NEW YORK — St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong would have fired his mother to hire Jim Montgomery.
If you don’t recognize it, that’s borrowing Armstrong’s one-liner from this summer, when he signed the Edmonton Oilers’ Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway to offer sheets. It came at the expense of new Oilers GM Stan Bowman, and when reports suggested that Armstrong wouldn’t have attempted the heist on former Oilers GM and longtime friend Ken Holland, he wittily replied, “I’d do it to my mother if she was managing the Oilers.”
Armstrong’s response to his decision to fire Drew Bannister and bring in Montgomery has the same feel. Feelings be damned, he’s all-in. He wanted the former Blues assistant coach back as the team’s head coach, and it didn’t matter if the season was just 22 games old, he got him.
I don’t think the Blues’ record under Bannister mattered much. Their 19 points had them sitting in sixth place in the Central Division and 13th in the Western Conference, but I believe that even if they had 10 more points, the change still would have happened.
As Armstrong said several times Sunday, this was about Montgomery being available, and it makes sense. If the GM didn’t think Bannister was a coach who could stay in charge when the Blues got to the next level and there was risk in losing the coach who could in his mind, he had to make the move.
The fact that the season wasn’t going as planned and that one prominent player was not-so-subtly questioning the team’s offensive direction under Bannister after Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders didn’t help, but that was unnecessary in the big picture.
In case you missed it, following the Blues’ seventh loss in their past nine games, Pavel Buchnevich said: “We score two goals a game. We can’t win the games like that. Our goalies have to stop 50 shots every game, is impossible. Our team has good players and we’re (not) scoring. We’ve got to figure out offense. Offense is our biggest issues. Impossible to win with one and two goals. Just impossible.”
When probed further about the offensive issues, Buchnevich replied: “I don’t know, (we don’t) work on that. We’re working on defensive zone. We’ve got to start working on offense, believing we can score.”
Bear in mind, by the time those words were coming out of Buchnevich’s mouth, Armstrong and Montgomery were already talking about an agreement that would be announced early the next morning.
It’s true that when Armstrong turns Blues GM duties over to Alexander Steen in the summer of 2026, he will remain the president of hockey operations. Though he says Steen will be calling the shots, he’ll still have plenty of influence on the organization.
However, make no mistake: Armstrong wants to return the Blues back to respectability before that transition takes place. This is his reputation in St. Louis at stake, and he knows it.
He will always be remembered as the GM who finally brought the city its first Stanley Cup in 2018-19. But if the team is still hovering near the bottom of the NHL standings when Steen steps in, there’s always going to be a blemish on his record that he broke up a championship roster and several long-term contracts handcuffed them to a point where they couldn’t compete.
There’s likely not enough runway over the next 1 1/2 seasons for Armstrong to make the Blues legitimate contenders, but if he can make a few moves that put Steen in a more enviable position at that point, a lot will be forgiven.
That’s why Armstrong was aggressive in his pursuit of Broberg and Holloway, two players who will certainly speed up the process, and that’s why he was so quick to act on Montgomery, who could have an even more meaningful impact. In both cases, it wouldn’t have mattered if the person affected was, well, his mother.
Armstrong does get a lot of credit for his boldness and creativity, and that’s understandable, but let’s not forget that he’s not without blame.
He said Sunday that it was time for a change when he fired Craig Berube last season. That may be true, but it was time for a change because Berube no longer had the roster to have the same type of success, and Armstrong was the architect of that roster.
He said that Bannister was the right man for the job, and based on his comments Sunday about a young coach making mistakes, that due diligence doesn’t seem to add up. Not to mention Bannister was trying to win with a lineup that, while improved in the offseason, still may not be playoff-caliber.
It makes you wonder what the Blues would have done if Montgomery weren’t available. Were they just going to spend to the salary cap, miss the playoffs and look for a new coach next offseason?
At the end of Armstrong’s press conference Sunday, he told reporters it would probably be the last time in his Blues career he’d be talking about hiring a new coach. With Montgomery holding a five-year deal, that had better be the case for Armstrong’s sake — and the club’s.
It may have been the right call for the franchise, but as we’ve seen with other decisions, it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to work.
(Photo of Doug Armstrong: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)
