Bruins captain Brad Marchand took responsibility on behalf of the team for Jim Montgomery’s firing in a candid session with reporters Wednesday.
“This is a reflection of our play, and it was avoidable,” Marchand said.
“I think that’s the tough part about this, is that if we would have done our job in here, he’d still be around.”
The Bruins announced Tuesday that assistant coach Joe Sacco would take over as interim head coach following an 8-9-3 start in Montgomery’s third year with the team.
“We also feel terrible as a group [and] individually that we let a really good coach and really good person down,” Marchand said.
Marchand said there’s no one reason for why the Bruins have gotten off to such a slow start.
“We just didn’t do our jobs, and we haven’t played to the standard that we need to, the standard that we've come to expect, that the management expects, [that] the fans expect and deserve. When you don't play to expectations and to the level that we are capable of doing – it’s not that the expectation is out of reach; we just haven’t played to our abilities,” he said.
Marchand has been through this multiple times now. Sacco will be the fourth coach the forward has played for in his 16 years with Boston.
“Things like this happen, unfortunately. People have to take the fall, and that's what happened,” he said.
Currently, the Bruins are the first team out of the playoffs in the Eastern Conference, tied with the Islanders for the second wild card spot in points, but behind on points percentage. Marchand believes the process of getting the season back on track starts with him and the leadership group.
“The biggest change has to start internally, with our group, with our leadership group,” Marchand said.
“It starts with me. It starts with our captains, our young leaders, and setting the example every day. We haven't done a good enough job at providing the example and holding the accountability that we need to and that we have in the past.”
Boston’s general manager, Don Sweeney, told reporters Wednesday that the team hadn’t been a “tough out” in the first month-plus of the season, which partly motivated the decision to make a change at head coach.
Marchand said that while it’s difficult, the team needs to establish a more consistent approach to become a harder out.
“We haven't done that enough, and we did have that for a very long period of time,” he said.
“It took a lot of really good leaders and competitive guys coming here to say that they wanted to be a difference maker and build something special. And we have the group to do that, we have the group that has the ability. There's a lot of guys that have been underperforming this year, myself included, and if we get back to playing to our standard, then we'll be fine.
“No one's looking at this saying that the season's over and that we can't turn this thing around. It's just we have to be better, and we know that we have the ability to do that.”
While the move to elevate Sacco, an assistant in Boston since 2014, to head coach will be a “rude awakening” for the team, Marchand said he doesn’t expect things to change overnight.
“We don’t have all the answers here now,” he said.
“Just because there’s a change made, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be the best team in the league starting tomorrow.”
Sacco will start his head-coaching career Thursday night, hoping to end the Bruins’ three-game losing streak when they take on the Utah Hockey Club at TD Garden.