MAILBAG: Jim Montgomery is Employed, Everyone is Bald, the Buffalo Sabres (Derogatory)
Which NHL team is next in line for a coaching change? Are the playoff-positioned Sabres running a social experiment? Who are the most entertaining sports writers right now?
Good morning and happy slacking off at work week American Thanksgiving to everyone except Bruins Blues head coach Jim Montgomery.
Montgomery is working hard enough for the rest of us slackers this week, since St. Louis scooped him up just five days after Bruins GM Don Sweeney fired him.
Sweeney has now fired three consecutive Jack Adams winners, all of whom found employment shortly thereafter. The Habs hired Claude Julien seven days after Sweeney’s ax, the Golden Knights hired Bruce Cassidy eight days later, and now we’ve arrived at Montgomery’s five-year contract with the Blues.
People are mad at Sweeney, and I’m people! Until the Bruins fully implode, though, you kinda gotta shrug and take these post-Montgomery 1-0 wins. Now that we’ve said virtually everything there is to say about Sweeney, Cam Neely, and the lack of checks and balances in the Bruins front office, it’s time to zoom out.
The first coach of the season was fired right before American Thanksgiving, AKA the special time of year when we all start to freak out about playoff positioning. Does this mean Montgomery was the first in a cluster of coaches who will soon get the ax, or can everyone breathe easy knowing the Blues fired Drew Bannister specifically because Montgomery hit the market?
Feel the rhythm
Feel the rhyme
Get on up…
It’s mailbag time
Question: Who’s next on the NHL coaching hot seat? Will other clubs move to implement change?
Answer: Montgomery was fired by the Bruins (my column, ICYMI) then hired by the Blues in less than one week. The NHL is often hilarious in moments like these. A club will fire a coach and three other clubs seem to go: “Oh hey, we forgot you can do that!” and follow suit. For Blues GM Doug Armstrong, it was more like, “Hey, it’s a free country and I really like that other guy!”
Armstrong actually said he had no inclination of making a coaching change until the Bruins let Montgomery go. He told reporters: “This decision, I would say, is based almost 100 percent on having someone of Jim’s caliber become available.”
I respect it! With the first domino down and American Thanksgiving approaching (aka ‘Are we making the playoffs or not?’ SZN), hot seats are getting warmer.
I’m seeing a lot of pundits and fans alike assuming Predators head coach Andrew Brunette is next in line for the ax, but I’m not so sure. The Predators have the most to gain from firing their coach, given their underperforming roster and playoff expectations combination. But I wonder if longtime NHL bench boss and current Predators GM Barry Trotz has a longer coaching leash due to his experience in the role. Plus, Saturday’s 4-1 win over the league-best Jets was Nashville’s best performance of the season, with stars finding chemistry and stepping up. Not to mention, the epic turnaround Nashville had last season is still fresh in everyone’s mind. They’ll be looking for that magic following Saturday’s win, and I doubt they fire Brunette if they string a few more convincing wins together now. But this is urgent, and we need to see more at five-on-five ASAP.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Red Wings head coach Derek Lalonde gets fired before Brunette. The Red Wings are 8-10-2, and somehow watching them with your eyeballs is even worse than the record. They’re slow, they’re not generating momentum in the rare event they’re in the zone, and the supporting cast just doesn’t have it.
The Yzerplan looks directionless. Perhaps last season was a bit of an overperformance, or Yzerman’s selections for the supporting cast are not good enough, or Lalonde isn’t squeezing the most out of the roster at large.
The thing is, and this has always been the crux of the Yzersplainers argument, is that the end result is supposed to happen after years of strategic shifts throughout the franchise. It sure seems like three things are true right now: 1. This isn’t close to the end goal roster 2. Lalonde isn’t the end goal coach 3. Only one of these things can really change right now.
By this logic, why not start a next phase coaching search right now and keep chipping away at the roster as you go? Lalonde’s on the last year of his contract anyway.
So, my updated hot seat rankings:
1. Lalonde
2. Brunette
3. Chicago’s Luke Richardson. Me when you’re putting literally everyone short of a random guy on the street next to Connor Bedard except the three good people on the team:
Question: How long until Jim Montgomery wins the Cup?
Answer: Congratulations to the St. Louis Blues on their 2025-26 Stanley Cup Trophy.
Question: Have we ever had this many bald coaches in the NHL?