One thing that it seems Joe Sacco is determined to do as interim head coach of the Boston Bruins?
Change the team identity that’s started to form this season as a group that allowed slippage in their defensive game to start this season. The Bruins have been in the bottom third of the NHL in goals allowed all season and currently rank 21st in the NHL whole allowing 3.18 goals per game with a leaky penalty kill and below-average goaltending unable to rescue them as they have in years past.
Quite simply the Bruins weren’t exhibiting good structure in the defensive zone and way, way too many battles were being lost in and around the front of the net.
“A lot of it is a mindset right now with our group and certainly we need to bring it out of them. One thing we’re going to focus on is being a harder team to play against, and when I say that I mean being stingier,” said Sacco. “We need to do a better job in front of our goaltenders. When you look at the ten years that I’ve been here, there’s always been a pride in defending your goaltender and defending the net-front and defending the zone. So we’re going to be more difficult to play against in that way within our system, which is going to allow us to be successful.”
Charlie McAvoy seems to have gotten the message as he played much more like a No. 1 defenseman in Saturday's win, with blocked shots and good D-zone coverage as the priorities in 25-plus minutes of ice time as the priority over flying out of position or taking unnecessary risks in a tight-checking game like the one against the Red Wings. The Bruins are a tough team to beat when their best defensemen plays with that kind of mindset.
That has changed quite a bit with one goal allowed in the first two games of the Sacco Era where backchecking, defensive zone structure and D-men battling in front of the net have returned after taking an early season vacation this year. The Bruins are also winning the puck possession battle like they weren’t in the first few months of the season, and it always helps keeping the puck out of the net when it’s at the other end of the ice.
But there’s been a marked difference in paying attention to the defensive details and building up those layers in all three zones, and it’s something the Bruins goalies are delightedly noticing in a big way.
“It’s really awesome to see the guys in front of me paying attention to details at both ends of the ice and getting rewarded for it,” said Jeremy Swayman, who arguably had his best game of the season in a 2-1 win on Saturday night in Detroit. “You can tell [the defensive play] has gained a lot of momentum for us and we’re taking steps in the right direction every day.”
The Bruins have a long way to go before anybody is going to again consider them a defensive stalwart group where opposing scorers after in for a long night at the office against the Black and Gold, but it looks like the B’s are again embracing what’s important to actually win NHL hockey games.
And that is a significant development even if you can write off the two-game winning streak was barely beating a couple of teams in Utah and Detroit that probably aren’t going to be playoff participants at the end of the season.
ONE TIMERS
* From ESPN: "The St. Louis Blues fired coach Drew Bannister and hired Jim Montgomery as his replacement just five days after the 2022 Jack Adams Award winner was let go by the Boston Bruins.
Blues president and general manager Doug Armstrong announced the stunning change Sunday. He is expected to address reporters on a video call in the afternoon, while Montgomery is joining the team in New York on Monday."
Montgomery reportedly received a 5-year contract from the Blues.
*Interesting response from Bruins GM Don Sweeney when asked if he had any second-guessing about allowing Jim Montgomery to enter a lame-duck contract year as head coach, which predictably went awry with him getting fired this past week. Sweeney said that offers had been made to the ex-head coach, who signed a pretty modest three-year deal when he was hired coming off difficult ending to his previous head coaching gig with the Dallas Stars.
“No, not for the second guessing. As I said, I was in extension talks, contract offers [were made to Montgomery], so I feel very comfortable [with how it went down],” said Sweeney. “The person makes it no different than another player in making a decision. We've got players that did that as well this summer.
“So there's two sides to every negotiation, and they have to make their own decisions accordingly and we react as a result of that. Doesn’t mean that it doesn't come to fruition at some point in time, we’re very open. It’s not like we shut things down, but at the end of the day performance is part of this.”
But Montgomery didn’t accept any of the offers, which one has to assume wasn’t massive money or the head coach having a bigger amount of control over his coaching staff, and it set up what we saw play out in the first 20 games of the season.
It begs the question as to just how badly the Bruins wanted to retain Montgomery long term with names like Joel Quenneville looking for an NHL coaching job, and other college coaches like Nate Leeman and Jay Pandolfo as interesting candidates should the Bruins want to dip into the college hockey ranks.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Joe Sacco, who takes over as interim head coach in a similar position to peers like Mike Sullivan and Bruce Cassidy, who learned quite a bit and became much better the second time around after a long period of time between NHL head coaching gigs.
“The biggest thing for me [that I’ve learned] is personalizing relationships with the players,” said Sacco. “I as a young coach at the time, 39 or 40…it was a long time ago. I felt like I didn’t do a good enough job of developing relationships with the individuals. I was more focused on the structure of the team and the systems we were playing. That’s all important at the end of the day, but what really matters is your relationships with your players.”
*One thing the Bruins expect to improve under Joe Sacco is the parade to the penalty box, which reached ridiculous proportions in the middle of Jim Montgomery’s doomed 20-game start to the season. The Bruins continue to lead the NHL in penalty minutes (259) and minor penalties taken (99), with a wide lead over the Sabres for the league lead with 11 more penalties than anybody else in the NHL.
It got to the point where Sweeney had a conversation with Brad Marchand about it after a home game against Calgary where Marchand took a costly roughing penalty that ultimately led to the Bruins needing to win the game in overtime.
“The penalties that are recurring… there’s some carelessness there. Whether or not they’re struggling, [or] whether or not they’re frustrated. Brad [Marchand] and I talked about his penalty against Calgary to start the third period. That’s not being focused on what's most important in that particular time,” said Sweeney. “It's one thing to defend your teammate and maybe jump in there in situations of that nature, but to give a team any type of momentum when you're in control of the game.
“That’s just not where you need to be on an execution level, and he knew it. But it allows the other team to get some momentum. There's too often where we’ve done that and you're playing uphill as a result. You can't take this many penalties and expect to have success. It’s going to bleed in, now your players that are playing in those [penalty kill] roles and sometimes they're both sides of equation. They're just taxed. And then you want to turn and say, well why aren’t we producing five and five? There's a trickle-down effect associated with that, and it just puts too much pressure on your club. Whether that's coaching, whether that's communication, whether that's player driven, I think it’s all of the above from a standpoint of being more disciplined.”
That had begun to improve in the days leading up to Montgomery’s dismissal, but it will be interesting to see how much inroads they can make in eliminating this as a team weakness over the course of the season.