Sign up for Bruins updates🏒
Get breaking news and analysis delivered to your inbox during hockey season.
Joe Sacco’s message to Bruins? Keep it simple … and create some ‘chaos’
"We have good players in this room and they’re capable of more."
Joe Sacco isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel with the Bruins.
Time isn’t on the side of Boston’s interim head coach, not with a reeling roster in need of results.
Continued lapses in execution, severe erosion in Boston’s stingy defensive structure, and a dearth of scoring conduits cost Jim Montgomery his job on Tuesday.
With only a short runway granted for Boston’s new bench boss to brace his team before Thursday’s home game vs. Utah, Sacco’s message was clear in his first days at the helm.
Advertisement:
“It’s being harder to play against,” Sacco said Wednesday of Boston’s first order of business. “I want teams to know again that it’s going to be hard to score goals against us. Our offense will come.
“There’s enough players in here that are going to score goals, and I think the focus has been too much on that. Let’s focus on keeping the puck out of our net, being hard to play against, and I’m very confident that this group will score goals.”
Sacco’s mandate was carried out in Thursday’s 1-0 win against Utah.
Advertisement:
It was far from flashy, nor will a slim, one-goal victory over a sub-.500 club dispel fears that Boston’s sleepwalking start to the 2024-25 season is far from a blip.
But two points are still two points.
And with Sacco and his reworked staff opting to simplify Montgomery’s systems, Boston has a template in place that can lead to white-knuckle wins more attuned to this current personnel.
“It always feels different when there’s a new coach on the bench,” Brad Marchand said after Thursday’s win. “There’s a couple good things that we tweaked. Mindsets, I think, were the biggest thing.”
Unlike in February 2017 when Bruce Cassidy injected speed and shot volume into Claude Julien’s measured, stringent structure, Sacco isn’t looking for sweeping changes — at least not yet.
An emphasis on urgency and best practices in the defensive zone made life easier for Joonas Korpisalo on Thursday.
Skaters — perhaps shocked into action following Montgomery’s ouster — found their legs on the TD Garden ice. Puck battles were won with regularity, while stretch passes were shirked in favor of low-risk chips up the frozen sheet.
Advertisement:
Blueliners like Nikita Zadorov finished checks and pinned skaters against the boards without the added snarl that leads to two minutes in the box. Mark Kastelic provided some punch via a pair of scraps with Robert Bortuzzo.
The odd-man rushes that put Korpisalo and Jeremy Swayman under duress for 20 games were snuffed out against Utah, while steady puck support created layers of black-and-gold sweaters in front of Korpisalo.
Utah landed 15 shots on goal during 5-on-5 action Thursday (per Natural Stat Trick), but the visiting team generated just two high-danger scoring chances over that stretch.
It’s a game that won’t be featured on many highlight reels. But Sacco’s strategy should steady a team that needs to start playing to its strengths.
If there’s any appetite for immediate tweaks, it’s down the other end of the ice.
Montgomery’s emphasis on quality over quantity with Boston’s shot selection led to an uptick in the Bruins’ 5-on-5 scoring output.
At least, for a time.
But passing up shots in search of selective, high-danger looks in the slot is only a fruitful approach if you have the finishing talent in place on the roster.
Advertisement:
It’s an issue that cost them dearly last spring. During their six-game playoff series against the Panthers, Boston held a 60-40 edge in high-danger scoring chances … but Florida outscored them at 5-on-5 play, 11-10.
On Wednesday, even Don Sweeney acknowledged that Boston might need to pepper the net moving forward.
“To your point on whether or not we can play a little more north-south and direct and get it a little more volume-oriented and score the greasy part of it? Yeah, I think that we probably have to get back to a little more simplistic approach because we haven’t been able to execute a system that was pretty damn successful,” Sweeney said.
Given the size of Boston’s forward corps — and the apparent lack of finishing touch — sending several volleys of pucks toward the net might be the apt move for a Bruins team starved for scoring.
Shunning tic-tac-toe passing and slot shots for tips and rebounds won’t win style points, but it’s a strategy that paid dividends on the power play Thursday.
With Sacco opting to shift Marchand from his usual spot along the right-side half boards to the netfront and goal line, Boston’s coach was looking to funnel more pucks around the net.
Sure enough, Marchand’s netfront tip off a David Pastrnak faked-shot feed created a skittering puck that Elias Lindholm jammed home for his first goal since Oct. 12.
Even though Boston only cashed in once across seven power-play bids Thursday, the Bruins generated 18 shots on goal and 10 scoring chances on the man advantage.
Advertisement:
“We said that we wanted to attack the net more, especially down low,” Sacco said. “Created some more chaos in front of the goaltender … more around the goal line, the bumper. I thought we really used the bumper efficiently today on the power play, was able to spread them out a little bit.”
The Bruins still have plenty of work to do when it comes to landing punches in the offensive zone. Even with Thursday’s win, Boston has only lit the lamp six times in the last four games.
But so long as Boston can continue to disentangle their D-zone lapses and limit risk, Sacco believes the offense will arrive — as unsightly as the process toward finding twine might be.
“Typically, when you have the work ethic and you have good energy in your practice and you have some enthusiasm, the execution will take care of itself after that,” Sacco said Wednesday, adding: “We have good players in this room and they’re capable of more, and it’s our job as a coaching staff to make sure that we get it out of them.
“I think it starts there with our work ethic.”
Be civil. Be kind.
Read our full community guidelines.