A hip injury would explain why he couldn't get up from the butterfly.
An important job of a coach is to know that athletes -- the athletes you want -- are competitive to a fault: if you ask a gamer if he can play, even if he is standing there like this guy below, he'll still say, 'put me in.'
i would take it a small step further in that Swayman isn't even a backiup, in the classic sense of the word. The two alternated just about every game for 70% of the season or so.
We really do live in a simulation. I did not think that my posts about the 2021 Islanders series were evergreen.
Only way it would make any sense would be if Swayman was also hurt. But I've not seen that anywhere.
If I dare say, I believe this wisdom also applies to Bergeron and Krejci in this series. Maybe it's a bit of a wild extrapolation, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the Bruins' best games in this series were the games where those two were out: 52% xGF and 4-2 final in Game 3, 62% xGF and 6-2 actual goals in Game 4.
But wouldn't Sweeney or Neely know this information too? I would assume that either they a. signed off on it or b. didn't think it was a big enough deal to tell Monte to change goalies. I would guess that this information went all the way up the chain, right?
Monty said "we" several times when discussing the goalie situation. I'm positive they have staff meeting to discuss goalies. I know they do in the regular season to map things out so I don't see why they wouldn't for the playoffs. Whether or not the front office is involved in the process, who knows. I'd imagine in a case like this they are and make recommendations but the ultimate decision maker is Monty.
Likely, but what’s your recourse? Fire him midway through the series? Do something over his head to take the decision out of his hands?
You're probably right, and that ardent resistance to any kind of accountability is another reason I want the entire management team blasted into space.
Sweeney and Neely are his bosses at the end of the day, correct? And if they were like, "This is a bad idea Jim we strongly suggest that you don't play Ullmark.", do you think Montgomery plays him?
The thing that's been pissing me off since I heard it was when they said Ullmark was a "game-time decision" for one of the games (game 5, I think). If he's a "game-time decision," there should be no decision at all, he should be sitting and Swayman should be starting. I can live with feeling like you need to ride Ullmark when he's healthy and playing well, but the team's depth was a huge advantage this season, and part of the way you take advantage of that depth is by not pushing players who are significantly below 100%.
From the quotes I saw so far, his answers are really weird. Talks about how he was hurt, not injured.
He was probably told that if he says he was injured, it throws his coaches under the bus.
I know this is tongue in cheek, but sometimes tradition should win out, sometimes it makes sense to leave your veteran workhorse in. But most of the time you should just put Dave Stapleton in to play the tenth. *If* Ully was as badly injured as people are hypothesizing, *and* Monty knew, he should be canned tomorrow, full stop.
