Boston flops: Bruins fire their head coach after poor start to season

Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney announced that the club has relieved head coach Jim Montgomery of his duties. Associate coach Joe Sacco will assume an interim head coach role. Montgomery’s ousting comes after a 5-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday. It was the Bruins' third consecutive loss and the 10th in their last 15 games. The Bruins have been outscored 51-to-28 in those games, good for a -23 goal differential — the worst in the NHL since Oct. 19.

To say Boston’s early season has fallen short of expectations would be an understatement. The team stands with an 8-9-3 record, and needed overtime to achieve half of its wins. No aspects of the lineup seem to be firing properly, with David Pastrnak (17) and Brad Marchand (13) the only Bruins to pass 10 points through 20 games — and even they’re scoring below their typical pace. Netminder Jeremy Swayman hasn’t been any better, with his .884 save percentage in 14 appearances outmatched by backup Jonas Korpisalo’s .901 in seven appearances. It’s been top-to-bottom struggles in Boston, sparking the first coach firing of the young season.

Montgomery will be replaced by Boston-native, and Boston University alum, Joe Sacco, who’s served on the Bruins bench since the 2014-15 season. Sacco worked under three different head coaches in that span — serving as an assistant up until this summer, when he received an aptly timed promotion to associate coach. He’ll now take one step further, moving into his first head-coaching role since 2012-13, when Sacco was fired after a four-year tenure with the Colorado Avalanche. He only led Colorado to the postseason once, in 2009-10 — his first year as a head coach. Sacco set a 43-30-9 record that year, only to fall to a dismal 88-104-21 record through his next three seasons. That includes a 16-25-7 record in the 2012-13, which paved way for Colorado to select Nathan MacKinnon first overall in the 2013 NHL Draft. Before his time in the NHL, Sacco achieved a 60-79-21 record across two seasons with the AHL’s Lake Erie Monsters.

But while past precedent may not shine favorably on Sacco, his decade in Boston has provided plenty of learning experience. He’s become known for overseeing Boston’s penalty-killing unit, which ranks as the second-most effective in the NHL over the last decade. More specifically, the Bruins have three separate seasons in the top 10 of penalty-killing percentage since 2014-15 — posting a second-ranked 87.3 percent in 2022-23, a seventh-ranked 86 percent in 2020-21, and a 10th-ranked 85.7 percent in 2016-17. That’s in large part thanks to Sacco, who amassed 738 career NHL games during his own playing as a stout defensive-forward. Those traits will come in handy for a Bruins team currently allowing the fourth-most goals in the league.