Boston Bruins Fire Jim Montgomery, 1st NHL Coaching Change Of 2024-25

The Boston Bruins have made the first coaching change of the 2024-25 NHL season, firing head coach Jim Montgomery on Tuesday. The move comes after a 5-1 home-ice loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night. The Bruins are 0-2-1 in their last three games, have been outscored 15-5 in that spanned, and have now dropped to 8-9-3 in their first 20 games. With 19 points, Boston sits in the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference heading into Tuesday’s games. Montgomery, 55, joined the Bruins prior to the 2022-23 season. In his first year, he won the Jack Adams Award as the coach of the year after guiding the team to the most wins in a season in NHL history — 65-12-5 for 135 points. Last season, the Bruins settled for second place in the Atlantic Division, with 109 points. But playoff success was elusive. Boston was eliminated by the Florida Panthers in both years — in overtime of Game 7 of the first round in 2023, then in six games in 2024. During the 2024 off-season, Boston general manager Don Sweeney spent big in free agency. He signed center Elias Lindholm to a seven-year deal with a salary-cap hit of $7.75 million and defenseman Nikita Zadorov to a four-year pact at a cap hit of $5 million. But after Montgomery deployed one of the strongest goalie tandems in the league in his first two seasons, Sweeney traded Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators in June, then had trouble bringing his new No. 1, Jeremy Swayman, under contract. Swayman missed training camp and all of pre-season before finally agreeing to an eight-year deal with a cap hit of $8.25 million per season on Oct. 6, two days before Boston’s season-opener. That lack of preparation may be part of the reason for a start to the season that has been well below his usual standard. With a career save percentage of .915, the 25-year-old is at just .884 this season. He has posted a record of 5-7-2 and sits at minus 7.3 goals saved above expected according to MoneyPuck. That puts him in the bottom five in the entire NHL. The Bruins are also scoring just 2.40 goals per game, second-fewest in the league. Their goal differential of minus-21 has them tied with the San Jose Sharks for 30th overall, ahead of only the San Jose Sharks. Boston was Montgomery’s second NHL head-coaching stop. He was 60-43-10 over 114 games with the Dallas Stars from 2018-19, and subsequently underwent treatment for alcoholism before catching on in Boston. Montgomery’s interim replacement, Joe Sacco, is a native of Medford, Mass. and is in his 11th season on the Bruins’ coaching staff. The 55-year-old was promoted from an assistant coach to an associate coach in July. As a player, Sacco patrolled right wing for five NHL teams over 738 games from 1990 to 2003. He served as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche for four seasons between 2009-2013, amassing a record of 130-134-30 over 294 games. Montgomery’s firing is the first of the year in the NHL, where job security behind benches has been in short supply. In just over two years, Montgomery had climbed the ranks to become the league’s 11th-longest-tenured head coach. Last season’s first firing came one week earlier, when Kris Knoblauch replaced Jay Woodcroft with the Edmonton Oilers on Nov. 12, 2023. Since then, Boston is the 13th team to make at least one coaching change. That doesn’t count Andre Tourigny, who is technically in a new job with the Utah Hockey Club even though he came over with the players from the Arizona Coyotes, where he had been behind the bench since 2021. Sacco’s first game in his new role will be on Thursday, when the Bruins host Utah.