2 weeks Ago By Paul Friesen
They crossed paths as player and coach in Winnipeg some 25 years ago, Jim Montgomery a 30-year-old journeyman centre, Scott Arniel fresh into the coaching ranks as an assistant. “I remember how easy he was to learn from,” Montgomery was saying this week, recalling his one year with the Manitoba Moose. “He wouldn’t listen to me at all,” Arniel joked.
“What a terrible player. I hated coaching him.” He’s loving coaching against him, though.
In another example of a full-circle moment in the small world of hockey, Arniel and Montgomery found themselves back in Winnipeg over the Easter weekend, this time matching wits as opposing head coaches in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Arniel’s Jets have the edge, winning the first two games. But the coaching edge goes to Montgomery and the Blues on home ice for Games 3 and 4.
“It’s why you love playoff hockey,” Montgomery said on Monday. “We’re good friends, and respect each other a lot. Well, I know I respect him a lot.
I can’t speak for him. But I know how bright of a hockey mind he is. I know there’s going to be adjustments and wrinkles by both of us.
” The 55-year-old Blues coach had just been out in the rink and seen Arniel from a distance, the two exchanging waves. That’s about all they’ll exchange during the series, unlike the way they’ve talked in-depth over the years. It all began with a chalkboard session the day Montgomery joined the Moose of the International Hockey League in 1999.
It was game day, so Arniel provided a crash course on how he and head coach Randy Carlyle ran the team. “I had a five-minute chalkboard with him before my first game, because I flew in that day,” Montgomery recalled. “And I just remember how simple he made it and how quickly I felt I could adjust to the way the Moose were playing, compared to the team I came from.
” Arniel, seven years Montgomery’s senior, remembers a player who was an open book. Montgomery closed the book on his Moose career after one season, going on to play for six more pro teams, making it 14 over his 12-year career. While he played just 122 games in the NHL, he’s already been the head coach for 277.
Arniel is at 205. “We’ve always had great open discussions,” Arniel said. Most recently, they shared a table at a fundraising dinner in Winnipeg back in September, Montgomery still with the Boston Bruins, Arniel getting ready for his first season in charge of the Jets.
“I don’t think my wife liked it that we talked hockey the whole dinner,” Arniel said. “He was in Boston, so we were trading secrets. I guess I should have held onto a couple of those, because I wasn’t expecting him to be in St.
Louis.” Fired by the Bruins in November, Montgomery took over the Blues five days later. This marks his fourth shot at an NHL head job, his second go-round with St.
Louis. It’s Arniel’s second chance, his first ending miserably in Columbus 13 seasons ago. “I told him how much better he’s going to be because of it,” Montgomery said.
“The first experience, you grow a lot. And the second time you get a crack at it, like he has shown this year, you’re significantly better. You know exactly how you want everything to run.
“And then when you invest the time he did, coaching with so many different coaches and really good coaches in the league, and learning...
you see the result this year.” They both know about regular-season results. Arniel’s Jets are coming off a 56-victory, Presidents’ Trophy-winning season as the NHL’s top team, the same trophy Montgomery’s Bruins won with a record 65 wins just two years ago.
A playoff crash-and-burn immediately turned those Boston warm-and-fuzzies into the hot seat, and when the Bruins struggled to start the year, he was done. Landing in St. Louis, he promptly turned the 9-12-1 Blues around.
“As he’s always done, he seems to bring out the best in his teams,” Arniel said. What neither has done is enjoy any significant success in the playoffs. In three post-seasons, one with Dallas, two with Boston, Montgomery has won a combined two rounds.
Arniel is working on his first post-season as a head man, a somewhat dizzying challenge even with 14 seasons as an NHL assistant under his belt. “Nerve-wracking,” is how Arniel described it. “Standing on that bench, it seems like it’s gone up 20 miles-an-hour faster than what it was in the regular season.
I know I’ve been behind the bench for playoff games, but man, it’s intense.” What that means for a coach: the chess game of line-matching is played at break-neck speed, too. “Whether that’s me keeping track of who is coming over the other boards, the pace, what we’re doing with the puck, are we doing the right things defending? You’ve got a million things going,” Arniel said.
“It’s been exciting. Really exciting for me.” A quarter of a century after they first talked X’s and O’s, it’s hard to say who’s the mentor today.
“A little bit of both,” Arniel said. Perhaps this series will decide that, too. paul.
[email protected] X: @friesensunmedia.
