Cam Neely Weighs In On Joe Sacco’s Future With Bruins

The Boston Bruins will need to address several areas of the team this offseason, including at head coach.

Joe Sacco is still wearing the interim head coach label after 53 games at the helm of the Bruins heading into Saturday night’s Original Six matchup with the Detroit Red Wings. Sacco amassed a 22-25-6 record over that span.

There’s no guarantee that Sacco, who was a longtime assistant with Boston before being promoted, will be back next season with the Bruins. But in an exclusive interview with The Boston Globe’s Jim McBride, Bruins president Cam Neely said Sacco will be in consideration for the head coaching job.

“Neely said Sacco ‘will be in the mix’ when he and Sweeney have offseason discussions about what direction they will go in a coaching search,” McBride wrote.

Sacco’s audition behind the bench of the Bruins has had its ups and down. Boston got a lift when Sacco took over for the fired Jim Montgomery in mid-November. The Bruins went 7-2-0 in Sacco’s first nine games.

The Bruins backslid to start the new year, though, and with the franchise dealing away pieces at the deadline, which included captain Brad Marchand, Boston is now vying for a top-five pick in the NHL draft this summer. The coaching change didn’t solve the offensive woes for the Bruins, who have the fourth-worst scoring output in the league at 2.63 goals per game.

But Neely commended the work of Sacco and his coaching staff in a difficult situation.

“I mentioned to the whole coaching staff recently that Don (Sweeney) and I certainly appreciate the job that they’re doing. It hasn’t been easy for them,” Neely said, per McBride. “Again, it’s something we’re not really accustomed to here. We’re usually playing games, meaningful games, at this time of the year and getting ready for playoffs, and I think Joe stepped in and early on we were playing very well. We had a pretty good record and then we just stopped playing the way we should play for a stretch there and it really hurt us, but not the easiest situation for Joe to come in. But he’s handled it very well.”