Team Brass Faces Questions as Bruins Offseason Begins, Search For Next Coach Underway
BY JIMMY GOLEN
Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Bruins said on Wednesday that they will begin the search for a new head coach, with interim Joe Sacco a candidate to stay on the job he took over when Jim Montgomery was fired 20 games into the season.
“He’s aware that we’re going to have a coaching search,” general manager Don Sweeney said at the team’s management media availability, a week after the Bruins finished the season without a playoff berth for the first time since 2016. “He’s aware that he’ll be part of the final group of coaches that we get down to, because I think he’s earned and deserves that.”
Sacco finished with a 25-30-7 record after replacing Montgomery on Nov. 19, presiding over a team that was further depleted by a trade deadline purge of captain Brad Marchand and a handful of other players from the roster.
The Bruins were 33-39-10 in all, tied for the worst record in the Eastern Conference. Only three teams in the league were worse.
CEO Charlie Jacobs apologized to the fans for the performance.
“We owe you a better team, and we aim to deliver a better team,” he said. “I share your disappointment and, frankly, embarrassment on how poorly things played out over the course of this season.
“We embrace your criticism because it’s well-deserved,” Jacobs said, expressing his support for Sweeney and team president Cam Neely. “The results from last season are absolutely unacceptable.”
Sacco led the Colorado Avalanche to a 130-134-40 record from 2009-2014 and was a finalist for coach of the year in his first season. He spent 10 years as a Bruins assistant before being promoted for the rest of the season when Montgomery was fired.
“I was given an opportunity after 20 games, and I really enjoyed it,” Sacco said last week. “Obviously, it didn’t turn out the way that we all wanted it to. There was a lot of moving parts. I look forward to see what happens here in the near future, and we’ll see where that goes.”
Montgomery replaced Bruce Cassidy — another likeable Bruins coach whose teams racked up 100-point seasons but flamed out in the postseason. Cassidy was fired three years after leading Boston to the 2019 Stanley Cup Final and hired by Vegas eight days after the Bruins fired him.
The Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in his first season in 2023.
Jacobs noted that no team has a better record than Boston since Sweeney took over. Neely lamented the Bruins’ failure to win it all in 2019, when they lost to St. Louis in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
“The game is so fickle,” he said. “We win in 2019 in Game 7, at home, here, I don’t know what the conversations are.”
Asked why the front office isn’t being held accountable in the same way as Cassidy and Montgomery, who are both currently coaching playoff teams, Jacobs said he thought the shelf life of coaches is shorter than GMs.
“It’s the nature of the beast of the job,” he said. “You could have players’ attention for a select window of time and then, unfortunately, sometimes you lose it. It’s Don’s job to make sure he’s got his hand on the pulse of whether or not the players tune him out, the head coach. And I feel he’s done a pretty good job of measuring that.”
Sweeney also noted that he tried to sign Montgomery to a contract extension but couldn’t come to an agreement. Sweeney is in the last year of his contract, and Neely was noncommittal over whether an extension would be offered.
“I’m still contemplating what the best course of action is,” the former Bruins forward said about the former Bruins defenseman. “I really feel like Don has done a good job here for the most part. … I’ll figure that out in the near future whether we’re going to re-sign Don. But he’s got another year left.”
Montgomery, 55, was 120-41-23 in two-plus seasons in Boston. The Bruins finished with more than 100 points in each of his first two seasons — including a record-setting debut, when their 65 wins and 135 points were both the most in NHL history.
But the team lost in the first round of the playoffs that year and advanced to only the second round last season.
The struggles carried over into the new season, with an opening night loss to Florida in which they fell behind 5-1 and an 8-2 loss to Carolina on Halloween. After a 5-1 loss to Columbus in which the Bruins were booed off their own ice, Montgomery was fired.
Five days later, the St. Louis Blues fired Drew Bannister and hired Montgomery to replace him. After losing 13 of their first 22 games of the season, the Blues moved into position to grab one of the Western Conference wild-card berths.
But Boston never improved under Sacco.
Heading into the trade deadline with a three-game losing streak that left them at 28-28, the Bruins traded Marchand — the only remaining member of their 2011 Stanley Cup championship team — as part of a trade deadline selloff that signaled a surrender on the 2024-25 season.
And they left Sacco on the bench to ride it out.
The depleted roster lost 10 straight games — the team only lost 12 in its record-setting 2022-23 season under Montgomery — and fell from possible playoff contender to the NHL draft lottery.
