Montgomery was fired as coach of the Dallas Stars on Dec. 10 because of unprofessional conduct and later said he had been receiving counseling for alcohol abuse and had checked himself into an in-patient residential program.
"Sometimes it takes an unbearable consequence in your life to happen to have an unbelievable breakthrough," Montgomery said. "I didn't know I was headed down the wrong path, and once I found out and you realize you do have a problem, it's time to get to work and try and fix it. It's over nine months now, I'm sober and I'm just very thankful for what happened because now I'm a much better person every day and obviously a better husband, father and son to the people I care about the most.
"I'm very fortunate to be joining an excellent hockey team and an excellent [coaching] staff, and I'm just looking forward to helping any way I can to help the Blues regain the championship form they have. Whatever [coach Craig Berube] wants me to do is what I'm going to do."
Montgomery was 60-43-10 in two seasons as Stars coach. Dallas reached the Western Conference Second Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, a seven-game loss to the eventual champion Blues. The Stars, who were 20-13-5 after Montgomery was replaced by Rick Bowness, have reached the Stanley Cup Final this season.
"With everything comes experience and with experience you have the ability to be a lot better because you learn from your experience and can apply it," Montgomery said. "That's true as a coach in the NHL. I'm going to be much better, and from the whole ordeal I've been able to overcome, the adversity, when you overcome adversity you're a much better person when you come out on the other side of it. I've seen that in the last nine months."
Montgomery replaced Ken Hitchcock as Stars coach May 4, 2018, after five seasons at the University of Denver, where he won the NCAA men's Division I championship in 2017. He won the NCAA title as a player with the University of Maine in 1993 and played 122 NHL games as a forward with the Blues, Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks and Stars.
"Jimmy has a long history in the NHL, as a player, got into the coaching ranks in the USHL, went to college hockey, won a national championship in Denver, in the NHL, back with Dallas as a head coach," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said. "He has a good reputation as a strong and powerful coach. He had some personal issues that he had to take care of, left the game last year. I talked to Jimmy, talked to his wife, talked to people surrounding his support staff. It was an extensive background check but extensive process to make sure that away from the rink that Jim was ready to handle the demands that go into coaching and everything came back positive. I had the opportunity to talk to people that I know from my days in Dallas about him as a coach, and it was positive. He's a good addition to our staff."
Armstrong said that Montgomery was the best option to replace Marc Savard, who was an assistant before leaving the Blues at the end of the season.
"We were looking to hire the best coach for our team and every coach has different things, reasons they're available," Armstrong said. "Jim's reason that he was available was something that happened away from the rink, so I just said to him, 'We all make mistakes, and if we can afford you the opportunity to get back into something you love, we can do that.' But it's understanding that our goal is to help make sure that mistake never happens again, not only because it affects your job at the rink, but let's be honest, at the rink is so secondary to all of our lives away from the rink or away from the media outlets you work for. So it wasn't something we were looking to give a guy a second chance, it's just basically one of the things, reasons, that Jim was available and we had to address."
The Blues, who had the best points percentage in the Western Conference (42-19-10, .662), entered the playoffs as the No. 4 seed following the round-robin portion of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers. They lost to the Vancouver Canucks in six games in the first round.
