How Joe Sacco Feels About Bruins Coaching Opportunity

BOSTON — Joe Sacco has been part of the Boston Bruins coaching staff for the past 10 years.

He was promoted to interim head coach after the franchise parted ways with Jim Montgomery on Tuesday after an 8-9-2 start to the 2024-25 campaign.

The decision left Sacco with mixed emotions.

“It’s been a tough 24 hours for myself and the staff,” Sacco told reporters following his first practice at Warrior Ice Arena on Wednesday. “We obviously lost a real good coach, Jim, and even a better person. I’ve established a strong relationship, a strong bond with Jimmy over the last two and a half years.

“He certainly has made me a better coach over that time. And I just want to make sure that I wish him all the best. He will land on his feet. He’s too good of a coach. And I want to wish his family the best as well. So it’s been a tough 24 hours, but it’s time for us as a staff and as a group now to make sure that we move forward here.”

Sacco believes the transition from associate to head coach won’t be as difficult given the amount of time he’s spent with the players over the last decade.

“You just have to be yourself at the end of the day,” Sacco said. “I’ve been with this organization for 10 years now, and I’ve been with some of the players that long, maybe a little bit less, but they know who I am. They know how I act around the locker room and one-on-one individually. I’m not going to change who I am. I think that I’m straightforward. 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, not just Jim, but I worked with Claude Julian, and I was able to work with Bruce Cassidy. Everybody has different personalities and different ways to motivate their team and individuals. And 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 going to try to do that.”

Sacco coached the Colorado Avalanche for three and a half seasons from 2009-13 with an overall record of 130-134-34. He plans to take one specific aspect of his coaching style from them to the Bruins now.

“The biggest thing for me is personalizing your relationships with players. That’s the biggest thing,” he explained. “I was a young coach at the time. … And I felt I didn’t do a good enough job developing relationships with the individuals. I was more focused on, you know, the structure of the team and the systems we were playing. At the end of the day, that’s all important, and it all matters, but what really matters is your relationship with your players, and that’s something that I think I learned from the first floor.”

He plans to bring that to the ice as he and the rest of the coaching staff work to bring out the best in the players who are underperforming.

“Well, I think it’s like I said before. I’m going to go back to it again. I need to start getting relationships with these guys. Get more personal with them. Find out what makes them go,” he said. “If it’s something that’s different from player A to player B, I need to know that. Certainly, there’s a lot of guys that are underperforming right now. And as a staff, we’re going to pull it out of them. I’m confident we are. But it’s going to take some work. It’s not going to happen overnight. But we feel like we have a good enough team. We have good enough character in that room. We’re going to get it out of them.”