Montgomery, Sacco need to stay true to selves with new teams

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Trent Yawney, a former assistant with the Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks, and head coach with the Chicago Blackhawks, writes about the changes in Boston and St. Louis, and the tasks at hand for Joe Sacco and Jim Montgomery, respectively.

Joe Sacco and Jim Montgomery know they can't change who they are just because they're in different roles with teams that are familiar with them.

Sacco was an assistant with the Boston Bruins for more than 10 years, including for the first 20 games this season, before he got the job as interim coach on Nov. 19, replacing Montgomery, who was fired.

Montgomery was an assistant with the St. Louis Blues for two seasons from 2020-22 before leaving for Boston. He's back in St. Louis now, taking over as the Blues coach on Sunday, signing a five-year contract to replace Drew Bannister.

The players each team know Sacco and Montgomery from their former roles with them as assistants. Now they've got to see Sacco and Montgomery as the head coach.

That won't be a problem. The players know who is in charge. Even when Todd McLellan got COVID and had to miss 10 days and I was put in charge of the Kings at the time, the players knew in those 10 days that I was in charge.

But Sacco and Montgomery can't change the way they carry themselves because the players will catch onto that real quick. I'm sure they each already made it real clear that some decisions they make the players might not like, but they don't expect the players to like everything; they expect them to understand why decisions are made what they're there for.

They're there to win hockey games.

Taking over struggling teams in mid-November, when the freight train that is the NHL season is already moving at a brisk pace, they're going to depend on their leadership groups to help with the transition.

The leaders are going to be the ones that will drive the bus and are going to be an extension of Sacco and Montgomery in their respective places.

Obviously, Sacco knows the leadership group in Boston well, having worked with them for years. That's probably a positive for Montgomery too going into St. Louis. He has been there and he knows the leadership group. His language, they'll catch on, they'll remember.

The focus for each team will also be spelled out clearly; defense leads to offense, not the other way around.

I found Sacco's comments recently particularly interesting. He said they've talked a lot about offense all year since training camp and when he addressed the team he made a point of them understanding that they have to be able to keep it out.

So, what do they do? They reel off 1-0 and 2-1 wins right out of the gate since the coaching change was made.

The Bruins were tied for 27th in the League in goals-against per game (3.45) before the coaching change. Coincidentally, the Blues were also allowing 3.45 goals against per game a week ago. Boston was also 25th on the penalty kill at 75.6 percent.

Boston has always been in the upper echelon in the league in the defensive metrics. Yeah, the Bruins have struggled to score some goals, but you never see Boston with a goals-against average and penalty kill like that. You can see it starting to get some life now.

In St. Louis, they're talking a lot about offense and how they haven't scored. That's true -- 2.36 goals per game entering Monday was 30th in the League -- but they were allowing the third most goals per game in the Western Conference (3.36).

Well, Jim Montgomery can't go out and score goals. He's going to have a pretty long stick to score from where he's going to be standing. But he can and will get the Blues to focus on the defensive end.

I always find it interesting when teams talk about how they need to score more, and then all of a sudden their defense goes out the window. Then you've got teams who have scored and they're saying they've got to defend better. That becomes the focal point and then they can't score.

The pieces have to go together. It doesn't have to be systematic changes or massive upheavals on power play or penalty kill. The approach has to be keep it out so we can get on the attack and get some in.

The start of an offensive play is a good defensive play a lot of times.

To that end, the one thing they each surely know is they can't change too much right away.

I've been on the other side of it as an assistant when the head coach has gotten fired and the new head coach comes in. The players they know that there has been a change made and they know they're partly responsible for that change, but if you start overhauling everything that just leads to confusion. It's a line they'll watch early on.

Tweaking things here and there, simple things, is probably the way they'll both attack this for the first month or so.

For example, the meetings, the flow of the new guy coming in will be different from the guy that was there before. Even with Sacco in Boston, I'm sure just for a refresh he'll change things around. Maybe the order of the meetings will be different. Maybe the timing of the meetings will be different. Maybe the video the day after a game will be different. That changes things for the players.

Finally, Sacco and Montgomery each know the situation well, that they're taking over these struggling teams and that means they have to reinvigorate things around the players. They know coaching the mental part of this is as much a part as coaching the physical.

The only difference is that in Boston, the playoffs are essentially a must. The Bruins must get in. The Blues don't have that built-in pressure. The Bruins are built to be a Stanley Cup contender.

The Blues are still in the infancy stage of their reset, similar to what we went through in L.A. So Montgomery gets the five-year contract to help carry the Blues through to the other side, with the goal of coming out of it as Stanley Cup champions.

That means he can have some patience. The younger guys that maybe he doesn't know or didn't get to know that well when he was there as an assistant, he's going to get to know those guys. He's going to get to see the players in a different light.

He's got a freebie up until either they make the playoffs or they don't make the playoffs. Next year it starts all over again.

There is no proverbial freebie for Sacco and the Bruins.