On Thursday morning, the Bruins officially announced the hiring of Marco Sturm as the 30th head coach in franchise history, finally filling the last vacant head coaching job in the NHL.
In accepting this job, the 46-year-old Germany-native will become a first-time NHL head coach, as he spent the last three seasons as head coach of the AHL’s Ontario Reign, the minor league affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings.
Sturm was also the head coach of the German national team from 2015 to 2018, helping lead a resurgence for the program that culminated in a surprise silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. In between those two head coaching gigs, Sturm was an assistant coach for the Kings for four years (2018-22), giving him the "NHL exposure" Bruins general manager Don Sweeney had mentioned as a borderline prerequisite.
Before coaching, Sturm played 15 seasons at forward in the NHL (1997-2012), including five seasons with the Bruins (2005-10) after being acquired from San Jose as part of the Joe Thornton trade.
As a Bruin, his highlights include a late winning goal in Game 6 of a first-round series against the Canadiens in 2008, and the overtime winner in the Bruins' first Winter Classic at Fenway Park against the Flyers in 2010.
So what are we to make of this hiring by Boston?
WEEI’s Adam Jones asked his co-host Rich Keefe on Thursday if he’d give the hiring a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”
“If you have to pick between the two, I’m ‘thumbs in the middle,’” said Keefe. “Like Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Gladiator,’ where he starts out in the middle.”
“Yeah, but then where does he point?” pushed Jones.
“It’d be down,” said Keefe. “They're the last team to pick a coach. And this was the guy who was rumored for a while, but he's a former player of the team, and you're like, ‘Alright, how extensive was this search?’
“And also, I wonder how many guys really wanted this job. I know Don Sweeney's telling everybody in the world that'll listen, ‘It's an original six team, everybody wants to coach the Bruins.’ I'm not so sure about that, because whoever coaches the Bruins becomes a scapegoat for the Bruins. It's not the players' fault, it's not Don's fault, it's not Cam's fault, [and it’s] certainly not the Jacobs’ fault. It's been the coach's fault the last five, six years when things go wrong. So I don't know how many guys are lined up for it. Hence, they were the last one to hire somebody.”
While Sturm is no franchise legend, he does fall in line with the recent trend in Boston sports of former players becoming head coaches of their former teams.
“Is this good, bad or in-between that three of the four head coaches in town were former players for the team?” Keefe asked Jones.
“Bad,” said Jones. “I think it's bad. It shows they have no they have no - either it tells you how little coaches do and they're like, ‘well, let's just hire somebody who played here for PR purposes,’ or it just shows you how unimaginative they are.”
“Yeah, I think that might be true,” said Keefe. “I think case by case, Robert Kraft is just wanting to hang on to the glory days so badly that he went back-to-back former players [with Jerod Mayo and MIke Vrabel].”
“It’s unimaginative, but it's also with him hanging on glory days,” said Jones. “I don’t really get what Sturm is.”
“I don’t really get what Sturm is either,” Keefe agreed. “Hopefully he can relate to coaching up young players.”
The Bruins will hold an official press conference to announce the hiring of Sturm as their new head coach on Tuesday.