I'm of two minds on Monty.
He got the team to 109 points in the regular season with Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie as his top 3 centers. The team really only has two good play drivers, Charlie McAvoy and Brad Marchand. Pastrnak is an elite offensive talent who turned Zacha into a 60 point player and made the rotating guys on the other wing like Danton Heinen into useful offensive players... but he isn't an elite play driver. Marchand is 35 and a good but not great play driving winger. The Panthers have several guys of his play driving quality at wing alone. McAvoy is clearly trying to do too much and his play has suffered tremendously. They are asking him to be Lidstrom or Bourque with this roster construction and he ain't that. It's a flawed roster in the first year of a re-tool that was in the gunning for the President's Trophy almost all year. Credit to Monty.
But, he has been seriously out matched three playoff series in a row. When they did have the horses last year, he completely failed to adjust his game plan to account for Florida's ultra aggressive play (I don't mean the physical part, I mean aggressive forecheck and aggressive activation from the D). Against Toronto this year he completely failed to adjust to Toronto moving to the 1-3-1 in game 5, 6 and 7. And in this series against being completely rag dolled. If it was just this year, I would give him the benefit of the doubt. It's hard to game plan around either an aggressive team or against a 1-3-1 when you don't have many guys who can skate with the puck. But, when you add in last year...
His post-game presser where he was giving off "aw shucks" vibes to the GI non-call and to the new Bennett camera angle sealed it for me. The team has taken on his personality and it just isn't going to work in the post-season. Folks joke about Maroon being awful, and he is, but he at least is trying to drag the guys into the fight. Shouldn't need a replacement level plug to do that.
As far as the PP stuff, you are right that having the horses and getting through the adversity is what great teams do. That isn't this Bruins team. They needed everything to go a certain way to win this series. Some of it is going their way. Swayman is doing his job. They are getting dominated on shots and possession, but the high danger chances are close and actually in the Bruins favor. It's 8 to 7 in goals at 5 on 5. Obviously, they wish they were getting out of their zone better, but they were never going to be *good* at it with this group. But, they aren't *that* far off from what they wanted to do given their limitations.
But the special teams stuff is killing them. And some of that is luck they created themselves, granted. But, it also sure feels like Florida has gotten away with some of the dumb penalties the Bruins have gotten called on. And the two Bennett incidents are total amplification points that are easy to point to rather than nickel and diming every potential call and non-call in the series. So all the frustration is getting poured into those two things.
But, the refs are not the top reason why this series is 3-1. It is certainly on the list, and I think most Panthers fans have been reasonable in thinking Boston has gotten some raw deals here, but if the Bruins were a really good team, they could have been able to overcome it. It's just not what they are right now. Which was expected in what is a re-tool year.
If you told me coming into the season they would win a round, Swayman would steal the starting job and that Lorhei and Poitras (before getting hurt) would solidify their roles on the roster while showing top half of the roster upside I would have taken it and ran. Fast. But, of course, once the games happen you want to win them, lol.
