2 days Ago By Conor Ryan
By Conor Ryan For the first time in over a decade, Joe Sacco is an NHL head coach. But the 55-year-old Medford native wishes that promotion wasn’t secured under these circumstances. “We obviously lost a real good coach, Jim, and even a better person,” Sacco said Wednesday after Boston fired Jim Montgomery the previous evening .
“I’ve established a strong relationship, a strong bond with Jimmy over the last two and a half years. I feel like as a staff, and personally, me, we feel like we’re responsible for what happened here. We have to take some of the fall and take some of the blame as far as what happened yesterday.
“I’m going to make sure that, as a staff, we try to correct this and move forward. I’m excited for the opportunity. I’m not gonna lie.
It’s a great opportunity. To get another crack as a head coach. It was always important to me.
It’s not the way you want to get it. But this is an opportunity that I’ve been waiting for.” Boston’s new interim head coach has a daunting task in front of him when it comes to righting the ship of a roster that has taken on water in just about every facet of the game.
There isn’t just one quick fix that can resurrect Boston’s 32nd-ranked power play, nor can the Bruins simply flip a switch and plug up a porous defensive structure. For Boston’s new bench boss, it all comes down to taking simple steps forward. And that can only happen if a Bruins roster attacks every upcoming game with urgency and pace.
“Typically, when you have the work ethic and you have good energy in your practice and you have some enthusiasm, the execution will take care of itself after that,” Sacco said. “But right now what we’re looking for from this group as a staff is to make sure that they believe that they’re a good team. “We have good players in this room and they’re capable of more, and it’s our job as a coaching staff to make sure that we get it out of them, and I think it starts there with our work ethic.
” Even if Sacco has not run an NHL coaching staff since 2013, he is no stranger to the Bruins. He has been on Boston’s coaching personnel since 2014 — serving as a valuable assistant to Claude Julien, Bruce Cassidy, and Montgomery. “His experiences is vast,” Charlie McAvoy said of Sacco.
“Possibly the most important thing is he understands — like a lot of the guys like myself that have been here — what it looks like and what it feels like to be a Bruin, and what the standard is every single day, and what we’re going to recapture moving forward.” Beyond an emphasis on pace and effort, Sacco’s blunt delivery and demanding approach could set the tone needed to drag Boston out of this current malaise. Sacco doesn’t plan to drastically augment Boston’s system overnight.
He’ll still have an active role on Boston’s penalty kill moving forward, even if his responsibilities are set to expand. But his experience working in three schemes crafted by Julien, Cassidy, and Montgomery should give Sacco the ability to blend those approaches together moving forward. “Monty’s really a personal guy, and Joe’s very direct, very simplistic in terms of how he’s going to explain things,” Sweeney said, adding: “But he cares, he’s been around here, he’s got established relationships with the players, he’s got trust with the players, the voice and having to be a little bit more of the “having the bark” and bringing it is going to be a challenge.
“I think he will be able to blend some of [those lessons from Julien, Cassidy, and Montgomery] with his own personality and his own style. He knows what he wants to do to tighten things up, and it’s going to be up to him to go out and effectuate that change.” Sacco has learned plenty of lessons from his four-year run as the Avalanche’s head coach from 2009-13.
But amid his evolution as a coach, Sacco doesn’t plan on changing how he works with a Bruins roster in desperate need of a reset. “I’m not gonna change who I am,” Sacco acknowledged. “I think that I’m straightforward.
I try not to sugarcoat a lot of things, but I’ve also had the experience and the pleasure of working with some really good coaches in the past. “Everybody has different personalities and different ways to motivate their team and individuals. You take the good that you want to take from certain individuals, but at the end of the day, if you’re not yourself, it doesn’t work, and I’m just gonna try to do that.
” Conor Ryan Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023. Sign up for Bruins updates🏒 Get breaking news and analysis delivered to your inbox during hockey season.
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