Commentary: Bruins, coach Jim Montgomery facing pivotal weekend

As the Bruins licked their psychological wounds on an unscheduled day off in Philadelphia on Friday, a panicked Black and Gold Nation was left to ponder how this team can pull out of this tailspin before it becomes a death spiral for the season.

Word is that though the practice was scheduled, it was felt that with three games in four days in three different cities, rested legs would be more productive than a practice. With the team’s performance staff holding great sway these days, the team scraps practices fairly regularly, especially on the road.

But given the situation, after an embarrassing 8-2 loss in Carolina on Thursday and an anemic shutout loss to the Flyers on Tuesday, you can understand the alarm.

The first month of the season has yielded a 4-6-1 record and, frankly, they have not been as good as that record indicates. They have just two regulation wins, in Colorado and against Montreal – and they needed to stave off late rallies to get those. They are 25th in goals for (2.64, tied with the still-rebuilding Blackhawks) and they are 28th in goals against (3.82, just a hair better than the Sharks). They are 28th in high danger scoring chances.

Y’all have a right to panic.

The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to can the coach. And make no mistake, Jim Montgomery – allowed by B’s management to go into the season without a contract extension, not usually a recipe for success – has to be feeling the heat. Nothing he has tried – including the drastic line changes that could prevent the gong show in Raleigh – has worked.

Maybe having a coach with more contractual security would have helped in the first month of the season, maybe not. It’s not really an NHL coach’s job to teach an NHL player how to make a 10-foot uncontested pass or how to dump the puck in deep for a line change.

But those seemingly simple tasks are not being consistently completed. These eyes cannot remember when a Bruins’ team has suffered through such a case of the roster-wide yips with the puck.

And it starts at the top of the pay scale. David Pastrnak has one 5-on-5 goal this season. Charlie McAvoy (2-1-3, minus-4) has struggled on the top power play unit and was replaced by second-year pro Mason Lohrei, who didn’t have much more success. Charlie Coyle, coming off a career season, has one goal and no assists and is minus-9, tied for the team low with Trent Frederic (1-2-3 totals). Brad Marchand showed a glimmer of his old self in the early stages of the blowout loss in Carolina and leads the league in drawn penalties, but he’s also been a part of the power play failures.

GM Don Sweeney’s big signings have not provided the expected oomph, either. Elias Lindholm, brought in to be Pastrnak’s set-up man among other things, snapped a seven-game pointless streak in Carolina with an assist on Marchand’s 5-on-3 goal, but his lack of chemistry with Pastrnak led to Montgomery understandably breaking up that tandem. And Nikita Zadorov leads the league in minor penalties taken with nine.

All those subpar performances have made the expected growing pains of promising young players Matt Poitras and Lohrei that much more glaring.

So can they get out of of it without resorting to the ol’ NHL reliable tactic of giving the head coach his walking papers?

That remains to be seen. When the possibility starts getting discussed in the public realm, it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. But this weekend, with a rematch against the Flyers in Philly on Saturday and then a home game against the .500 Seattle Kraken on Sunday at the Garden, is pivotal. These are two beatable teams.

And it would be nice if Sweeney could soon sign veteran Tyler Johnson, who has been practicing with the team for a month and a half now since coming to training camp on a tryout, before any decision is made on the coach. Johnson would not be a replacement for the top six forward they’re still missing, but he would add a little speed, veteran savvy and help on the power play. A well-timed power-goal might have changed the outcome of a couple of their losses.

But in the end, it will be up to those underperforming, tenured veterans to turn this thing around. Easier said than done. If it was easy for them to get out of their own way in their current state of mind, it would have been done by now.