Jim Montgomery rips into his Bruins’ team
Coach didn’t like practice, nor the last two games
Jim Montgomery wanted to be heard on Monday morning, and was he ever. His bellows even permeated the glass-enclosed press box two floors above ice level at Warrior Ice Arena.
Bruins’ practice was barely five minutes old when Montgomery screamed to his players, “Wake the (expletive) up!”
With that, Montgomery stopped practice and made his team go through rinklength wind sprints.
When practice resumed, his overall tone didn’t change much.
“Get the puck in! How (expletive) hard is that?!?” yelled Montgomery.
While he wasn’t happy with the way practice was going, it was not the only (or even main) source of his ire. On Saturday, the Bruins showed up late to a winnable game in Philadelphia and then, when they put themselves in position to grab at least a point out of it, they simply played losing hockey and wound up with nothing.
“I hated the way we finished the game in Philly,” said Montgomery. “It was a good hockey game, it was playoff intensity, physicality to it. And I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job of teaching the details and game management that we need. And then, we weren’t prepared to practice today. So those things coupled together — not ready to start practice on time and guys not knowing what we’re supposed to be doing… Again, I take responsibility for it. There’s got to be some responsibility on the players, too.”
The last two games against the Flyers and the Rangers have given the B’s a taste of what life will be like in the playoffs, which for them will be short-lived if they can’t manage to fight through the checking any better than they did in those two regulation losses. In both games, the B’s offense went dormant for close to 40 minutes.
Life won’t get any easier this week. On Tuesday, the B’s travel to Sunrise, Florida to take on the Panthers, who regained the inside track to the Atlantic Division title with their win in Philly on Sunday. Then they’ve got the Lightning on Tuesday and the Bolts are proving old champions die hard. On Saturday, they’ll play a surprising Capitals team that is inside the playoff structure.
“To me, as much as team it’s (about) individuals. Who’s ready to handle big moments? And it goes back two games. Checking is elevated in the league. The league usually goes up after All-Star break and I find it’s gone to another level the last two games,” said Montgomery. “Do we lose our patience and start giving up odd-man rushes? Or do we continue to fight and have second, third efforts and play the right way and get a greasy goal to win a hockey game. That’s what I’m looking for in the Florida game, the Tampa game. Then we have two days off and we’re playing a team in Washington at the end of the trip and — I’m not trying to get too ahead of myself — but this team is (minus-27) in goal differential. But they win the games they’re in.”
What specifically did he not like in the Philly loss? Let him count the ways.
“Bad changes. We had a real bad change. We gave up five odd-man rushes in the third period. A 1-0 game, we gave up two. We tie the game, we give up one and go down 2-1. We tie the game and we give up another two in the last three minutes and they go ahead. That’s the kind of things that we need to get better at,” said Montgomery.
Montgomery didn’t discuss what his lineup will look like on Tuesday in Sunrise. But in practice, it looked like Mason Lohrei and Kevin Shattenkirk were trending toward being the scratches on the back end — Parker Wotherspoon and Andrew Peeke were the third pairing — while James van Riemsdyk could be the odd-man out up front.
What is Montgomery looking for from individuals?
“Who are the guys who are going to manage the game, manage the puck, protect the puck? Who’s going to win battles? Who’s going to be first on pucks? We saw some guys who didn’t want to be first on pucks last game,” said Montgomery.
The tone of the practice from the head coach was spot-on to captain Brad Marchand, who felt it caught the players’ attention and eventually produced a good practice. But more importantly, that attention to detail needs to carry over into games.
“That’s what wins and loses in playoffs, the details. One mistake can cost you a game. And it’s not something you can turn on and off come playoffs time,” said Marchand. “It’s something we need to be really detailed in going down the stretch and your game has to be not perfect, you’re never going to get there. But you need to strive for that every day. You see teams fighting for their lives. They’re playing for keeps every night and they’re competing at a different level. Even though we’re not in that same position, we have to have that same mindset. That ultimately means that we need to be prepared in every minute of the game to take care of the puck and be on top of our structure. When we do that, we’re a great team. When we get away from that, we’re not.”
While the schedule is a challenge, it’s also a blessing. The B’s would not be able to get right if they were playing the Blackhawks and the Sharks every night. They’ve got 10 games left and eight of them are against teams currently inside the playoff bracket.
“I don’t think our team’s ready yet for playoffs,” said Montgomery flatly. “We’ve got to continue to get tested and we’re going to get tested.”