BOSTON — Jim Montgomery didn’t mince words. He didn’t avoid the topic, or beat around the bush.
The head coach of the St. Louis Blues is well aware why his return to Boston on Thursday carries so much meaning after he was let go by the Bruins now more than a year ago.
“I got fired,” Montgomery said with a chuckle. “Call it what it is.”
But as Montgomery gets set to coach his first game back at TD Garden since his unceremonious departure, he’s not focused on why he was fired or how he could’ve kept his job behind the Bruins’ bench. Instead, he’s reflecting on the time he spent in Boston, the memories he made, the lessons he learned, and how they made him who he is today.
“For me, it’s always about people,” said Montgomery. “The great players, the management that I got the opportunity to work with, everybody here made me better.”
Montgomery spent two and a half seasons as the head coach of the Bruins, making the playoffs twice and accumulating an overall record of 120-41-23.
In 2022-23, he led the team to the best regular season record in NHL history and won f the Jack Adams Award as the league’s best coach. But after the Bruins began last season 8-9-3, Montgomery was fired after only 20 games.
“I don’t think any time a team fails, it’s just one person,” Montgomery said. “It’s impossible. Everybody had a hand in the success of the great year that we had, the one season. Everybody had a hand in why we failed last year.
“I think if you’re going to grow as a person, you have to realize, whether it’s in your personal life or your professional life, what exactly you could have done better. That’s what I look at. I don’t look at what others could have done better. I don’t control others.”
It didn’t take long for Montgomery to find work again. Just five days after being fired in Boston, he landed on his feet in St. Louis.
“It happened so quickly,” said Montgomery. “I was still in the mode of, ‘Where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong?’ Then, all of a sudden, the phone rings, and you got to start. It helps you get over it quicker, but I still feel like it would have been healthy to have more time. It’s just the way my brain works.”
The two teams followed very different paths in the aftermath.
Montgomery and the Blues put together a 35-18-7 record, reached the playoffs, and nearly upset the Presidents’ Trophy winning Winnipeg Jets in the first round. The Bruins, meanwhile, continued to spiral, eventually crashing and burning in the form of a last place finish in the Eastern Conference.
The team is barely recognizable from the one Montgomery left. Only 13 players on the Bruins’ active roster played for him.
That, however, doesn’t minimize the importance of the game for either side.
Boston, now led by new bench boss Marco Sturm, is trying to stay afloat while a myriad of injuries, including ones to David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, threaten to sink its season.
St. Louis is already underwater. Off to a 9-11-7 start, Montgomery finds himself in a similar situation to the one he was in with the Bruins a year ago.
More than anything else, that’s why Montgomery’s return means so much to him.
“This game matters to me,” Montgomery said. “No doubt, I want to win, let’s be clear about that. But the emotions of it? No, I got to coach a game. I got to get our team ready to beat the Boston Bruins.”