Jim Montgomery Reveals His One Regret From Round One Loss
In what was the first time that Bruins fans saw bad coaching from Jim Montgomery came at the absolute worst time. However, Boston's head coach revealed he had just one regret from the round one loss.
But Should There Be More?
In a crazy twist of fate, both Montgomery and Linus Ullmark picked the opening series against the Panthers to be their worst of the season. Although it would be easy to point out several of Montgomery's mistakes, the coach himself only had one.
According to Joe Haggerty of Boston Hockey Now:
Since the 2008-09 season, Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand appeared in 12,842:46 of ice time together in all situations. Despite being somewhat of a shock to the duo, it seems hard to believe that had more of an outcome than Montgomery's real mistake.
Looking back, the disaster of an ending could have been avoided if he didn't make his first simple mistake of the series. Returning to Boston with a 3-1 series lead, Montgomery chose to go with Ullmark for the fifth straight game. This was after consecutive games of heavy pressure from the Panthers' offense.
Even if the Bruins still lose game five with Jeremy Swayman - who played unreal in the game seven loss - they still would've had a rested Ullmark for game six.
But who knows? The blame may be on the coaching, goaltending, or to the players. Another thing to consider is giving credit to the Florida Panthers, who found a way to exploit the NHL-best Bruins with their heavy forecheck.
| POLL | ||
What was Jim Montgomery's biggest mistake in the playoffs? | ||
| Not starting Swayman in Game 5 | 392 | 76.7 % |
| Splitting up Marchand and Bergeron | 63 | 12.3 % |
| Sitting Grzelcyk in Game 6 | 28 | 5.5 % |
| Other? Let us know in the Facebook comments | 28 | 5.5 % |
| List of polls | ||
