"Once A Blue, Always A Blue": Jim Montgomery Back Home, Couldn't Pass Up Opportunity When Armstrong Called

Jim Montgomery stood in front of his first media throng Monday morning as St. Louis Blues coach with a 'St. Louis Blues' pullover on.

He ever got rid of it from his days as an assistant coach with them from 2020-22.

"Once a Blue, always a Blue," he said with a smile.

And with that, he's already -- if he for some reason wasn't yet -- endeared himself with the Blues fan base.

Twenty-four hours later after being named 28th coach in franchise history when the Blues fired Drew Bannister 22 games into his official coaching tenure following a stint as the interim coach, Montgomery was back in familiar ground, with the franchise his NHL career began with and one where he had a great run as an assistant coach under Craig Berube (2020-22).

Montgomery signed a five-year contract.

"I just want to start off with how excited I am and my family is to be back in St. Louis," Mongomery said prior to the morning skate before the Blues (9-12-1) faced the New York Rangers (12-6-1). "But for me this decision was about people. I've always believed you align yourself with good people and people that you believe in, and for me with Tom Stillman and the ownership group, it starts right there. I appreciate their confidence and their vision. And then Doug Armstrong is someone that obviously was really important to my second chance and also, I think he is elite at what he does. His vision, his plan for how the Blues are going to become an elite team and a consistently elite team again is something I wanted to align myself with. The people under him, from the hockey operations side of things, Scott Mellanby, Alex Steen, who is an incredibly bright mind that I love talking hockey with. Al MacInnis, there's hall of famers in and around everywhere. And then I talk about the staff, I've worked with the staff before, the majority of it and I know how invested they are.

"It's great to come to the rink with people that are trying to push the players to be the best version they can be. The people in this room, I've worked with over half this lineup already and I know how committed they are to playing the right way and the type of people they are. So for me this was a no-brainer to be able to come back home and be a Blue again."

Montgomery was fired as coach of the Boston Bruins on Tuesday after starting the season 8-9-3, despite going 120-41-23 in two-plus seasons, including the best record in NHL history in 2022-23 (65-12-5), was receiving consoling text messages from Blues players he coached here after being fired, then getting messages from his now former Bruins players upon getting the job here five days later.

He called this past week, "Crazy! Crazy! There's no other word for it. A lot of emotions. I'm a firm believer when one door closes another one opens if you do the right thing. And it's about your relationships in life. At the end of the day when we're all done and retired and we're not fortunate enough and privileged enough to be in NHL buildings again, it's the relationships you have in your life."

Doug Armstrong was content with getting his guy, and Montgomery was his guy all along once he hit the market.

"It was very exciting, but I was in the mindset when 'Army' called, I thought this was a social call of, 'Hey, I've been there, keep your head up, take a breath, enjoy the family,'" Motgomery said. "I got a lot of those text messages and calls. Once it turned to business, the engine and my blood started pumping.

"Honest to God, it's been a whirlwind. The particulars I really don't want to get into when and all that, I just want to talk about how excited I am to be a Blue. I'm just grateful that 'Army' did make the call."

Montgomery could have waited out options, and there would have been countless suitors that would have jumped at the chance, but ... "When you get a phone call and you hear Doug Armstrong's vision and plan and how you're a big part of it, it makes you feel like this is just the right place to go. Army, he's very persuasive."

How so?

"The best line that put his hooks into me was, 'When something delicious falls on my plate, I eat,'" Montgomery said laughing. "I don't know, I guess I was a T-bone that day."

Now it's get back to work, on a team that is floundering offensively, and to connect again with those players Montgomery had a terrific pulse with.

"I think the No. 1 thing is to reconnect with the guys that I worked with previously when I was fortunate enough to be a Blue, create new relationships with the others that I haven't worked with, but most importantly it's about attitudes and intensity," Montgomery said. "The energy that we're going to bring to the rink and the attitude that it's a 'we' thing here.

"I've read the offensive struggles of this team; to me this is an offensive slanted team and it just shows you how hard it is to score. We've got to get the details and be in the right areas, the hard areas at the right times to be able to score more, but we have the ability to score goals."

Montgomery arrived in New York from Boston, where his family will remain through the end of the school year, on Sunday night and met with the team there like not much had changed since he departed a little over two years ago.

"I think it gives me a tremendous head start because there's been hard talks, there's been a lot of good memories," Montgomery said. "We did a lot of good things. And watching the growth of all these individuals. [Brayden] Schenn was an assistant, now he's a captain. [Colton] Parayko and [Justin] Faulk -- Faulk was not an assistant when I was here. Now Robby Thomas is wearing a letter. The relationships I have with [Jordan] Kyrou and [Pavel] Buchnevich, skilled guys who think the game at a high level, that compete. Those are things I'm looking forward to continuing. I know we've got a tremendous goaltender [Jordan Binnington] and a great young goalie [Joel Hofer] that I had the fortune of doing shootouts with when I was doing skill work at the end of practice. To go to your meeting part, there was naturally a lot of smiles between us because of what we've been through before. We've been through a lot of wars together already."

Montgomery said he wants to give Blues fans what they want, to be who they represent.

"I love it there and it's about the people," he said. "The Blues fans are incredible and they're a blue collar town and they want to see a blue collar team. That's the most important thing that we've got to establish is being a blue collar team that the city and the fans are proud of. It goes back to players, through Kelly Chase, Al MacInnis, Bernie Federko, there are so many that have stayed in St. Louis. They're part of the fiber of the culture. That's what it means to be a Blue."

And now he's back to being part of the fiber of the franchise with a five-year contract in tow, which was important for the 55-year-old to grow the group today and the group of tomorrow.

"It was huge. First it shows the commitment from Tom Stillman, the ownership group, Doug Armstrong and Alex Steen that we're going to do this together, we're going to build it the right way and we expect to be good in time here," Montgomery said. "How quickly? That ceiling. I've got to get my hands in with these guys. I think our ceiling is pretty good, but we determine the ceiling by our work ethic, our communication together and how we go about our daily tasks.

"As a coach you coach for today but I'm also coaching for tomorrow, so there's going to be a balance of what do we need to do to be competitive right now without losing sight of the team. The team is always going to be first. The Bluenote is always going to be first. Our team identity and not letting a standard that we set slip from our structure standpoint. Also there's some players that need to play. Learning how to win in this league is part of that development.

"I'm a process oriented coach. Whether I'm on the end of a one year deal or have a five year deal it's not going to change the way I do things with the process and the results. I expect that to drive success in this league. But when you have a five-year deal you can afford to be a little more patient at times. That is absolutely the truth."