Joe Sacco reportedly informed he won't be Bruins next head coach
The Boston Bruins are expected to name a new head coach this week. It will not be Joe Sacco, who was the team's interim head coach for the majority of the 2024-25 season.
Sacco has been informed by the Bruins that he will not stay on as the head coach, in his 32 Thoughts podcast that was released Monday. It doesn't sound like Sacco will be back on the Boston bench at all, with Friedman speculating the 56-year-old could join Craig Berube's staff with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Sacco replaced Jim Montgomery last November, after Montgomery was fired after an 8-9-3 start to the season. Sacco led the team to a 25-30-7 record during his time on the bench.
The Bruins got off to a good start after the coaching change, but the team stumbled enough the rest of the way to prompt general manager Don Sweeney to hold a fire sale at the NHL Trade Deadline. With Brad Marchand, Trent Frederick, Brandon Carlo, and Charlie Coyle among the players traded away, the Bruins lost seven of their final 10 games of the regular season to finish the year 33-39-10. It marked the first time Boston missed the playoff since the 2015-16 NHL season.
Sacco, a Medford native, first joined the Bruins staff in 2014 as an assistant coach.
Who could be the next Bruins head coach?
The Bruins are expected to announce their head coaching hire early this week, . In his podcast, Friedman said the team interviewed Marco Sturm, Mitch Love, Jay Woodcroft, and Jay Leach for the position last week.
Sturm played five of his 14 NHL seasons in a Bruins sweater, and has spent the last three seasons as the head coach of the Ontario Reign, the AHL affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings.
Woodcroft was the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers for two-plus seasons from 2022-24, which included a trip to the Western Conference Finals. He has been an assistant coach for Canada at the IIHF World Championships since April of 2024.
Love is seen as one of the top young assistants in the NHL, as he's been on Spencer Carbery's staff with the Washington Capitals the last two seasons. The 40-year-old Love was also the head coach of Calgary's AHL team for three years.
Leach knows quite a bit about the Bruins organization, having served as the head coach of the Providence Bruins for four years before he was named an assistant coach in Seattle in 2021. He returned to Boston's staff in 2024, and was an assistant under both Montgomery and Sacco last year.
