The man who should be the Avalanche’s next coach works a little more than six miles down the road from the NHL team’s arena in Denver. If general manager Joe Sakic lets Jim Montgomery get away, it will be a crying shame.
Montgomery knows how to build a winner. He has done it at the University of Denver. The Pioneers won the eighth national championship in school history earlier this month with a 3-2 victory against Minnesota Duluth. And the NHL has noticed.
The Florida Panthers have scheduled an interview with Montgomery. They would be smart to hire him. But Sakic, the former Avs star whose efforts as a front-office executive for the franchise has been an unmitigated hockey disaster, would be crazy to let Montgomery leave town.
After finishing the season with a 22-56-4 record, worst in the league by a wide margin, the Avalanche faces a major rebuilding project. After leading the Pioneers to a 33-7-4 record in his fourth season at DU, Montgomery appears to be itching for a new challenge.
At age 47, Montgomery is no kid. If he wants to test himself at the sport’s highest level, the time is now. But his love for the Pioneers’ program is genuine, and he will consider moving on from DU only for a head coaching vacancy in the NHL, as Montgomery has told my colleague Mike Chambers.
The Avalanche’s free-fall to the bottom of the NHL standings began when coach Patrick Roy abruptly resigned late last summer in a messy divorce that clearly blindsided everyone at the Pepsi Center, from franchise president Josh Kroenke to players young (Nathan MacKinnon) and old (Jarome Iginla).
Roy’s departure left Sakic in the lurch, leaving the Avs with limited options and precious little time to find a coach prior to the start of training camp. The team hired Jared Bednar, who labored long and hard as a defenseman in backwater rinks from Saskatoon to South Carolina before proving himself as a capable coach in the Columbus Blue Jackets’ farm system.
Bednar is trustworthy, loyal and courteous. But being a good Boy Scout doesn’t make him Scotty Bowman. The Avs had more than their share of bad luck, including a season-ending injury to goalie Semyon Varlamov, but a team with Matt Duchene and Gabe Landeskog has no excuse to be a league laughingstock. The main justification for retaining Bednar for a second season seems to be pity, as firing him after only one disastrous year would be regarded as unfair.
But shouldn’t the welfare of the team be a greater concern than sympathy for a coach who could find no answers for the Avalanche?
I have personally sat at Magness Arena on the DU campus and watched Montgomery work more than two dozen games. He’s the real deal.
Facing intense scrutiny after replacing popular coach George Gwozdecky, Montgomery has averaged more than 25 victories per season since taking over the DU program in 2013. His ability to develop NHL-caliber talent is as obvious as the gorgeous passing and precise shooting of young Pioneer forwards Troy Terry and Henrik Borgstrom. A year ago, Montgomery interviewed with the Calgary Flames. His star is rising.
It seems to be a matter of when, not if, Montgomery will be an NHL coach.
Why would the Avs let a winner escape from their backyard?
