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Bruins to conduct another head coaching search; Joe Sacco to be considered
"I think the shelf life of a head coach is significantly shorter than one of the general manager or a team president."
Don Sweeney confirmed on Wednesday morning that the Bruins are already in the early stages of another head coaching search.
Boston’s general manager — who received another endorsement from team CEO Charlie Jacobs as part of Wednesday’s end-of-season press conference — added that current interim head coach Joe Sacco will be considered in the process of identifying a bench boss for the 2025-26 season and beyond.
“I’ve spoken at length with Joe,” Sweeney said. “He’s aware that we’re going to have a coaching search. 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 deserved that.”
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Sacco, who replaced Jim Montgomery after the team fired him following an 8-9-3 start in November, coached Boston for the final 60 games of the 2024-25 campaign — with Boston sporting a 24-30-6 record over that stretch.
While the longtime assistant coach and Medford native will remain in the mix, Sweeney also preached the need to identify a head coach who will be equipped to develop a retooling roster moving forward — and correct the several flaws that hampered an underachieving and ill-constructed team this winter.
“I want a coach that’s going to evolve a little bit offensively,” Sweeney said. “Again, that’s part and parcel with being able to communicate with sometimes younger players and their stubbornness or their inexperience.”
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There should be several intriguing coaching candidates available this offseason — be it established NHL coaches like Peter Laviolette, Greg Cronin, and David Quinn; or internal options within Boston’s organization in assistant coach Jay Leach or Providence head coach Ryan Mougenel.
Sweeney acknowledged that a head coaching candidate would ideally have “some form of NHL exposure”, which could make an assistant coach on another NHL club like Dallas’ Misha Donskov a tempting target as an outside-the-box appointment.
But Boston’s GM — who noted that there’s no “definitive timeline” on a coaching hire — added that NHL reps are not a definitive requirement for Boston’s vacant position.
“If somebody blows you away, they blow you away — I don’t think I’m going to narrow it down,” Sweeney said. “I think that’s a [disservice] to the process. So I’m going to take the process and identify, as I said, the criteria that we have in place, and go through it similar to last time.”
The franchise will appoint a third full-time bench boss since Sweeney took over as general manager in 2015.
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Bruce Cassidy was promoted to interim coach following Claude Julien’s firing in February 2017, with the team removing the interim tag in April of that year.
The Bruins abruptly fired Cassidy in June 2022, replacing him with Montgomery, before firing the 2022-23 Jack Adams Award winner after a sluggish start to this past season.
“I think the shelf life of a head coach is significantly shorter than one of the general manager or a team president,” Jacobs said when pressed about the turnover at the coaching position when weighed against Sweeney and Cam Neely’s extended tenures with Boston. “It’s the nature of the beast of the job.
“You can 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.”
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