Who’s most to blame for Bruins’ disastrous start to season?

Who’s most to blame for Bruins’ disastrous start to season? originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Bruins are an absolute mess right now.

Just when you think this team can’t play any worse, they give another lackluster performance where the exact same problems — lack of 5-on-5 scoring, too many penalties, etc.– crop up and in some cases grow larger.

The B’s hit a new low Thursday night in Carolina. The Hurricanes dismantled the Bruins in an 8-2 win at PNC Arena. The Bruins couldn’t generate any offense. They scored one 5-on-5 goal and another on a 5-on-3 power play that required an incredible stroke of puck luck to find the back of the net. The defending was atrocious. The power play (1-for-5) and penalty kill (2-for-3) were awful.

The players lacked energy, discipline and attention to detail. When you think of the Bruins’ success over the last 15 or so years, those three attributes were always there. The B’s have always been among the toughest teams to play against. But 11 games into the 2024-25 season, you’d have to rank them among the easiest to face.

For the first time in Jim Montgomery’s tenure as head coach, the Bruins are at the bottom of the Atlantic Division standings through the first 11 games of a season.

The B’s are 4-6-1 and have lost five of their last six games. Boston had a 10-1-0 record after 11 games in 2022-23 (Montgomery’s first season) and a 9-1-1 record after 11 last season.

So, who’s to blame for this disastrous opening to the season in Boston?

Here’s a list of the top candidates (in no particular order).

Jim Montgomery, Head coach

Montgomery has tried just about every possible line combination imaginable over the last two weeks. The only line that’s produced offensively with any kind of consistency is the fourth line of John Beecher, Mark Kastelic and Cole Koepke.

Montgomery decided to split up that trio against…