Early Trading: Is firing Montgomery really Bruins' only option?

TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun and Gino Reda discuss the speculation surrounding the struggling Boston Bruins.

'Firing coach Jim Montgomery is the Bruins' only logical move.'

That's the headline from Bruins beat reporter Fluto Shinzawa following an embarrassing loss to the Blue Jackets on home ice last night. It's been ugly in Boston. On this day last year they had the best record in the league. Now, they're under .500 and in 18th. What are you hearing out of Boston?

Jim Montgomery Boston BruinsPierre LeBrun: Yeah. You can obviously see why, Fluto, who is one of the best beat writers in the NHL by the way, would go that way after an embarrassing loss at home to Columbus. It's been a brutal start to the year for a team with higher expectations. But also, the obvious angle in all of this is that Jim Montgomery's contract is expiring at the end of the season. That makes it even more glaring when a team is in this situation. Not that there weren't talks in the summer about an extension, there were, it just didn't get done. 

So where does it go from here? Certainly when I talk to other people around the league on Monday night after that loss, there were people wondering if this was it for Montgomery. There's been nothing from the Bruins, so far, on this day. They have a complete day off, no practice. They don't play again until Thursday night. 

You can't put everything here on Jim Montgomery, even if he does ultimately pay the price. I sat down with [general manager] Don Sweeney two weeks ago for a piece I wrote for The Athletic and there's a quote that still sticks with me, 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 just one player, or two players, it's a lot of players.'

Man, did that stick with me. And you can read into that comment in a number of different ways. Was he shielding his coach at the time and laying the blame mostly on his players? Or was this about laying the blame all around, which is that the players need to be better but the coach has to find a way to get more out of those players, and 'I'm the GM who put this roster together.' I think that, in a way, Sweeney was putting himself out there too.

There's a lot of blame to go around here. Listen, it's not about one player but Elias Lindholm has not found his bearing at all since signing that massive seven-year deal with the Bruins. He's not been very good at all, but again, he's not the only one. David Pastrnak has been hit and miss, he got benched one game a few weeks ago. Jeremy Swayman missing camp has clearly affected him. He's not been at his best.

So where does it go from here? One comment that I got from a rival team executive this morning, which I thought was absolutely true, which is, through all this, and regardless of where the Bruins go from this moment, one thing hat has to be true is that they've been been good forever and this cap system does not allow you to cheat father time. Eventually that lack of prospects and always going for it will catch up. We've seen it in Pittsburgh but the question is, has it happened with the Boston Bruins? 

The Carolina Hurricanes are flying. They have the top point percentage in the East despite the fact their No. 1 goalie is out. On Friday, Canes head coach Rod Brind'Amour said Frederik Andersen is going to be out 'way longer' than first thought. What are you hearing out of Carolina?

Martin Necas Carolina HurricanesLeBrun: First, I would argue that Pyotyr Kochetkov is probably their No. 1 goalie by now but I guess we can discuss that another day.

I had a chance to chat with GM Eric Tulsky and, listen, could he have predicted for sure winning 13 of the team's first 17 games? No. He understands why the outside world might have been somewhat skeptical [coming into this year] because they had massive offseason losses. They lost [Brett] Pesci and [Brady] Skjei from their blueline. They lost Jake Guentzel after trying to re-sign their trade deadline acquisition. He gets it but he had a pretty solid, under the radar response. All the new guys are fitting in but most importantly, he did not trade Martin Necas.

We know that Necas asked for a trade at the end of last season. He was unhappy with his role on the team, he was on the third line throughout the playoffs. There were serious trade discussions, as Tulsky confirmed. He spoke to a number of teams. According to my sources, 28 teams had discussions with the Hurricanes about Necas. And why not? he's 25 years old. There were teams in are build, contending teams, everyone was in on him. The Winnipeg Jets tried hard to get him, the Columbus Blue Jackets with ex-Carolina GM Don Waddell tried to get him, Montreal made a number of inquiries. But at the end of the day, Tulsky said nothing that was on the table made sense. 

So they convinced him to re-sign on the two-year deal. It bridges Necas to UFA but they'll deal with that later. In the meantime he has 30 points in 17 games and is third in league scoring. Yes, the Hurricanes are relieved and thrilled that the best trade they made is the one they didn't make in keeping Martin Necas.