Bruins general manager Don Sweeney talks in depth about the process that ended with Marco Sturm being named head coach

Boston Globe

a day ago

No matter the topic, be it coaching style, playing structure, player development, what he expects and demands from players, or talking about his family, Sturm's energy was evident. He checked the boxes Sweeney was looking for in the search for the franchise's 30th head coach.
Sweeney knew Sturm from his five seasons in Boston, but it was the hockey journey of his post-playing days that the GM wanted to dive into deeper.
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'We got into his path and his passion and his command of the steps that he's taken to be ready for this opportunity,' Sweeney told the Globe at the NHL Scouting Combine on Friday. 'And while we were going through it, the third or fourth time we met up, the passion just about why he was coaching, and the fact that he'd spent a lot of time away from his family, the sacrifice he's made to be a coach despite being a successful player and still had the passion to really take the reins of the head coaching job in the NHL. He's put his time in.'
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Sweeney revealed details about the 'laborious' search to find a coach to lead a Bruins team that will look much different from the one that started the 2024-25 season, and the edition that ended the campaign.
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'It's an encompassing process in the fact that it's laborious from the standpoint of the amount of time you want to spend and need to spend with each person, but it's insightful in a lot of ways,' said Sweeney. 'They're breaking down your team at some point in time. Now, our team looks far different than it did in the first part of last year, right? You go through the trade deadline; you realize that there's a much smaller core group of guys and what you're going to do is hypothetical in a lot of ways. So, you get into not as much your personnel side of things. The first phases for me have always been about what you are as a coach and then, how are you going to play, how do you expect your team to play? And then you can get into the personalities of how you interact with players and how things have gone. In some cases, guys have been head coaches and what experiences they've learned, what they might want to do differently, and things like that.'
While the meetings are set to learn about the candidates, Sweeney finds they often have other benefits.
'You are gaining a lot of knowledge both about your own team and about your interactions, and how you need to continue to work . . . It's a chance to have some feedback and a bit of a critical eye, to tell you the truth, and you have to be receptive to things you need to do differently,' said Sweeney. 'Are these things the organization is willing to do differently? Because that's what a coach is presenting, he's not presenting how we see it, but at the end of the day I'm always pointing it back, 'No, no, no, don't ask how I see it. How do you see it? How do you want to play?' '
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Sweeney went through several rounds of interviews as he whittled his list and
'I did two initial screenings with most of the candidates and then we did very thorough Zoom calls, so the coaches were fully presenting, and I had [assistant GMs] Jamie Langenbrunner and Evan Gold in those meetings,' said Sweeney. 'I followed up with, once we talked about all the candidates that we had on Zoom, I followed up with secondary things that [Langenbrunner and Gold] had pointed out that maybe we can pull on this string and maybe we can ask this follow-up question, and then we narrowed it down to the four guys we felt comfortable with. And at that point in time, we brought four candidates in to meet, and [team president] Cam [Neely] and I sat down with them. Now, by the same token, after those meetings, I called up Evan and Jamie because they had been part of [the process], as well. Marco did come and meet with [chief executive officer] Charlie [Jacobs] and Cam, as well, when I made my recommendation.'
Sweeney declined to name the other finalists.
As for the qualities and reasons that made Sturm stand out above the others, there were numerous.
'I don't think it's the narrative of just bringing back a former player. I think it's a player who has passion, has familiarity with the marketplace, and knows what the expectations are, which is healthy in a lot of ways,' said Sweeney. 'He's got eyes wide open.'
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Sweeney pointed to Sturm's extensive coaching experience from the prep school level to international competition, and his time in the NHL and AHL. All of those experiences helped him build a résumé for this job.
Sturm began his NHL coaching career in the Kings organization as an assistant under Todd McLellan. Part of Sturm's duties consisted of helping a team that was always stout defensively evolve offensively to become more well-rounded.
Sturm then decided he needed head coaching experience and took the top job with the Ontario Reign, Los Angeles's AHL affiliate, in 2022.
'He embraced the opportunity to go down and lead his own team and then he got a chance to work with some pretty good younger players there and develop them and watch them go on to be NHL players,' said Sweeney.
Sturm's ability to work with and gain the trust of LA's development staff also impressed Sweeney, who said he will be adding another assistant to holdovers Chris Kelly, Jay Leach, and Bob Essensa.
'They trusted Marco at the NHL level as an assistant, now as a head coach working in the development side of it, watching him run his own team,' said Sweeney.
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Sturm became adept at holding players to a standard they would need to follow in order to be successful in the NHL.
'He has enough confidence and pushback to say, 'Hey, this is the right path for this player. This is my recommendation. I respect what the organization wants to do, but I also have an understanding of what I think needs to be done as a coach,' ' said Sweeney. 'And I like that.'
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The ability to coax and coach players should benefit some of the Bruins' core younger players, including Mason Lohrei, Matt Poitras, and Fabian Lysell, among others.
'These guys and the next guys, to tell you the truth. This has a longer-term growth opportunity for the organization because Marco's seen the success of those players. He can hold them to that standard,' said Sweeney. 'He can also have a conversation saying, 'I told [Kings defenseman] Brandt Clarke the same thing, Mason, if you don't go up and defend and play with a conviction, you might be able to run a power play but they're not going to trust you, they're not going to play you in the playoffs, they're not going to put you in situations that you can't handle and you have to respect that part of the game.' So, we're going to do that as an organization, but he can walk that walk. I like that part. I like the fact that he's put some guys in those situations, he's given him opportunities while also holding them to a standard.'
Jim McBride can be reached at