The Boston Bruins have welcomed Marco Sturm as their next head coach.
The longtime NHL player, who played five seasons with the Bruins from 2005 through 2010 and famously scored the winning goal in overtime of the 2010 Winter Classic at Fenway Park, was officially hired Thursday.
This will be Sturm’s first ever NHL head coach job, but he does have head coaching experience at the international level (he won Olympic silver with Germany in 2018) and the AHL level with the Ontario Reign. He had been the Reign’s head coach since the 2022-23 season. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Kings for four years.
Sturm has a tough job in front of him. The Bruins just completed their worst season in almost two decades. They tied for the fifth-worst record in the league, couldn’t score consistently, struggled to defend at a high level and saw a steep decline in goaltending.
There are two key …