Marco Sturm plans to change Bruins' systems over the coming days: What can we expect?

Marco Sturm isn't just a familiar face that Don Sweeney brought in as a feel-good story as a former player in the organization. Sturm has done his time climbing the ranks in coaching, culminating in his most recent stint with the Los Angeles Kings' minor league team in Ontario. He has built his reputation on a good rapport with young players and a willingness to foster a positive culture, something he learned from those Boston Bruins teams in the late 2000s.

With a new head coach comes a new myriad of systems for the Bruins. We've seen it over the past decade, as Claude Julien, Bruce Cassidy, and Jim Montgomery all attempted to put their own spin on the roster. The problem was that with most of the core intact through all three of those coaches, it was hard to teach a bunch of old dogs new tricks and get them to buy in. With the rebuild in motion, maybe Sturm's systems and vision will be the one that sticks.

Bruins reporter Fluto Shinzawa had a great deep dive into Sturm's way of thinking on how the team will play under his tutelage. He prefers defenders to step up to maintain tight gaps, with a forward tracking back deep to trap opposing players. The same goes in the defensive zone, with centers playing low to start counter-attacks 200 feet from their own net. It's a strategy he saw Patrice Bergeron employ when he played with the Bruins, and something he still tries to teach the centers that he coaches.

The issue is that Elias Lindholm, Pavel Zacha, and Casey Mittelstadt aren't Patrice Bergeron. It's a sound strategy that Sturm believes will help the Bruins beat teams that are better skilled than they are, but I'm unsure of how successful it will be, at least for the 2025-26 season.

The play that Sturm praises in Shinzawa's article is a goal from the 4 Nations Face-Off that took place this past year. Ironically, the player who makes the play in that clip is Brad Marchand, who then counterattacks the other way and scores. While it'd be nice for Sturm if he still had Marchand to make those kinds of plays, it's up to the front office that employed him to find guys who will.

Sturm will use this season to implement the system he is trying to run. It might not reach it's full potential with the roster as currently constructed, but getting it in place as the team's growing list of prospects begin to turn pro would be resetting the clock on the culture that Sturm helped build during his playing days.

It might be a risk for Sweeney to take a chance on a new head coach, but if it works the way Sturm envisions it, the payoff will be massive. No Bruins fans will turn down the possibility of a team full of players who play the game like Bergeron and Marchand. But they need players who are able and willing to do it.