Friedman: Maple Leafs could look to ex-Bruins head coach Joe Sacco for assistant role

The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ offseason is well underway, and the second domino fell following the departure of Brendan Shanahan from his role as President of Hockey Operations.

The second domino in this case is Lane Lambert, whom the Leafs hired prior to the 2024-25 season to oversee the penalty kill. The former New York Islanders bench boss was fired by his last team in the middle of the 2023-24 season, with the Leafs scooping him up for an assistant coach role on Craig Berube’s hand-picked staff. Following the 2024-25 season, Lambert’s return to the bench inspired at least one team to consider, and eventually execute, hiring him as their head coach. The Seattle Kraken named Lambert their new head honcho on Thursday last week, making him the second coach in the past couple of years to leave an assistant role with the Leafs for the head coaching job with the Kraken. Dave Hakstol did the same following the 2022-23 season.

Nevertheless, the Leafs will have to fill the role of penalty kill coach, and Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman speculated that the Leafs could look to a divisional rival for that on the latest 32 Thoughts Podcast.

“In Boston, since our last pod, I believe Joe Sacco was told he will not stay as the head coach of the Boston Bruins. I’m actually kind of wondering if he could end up in Toronto, in place of Lane Lambert. We’ll see. But I’m under the impression he was told he won’t be staying.” -Elliotte Friedman

While Sacco’s tenure as Bruins head coach didn’t go well, with the Bruins missing the playoffs for the first time in ten years, he was sort of thrown into the fire after Jim Montgomery was fired in November. If you look at his track record as the Bruins’ penalty kill coach, there’s some life. The Bruins’ penalty kill finished seventh in the league in 2023-24, first in 2022-23, and ninth in 2021-22. Three top-10 finishes are better than what the Leafs have gotten in recent memory, and although the personnel makes a difference here, the Leafs could likely stand to improve on the bench, as well. Lambert’s penalty kill for the Maple Leafs was average for most of the 2024-25 season, finishing 17th overall in the regular season. However, it did pick up in the playoffs, with the Leafs owning the fourth-best penalty kill percentage of all the playoff teams at the time of filing.

The Maple Leafs will continue to scout candidates for this role as the offseason gets underway, and their solution for the defensive side of the game could come from within the division.