three years took place in Arizona before the franchise's relocation.

There should be a lot of incentive for Utah to become a winner quickly, as it tries to build a fanbase in a new market.

It finally has legitimate NHL ownership, made some significant moves this offseason with the additions of Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino to the defense, and there is a nice young core of talent at forward with Clayton Keller, Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley leading the way.

After a fast start to the season, though, things have cooled off dramatically and Tourigny could be in danger of missing the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season. Most head coaches do not get that sort of leeway in the NHL.

Montgomery would be a bold hire for a team looking to create an identity for itself and become relevant on the NHL map.

Drew Bannister took over for Craig Berube midway through the 2023-24 season, and he helped lead the team to a strong finish and did enough to earn a two-year contract extension in the offseason.

Firing him would be a dramatic and sudden move at this point. Maybe even a little unfair.

However, the Blues are off to a brutal start to the 2024-25 season, and Montgomery has some connections to the team.

Prior to being named head coach of the Bruins, Montgomery had been working as an assistant coach with St. Louis and helped boost the team's offense. It has regressed significantly in the years since and doesn't really do anything well at this point.

The availability of Montgomery, as well as his connection to the team and general manager Doug Armstrong, could at least give everybody something to think about.