Insider Trading: Montgomery fired; where do Bruins go from here?

TSN’s Hockey Insiders discuss the coaching change in Boston and the onus now shifting to the players, Auston Matthews visiting a clinic overseas, Ovechkin’s goal chase on hold, J.T. Miller taking personal leave and more.

When might we see Auston Matthews back on the ice?

Reda: They are the Insiders, Chris Johnston and Pierre LeBrun - how bad is Auston Matthews' injury? The Toronto Maple Leafs say he's recovering nicely, he's still just day-to-day, there's no setback, but he's gone overseas for treatment? CJ, can you help us make sense of this?

Johnston: Well he's arrived at a renowned sports clinic in Germany, it's one that many athletes have gone to from various sports for treatment, it's one that Matthews himself has been to previously.

I think where some of the surprise comes in is understanding where it started. This is an injury that Matthews initially suffered in training camp, tried to play through in the regular season - it was thought that a little bit of rest would be enough to get him back to where he was and he just wasn't responding, wasn't getting better.

With this break in the Leafs' schedule the decision was made for him to go over to Germany to see this doctor, accompanied by a Leafs physician, and the hope is that after treatment he'll be able to resume skating and start working his way back into the lineup but I wouldn't expect to see him - in a best-case scenario - until some time next week.

Not a worst-case scenario for Alex Ovechkin?

Reda: Speaking of injured superstars, we said at the beginning of the season that Alex Ovechkin needed two things to break Wayne Gretzky's record for goals this season: To return to his former goal-scoring self and to stay healthy. After an amazing start he was on pace to break the record some time in February, now he's out week-to-week, what are you hearing about his timeline CJ?

Johnston: The way it was described to me was that this was not the worst-case scenario.

The fact that they're calling it week-to-week, it's a lower-leg injury, I think there might have been some initial concern when he left that game against Utah that it might have been a knee-on-knee injury and something that was more significant but the truth is that the Washington Capitals don't know for sure and Ovechkin won't know for sure until he sees team doctors on Wednesday and has a chance to have a more thorough review of the injury. 

I'll point you to one thing: In addition to scoring a lot of goals, this guy has not missed a lot of time to injury during any point of his career so there is at least some hope that this won't be too long-term and he can return to that pursuit of the goal record in the near future.

Where do the Boston Bruins go now after firing head coach Jim Montgomery?

Reda: Still in the Eastern Conference: It's been an amazing fall from grace for the Boston Bruins; on this day last year, they had the best record in the entire league. Now they're under .500, they're 18th overall and head coach Jim Montgomery got fired. Is this just Montgomery becoming the fall guy for bigger issues, Pierre?

LeBrun: Certainly a few layers to all this. The firing itself felt inevitable as the Bruins couldn't turn around their slumping start to the season, especially the way they looked listless in that home loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night.

The fact that he was on an expiring deal, which always sort of puts a coach close to the chopping block, if things don't go well it's so hard to make trades in this league.

Having said that, the team just fired a guy who won the Jack Adams Award two years ago and leaves with a .715 points percentage in his two-plus years in Boston.

Joe Sacco takes over, and he's been there for a decade, he's well-respected in that organization and they announced him as the interim head coach, but my understanding is that the Bruins want to give Sacco a real shot here, that they won't begin a coaching search, they won't reach out to other candidates right now, they want Sacco to have a legitimate chance at being the head coach here.

In the meantime, there's this: You asked the question Gino, is a coaching change in Boston going to fix everything? I go back to a sit-down interview I did with general manager Don Sweeney earlier in November where he said 'If you look at our overall roster, you've got a lot of players that are off to a slow start. It's not one or two players, you've got a lot of players.'

To me that said a couple of different things: One, the players share some of the blame here and they need to improve their play, but I also think the GM put this roster together and I think that's him acknowledging 'This is partly my fault here, too' so we'll see where it goes for Boston.

Johnston: That's certainly consistent with sort of the outside view too, Pierre. One thing I've heard consistently in talking with the Bruins is the onus has to be on the players.

A lot of people outside those doors noticed how much heat Montgomery had placed on players like David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy in the final weeks of his tenure in Boston. It will be interesting to see how they respond to a new voice and, with Sacco, it's one they already know well.

An update on J.T. Miller

Reda: Big news out of Vancouver: The Canucks say that J.T. Miller, their second-leading scorer, is taking an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons. What can you tell us about how we got here, Pierre?

LeBrun: Well certainly we wish Miller the best here, as he leaves the team, but what we're being told is that he has not been right physically since the start of the season. He's been battling that, he has not been able to find his 'A-game' because of those physical limitations, and that certainly has harboured a level of frustration.

That level of frustration has led to some mental duress, it's been hard on him mentally, so what's been described to me on this day is that Miller needs a reset here. He needs to heal both physically and mentally, and the Canucks as a team have been really supportive of this decision and they stand behind him.