NHL head coach is fired after team’s awful start to the season

The Boston Bruins fired Jim Montgomery has their head coach on Tuesday afternoon. 

The pink slip comes after the team’s third straight loss, the most recent of which was a 5-1 home loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, one of the league’s worst teams. 

Montgomery had been the bench boss for the Bruins for the last two seasons, with Associate Coach Joe Sacco taking over as interim head coach.

The Bruins are currently barely hanging on to a playoff spot with 19 points from their first 20 games. 

As other teams have games in hand, Boston will likely fall out of the Eastern Conference’s top eight in the coming days, a disappointing place for one of the NHL’s preseason Stanley Cup favorites to reside. 

Montgomery’s Bruins’ tenure could not have started better by setting an NHL record with 135 regular-season points during the 2022-23 season. That success did not translate to the playoffs with a first-round exit against the Florida Panthers.  

The Bruins have only garnered a disappointing 19 points from their first 20 games this season

The Bruins’ playoff hopes last year also ended in disappointment, with a second-round exit again at the hands of the Panthers. 

Boston released a statement from team general manager Don Sweeney, who has fired his third Jack Adams Award-winning head coach in his time as the Bruins’ GM, after previously canning Bruce Cassidy and Claude Julien. 

‘Today, I made a very difficult decision with regards to a coaching change. Jim Montgomery is a very good NHL coach and an even better person. He has made a positive impact throughout the Bruins organization, and I am both grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to work with him and learn from him,’ Sweeney said. 

‘Our team’s inconsistency and performance in the first 20 games of the 2024-25 season has been concerning and below how the Bruins want to reward our fans.’

Oddly enough, the Bruins are only six points behind Florida for the Atlantic Division lead.