Bernie Show: Montgomery to the Blues?

Your St. Louis Blues are in a swoon, having gone 1-5-1 in the last seven games and straining to score enough goals to be competitive. This is part of a 3-8-1 stretch that has made the Blues the worst team in the NHL (.292 points percentage) since Oct. 26.

As the Blues were playing against Minnesota at Enterprise Center Tuesday night, the news of a coaching change went public: the Boston Bruins fired Jim Montgomery after the team got off to a rocky and chaotic start. Montgomery was straight-up scapegoated by a GM who had offered the coach a contract extension earlier this year. So Montgomery is out. That's life for an NHL coach. This league devours them.

Montgomery has Blues roots. His first NHL season as a player was here in 1993-94. He coached the UHL Missouri River Otters. Montgomery was a successful coach in Dallas but the Stars fired him because of Monty's problems with excessive drinking. But Montgomery entered rehab, cultivated a network of supporters to help him through the personal crisis, and cleaned up his life. The Blues gave him a second chance to return to the NHL as an assistant to Craig Berube for two seasons, and Montgomery has said that he'll always be grateful.

Montgomery left St. Louis when the Bruins offered him their head-coaching job -- and in his first season (2022-2023) the Bruins went 65-12-5 for 135 points, capturing the Presidents Trophy as the NHL's best regular-season team. His career points percentage as an NHL head coach in Dallas and Boston is an exceptional .659.

Is a homecoming in the works? Montgomery's wife is a St. Louis native and the family (including four kids) still has a home here. Montgomery is close with Blues GM Doug Armstrong. It may not be fair to talk about Montgomery replacing him as Bannister is only 20 games into his first season as the Blues full-time (not interim) coach. But Armstrong almost certainly would have hired Montgomery if the Bruins fired him for losing in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. But Boston escaped and the Montgomery kept the job. That's when Armstrong decided to stick with Bannister, the interim who had succeeded Berube when Berube was dismissed last season. Will Armstrong make a move? Will he give Bannister more time to get the Blues on track? But if Armstrong waits too long, would he lose Montgomery, to another disappointing team that's looking to shake things up? Hey, Army fired the only Stanley Cup-winning coach in Blues franchise history. And if the Blues boss was willing to do that, one would think that he'd be willing to part with the largely unestablished Bannister because of an opportunity to get the coach (Montgomery) who was on the top of his list earlier in 2024.