{"id":425228,"date":"2024-11-25T17:45:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T17:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=425228"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Five-days-after-Bruins-firing-Montgomery-named-NHL-Blues-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Five-days-after-Bruins-firing-Montgomery-named-NHL-Blues-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Five days after Bruins firing, Montgomery named NHL Blues coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Montgomery was hired as coach of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues on Sunday, five days after being fired as coach of the Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n

The 55-year-old Canadian, who guided Boston to an NHL record for wins and points in a season but never got past the second round of the playoffs, replaced Drew Bannister, who was fired after a 9-12-1 start by the Blues this season.<\/p>\n

An 8-9-3 start this season by the Bruins led to Montgomery’s firing, but he signed a five-year contract with the Blues.<\/p>\n

“This was more an opportunity to get someone of Jim’s caliber more than anything else,” Blues president of hockey operations Doug Armstrong said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had to deal with our situations off the ice with injuries and everyone deals with that, but this decision was based 100% on having someone of Jim’s caliber becoming available when I didn’t know that was going to happen.”<\/p>\n

Montgomery is 180-84-33 as an NHL coach, having guided Dallas for two seasons and Boston for just over two campaigns, going 120-41-23 with the Bruins.<\/p>\n

In the 2022-23 season, the Bruins won an NHL record 65 games and compiled a record 135 points under Montgomery, who was named the NHL’s Coach of the Year, but were upset by Florida in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Boston also lost to the eventual 2024 Stanley Cup champions in last year’s playoffs.<\/p>\n

Montgomery was dropped by the Bruins last Tuesday and replaced by Joe Sacco.<\/p>\n

“He certainly has a very positive demeanour, works well with the top players in the organizations that he’s been with,” Armstrong said. “He has a wealth of experience and he’s at the prime of his coaching career.”<\/p>\n

The Blues, who won the 2019 Stanley Cup, have missed the playoffs the past two seasons.<\/p>\n

Bannister went 39-31-6 as the Blues coach after replacing Craig Berube last December.<\/p>\n

Montgomery gets his first test with the Blues on Monday when they visit the New York Rangers.<\/p>\n

js\/sev<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jim Montgomery, fired five days ago as coach of the NHL Boston Bruins, was signed to a five-year coaching deal by the St. Louis Blues<\/p>\n

-Joel Auerbach
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Jim Montgomery was hired as coach of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues on Sunday, five…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}