If you know anything about St. Louis Blues hockey, it’s that they fired their previous head coach, Craig Berube, and replaced him with Drew Bannister last season. Berube ended up in Toronto this year, and the Blues, under Bannister, swept them in the season series, exerting “revenge” on their old coach. Now that the Boston Bruins ex-bench boss is in Gateway City, they have a chance to exert that same revenge.
But it won’t happen this season, as both teams have already played one another twice and split the series. So, as long as Jim Montgomery doesn’t let this new opportunity go to waste, and I highly doubt he will, expect the Blues and Bruins to face off with Montgomery behind St. Louis’ bench.
This puts the Bruins in pristine position to beat Montgomery twice next season, especially since the Blues are still in rebuilding, or retooling mode. Boston should remain in a position of contention despite recent hardships. But under their current head coach, they've gotten off to a decent start, winning not one but two games with Joe Sacco in command.
Boston Bruins can win some ‘bragging rights’ over the Blues in 2025-26
Overall, beating Jim Montgomery twice next season would most likely give the Bruins nothing more than bragging rights, but it would still make for some satisfaction no matter what. The only way it would become a massive deal is if Boston and St. Louis, somehow, met in the 2026 Stanley Cup Final—or if you wanted to have some fun and talk about this season, the 2025 Final.
Doubt that would happen, given the Blues current state, but then again, this was the same organization that was down and out back in 2018-19 and they ended up winning it all, so I guess anything can happen, right? But to be more realistic, I’ll just assume these two teams won’t meet one another again until sometime in 2025-26.
Anyway, one can say that this has been a rather interesting turn of events, as few would have thought Jim Montgomery would have found a new home so quickly as a head coach. But then again, should we really be surprised that the Blues did this, following a couple of arguably the boldest moves they made this past summer?
I’m sure Bruins fans may be peeking over at the Western Conference just to check up on how Montgomery is faring in St. Louis. But with Joe Sacco looking like he’s getting everything back on track in Boston, they will look forward to another playoff run.