“If you ever get a chance to cover one of Monty’s teams, you should do it. You’d learn a lot.”

So said one of Jim Montgomery‘s former University of Maine teammates to me at a pickup hockey game several years back. The former teammate ran a successful youth hockey organization in Southern California and hosted regular skates for his coaches and various others.

I’d just spoken to Montgomery for a story about the goalie – a California native named Arthur Brey – on his Clark Cup-winning Dubuque team in 2013. He clearly and concisely broke down Brey’s strengths and how he’d helped the Fighting Saints win their second USHL title in three seasons. Shortly thereafter Montgomery was hired by Denver.

Two years later I was writing regularly about the Pioneers – and learning a ton more about a sport I’ve covered for more than 20 years.

It was immediately clear that Montgomery didn’t waste any time teaching – or winning.

Star search

Reports circulated Wednesday that the wildly successful coach has an agreement in place to become the next coach of the NHL’s Dallas Stars. Rumors of his departure for the League had swirled each of the past two springs, but they came to pass on a cloudy hump day.

In 2016, Montgomery interviewed for the Calgary Flames’ job as the Pioneers were fresh off a Frozen Four appearance. Last season, he interviewed for the Florida Panthers’ job and was contacted by the Los Angeles Kings about being their associate head coach for his longtime friend and former Philadelphia Phantoms teammate John Stevens, whose son of the same name played for him in Dubuque.

Montgomery cleared the air last summer, saying it would take the perfect job to get him to leave DU. Texas might not be perfect, but going to an NHL team that has a legitimate chance at making the playoffs and multiplying one’s salary by several factors in the process isn’t a bad deal.

Stars general manager Jim Nill had gone on the record recently saying that among the attributes the franchise was seeking was someone with a track record of success developing young players, noting that a lack of NHL experience wouldn’t preclude someone from consideration.

The NHL has trended far younger lately, a testament to improvements in training and coaching in youth hockey, as well as the realities of the sport’s salary cap. Young labor is cheap labor.

Given that Montgomery became the fastest coach in Pioneers history to reach 100 career wins (he leaves with a 125-56-26 record) and that he has sent 20-plus players into pro hockey in five seasons, he clearly met that criteria.

The Stars weren’t the only partner willing to dance with Montgomery, however. The New York Rangers interviewed him a few weeks ago and apparently liked what they heard as well. But given Montgomery and his wife have four young children and the Rangers appear to be in for a long rebuild, a move to the Big Apple seemed to me like a less-than-ideal scenario.

Dallas, meanwhile, offers the opportunity to make an immediate impact after a couple of disappointing seasons. The Stars boast excellent top-end talent in forwards Jamie Benn (a one-time Alaska-Fairbanks recruit of DU assistant Tavis MacMillan), Alexander Radulov and Tyler Seguin (who is heading into a walk year) and a tantalizing young defensemen in John Klingberg. Dallas also has a proven goaltender in Ben Bishop.

In short, the Stars have the talent to play the type of puck possession style Montgomery favors. They also have a family-friendly area with a burgeoning youth hockey scene that if it isn’t the equal of Colorado’s, it’s getting closer.

Why now?

How many teams have reached the elite eight of the NCAA men’s hockey tournament four years in a row? Just two. Denver and Minnesota Duluth.

Given the Pioneers’ recent success at the point in the season that matters the most, it figured the architect of it would draw considerable attention.

The cynics might say get out while the getting is good. After all, the Pioneers graduate arguably the best goalie in program history (Tanner Jaillet) and two rock-solid defenseman (Tariq Hammond and Adam Plant). They also lost four elite players – forwards Henrik Borgstrom, Dylan Gambrell and Troy Terry, as well as defenseman Blake Hillman to the NHL after the season ended in the Midwest Regional final. What team can absorb those sorts of hits and keep swinging for the fences?

Surely the Pioneers will take a step back in 2018-19, right? They’ve lost a lot of talent, but they also welcome a supremely talented incoming class that includes two NHL draft picks (Filip Larsson and Cole Guttman) and could include as many as three more. And Larsson comes in having set USHL goaltending records.

They join a trio of well-rounded senior forwards and an impressive rising sophomore class. So the cupboard isn’t bare.

Montgomery brought a pro style

“What you’re describing is a pro environment,” a longtime friend who would know such things told me while we discussed my weekend behind the scenes with the Pioneers.

From the attention to details to treating players as men with the requisite accountability to the rapid adjustments, Montgomery’s style fit the pro game, this friend said.

What really stood out to me then was how quickly Monty could ingest information, analyze it and make highly effective changes on the fly. That, I believe, is why the Pioneers were so effective in second and third periods and in Saturday night games. Give Monty a little bit of time to analyze what’s going on and he could make the right adjustments. We saw this over and over and over during the past five seasons.

When you consider an 82-game schedule plus the potential of every-other-night playoff games, that ability might be the most valuable one an NHL coach can possess.

Also important is that Montgomery, who played 13 seasons of pro hockey including 122 games in the NHL, knows the ups and downs of the pro gig. Yes, he’s considered a players’ coach, but unlike some he has discovered a sweet balance between an authoritarian regime and romper room.

The excitement is back

There is a bit of irony in all of this because Montgomery leaves the program in a much different spot than when he arrived.

Stung by the departure of longtime coach George Gwozdecky in 2013, many Pioneers fans stayed away during Montgomery’s first two seasons. The media attention was nearly non-existent at times (something that provided an impetus for starting this website).

Now look at it. The 2015-16 season – with the heroics of the Pacific Rim Line, a long win streak and run to the Frozen Four – revitalized the fan base. Delivering an eighth national title last season cemented it. And Old Mo kept paying visits during this past season of sky-high expectations.

DU was back, and it was back on the sports radar in an orange-tinted town.

It’s hard to follow a legend and succeed. Monty did it at DU, and he’ll have to do it in Dallas, where he’s replacing Ken Hitchcock.

That he was successful in doing it here in just five seasons is impressive, and it would seem the Stars agree.

©First Line Editorial 2017-18