Since his playing days ended, Marco Sturm embarked on a methodical journey from the German national to team to NHL assistant to AHL head coach until he finally reached the goal of becoming an NHL head coach when he was hired by the Bruins on Thursday.
Sturm was probably going to be a head coach somewhere at some point in his career. But it’s highly questionable if he would have landed the Boston gig if former GM Mike O’Connell did not make a certain trade almost 20 years ago.
That deal, of course, was the Joe Thornton trade to San Jose that brought Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau to Boston. Sturm stayed in Boston for five seasons and the current management’s familiarity with Sturm in part helped facilitate his hiring.
O’Connell, who went on to be the head of player development for the Los Angeles Kings with his time there overlapping with Sturm’s tenure as an assistant in LA, could see the path the German was on would lead to where he is today.
“He put the time in over in Europe and then he came over, made that commitment to the Kings to be an assistant and then he moved down to Ontario (AHL) to the be the head coach,” said O’Connell, reached by phone last week. “So he did all the right things, he made all the right decisions with regards to his career and experience and really get to know he business. He’s an extremely bright guy and tremendous person. He took all the necessary steps to gain the necessary experience to achieve a goal he was probably looking to achieve.”
O’Connell worked with the young players in the Kings organization and not so much with the big club when Sturm was an assistant, but he believes the B’s new head coach will be a good fit to work with the youth that should be coming through the organization in the next couple of years.
“He knows the young players and he knows the direction the game is going and where it is today,” said O’Connell. “He had a tremendous playing career so he knows where it was, how it was developing and where it is today. Based on those things, he has a pretty good understanding of where it’s headed.”
Former B’s captain Patrice Bergeron said last week that Sturm was an important mentor for him, something O’Connell noticed as well.
“It was hard not to notice because he was such a good person. He cares about his teammates,” said O’Connell. “I can remember when once we made the deal with San Jose and Sturm was involved in the deal. Dean Lombardi (the former San Jose GM that was replaced by Doug Wilson in 2003) called me and he said ‘Marco is an unbelievable person. Terrific human being, he’s dedicated to his craft, he takes it seriously and in a very professional way.’”
At the time of the trade, the Bruins were in a slow-moving upheaval. They were one of the top teams in the league in 2003-04 before being upset by the Montreal Canadiens in seven games as Thornton, dealing with torn rib cartilage, was held off the board.
Then came the lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season as the owners, led in part by B’s owner Jeremy Jacobs, pushed for the installation of a salary cap, a movement that was eventually successful.
During that time, the B’s allowed a handful of important players – Mike Knuble, Brian Rolston and Sergei Gonchar among them – to walk. When business resumed, the best the B’s could do in the free agent market was an aging Alexei Zhamnov, who lasted 24 games before a hip injury led to his retirement, and defenseman Brian Leetch, for whom the ‘05-06 season would be the last of his Hall of Fame career.
The B’s sputtered out of the gate that season and the deal was made, outraging many Bruins fans. From that outside looking in, it appeared that situation weighed more heavily on Stuart than it did the effervescent Sturm, though O’Connell didn’t fully agree with that.
“I’m sure it was difficult for all of them,” said O’Connell. “We had to do something because we weren’t going anywhere because of the decisions we made prior and during the lockout with the players that we lost, outstanding players that we lost. It was the reason why we had to make that decision to make the big trade that we did. But everyone’s different. Brad is more of an introverted guy and Marco has more of an infectious way about him.”
The trade did not save the ‘05-06 Bruins. As they were headed for a DNQ, O’Connell was dismissed. For many, the trade would define his tenure. But that history should be revised a little bit. O’Connell drafted Bergeron in ‘03 and then David Krejci, both of whom solidified the center position for the next two decades. He also was the first to hire Mike Sullivan, who was the most sought-after coach on the market this spring before getting the Rangers’ head coaching job. He was also the first to hire current Montreal Canadien team president Jeff Gorton, one of the most highly regarded executives in the league. It was Gorton who drafted Phil Kessel, Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand in the summer of ‘06, setting up the B’s for a long run of success. One of the last players O’Connell signed was Tim Thomas.
And though Sturm didn’t last in Boston to lift the Stanley Cup in 2011, he was part of the club’s resurgence. Now it will be his job to get the B’s back among the elites.
“He’s a really good person and I think he’s going to be a really good coach,” said O’Connell. “He listens intently, he’s smart. He reminds me a little bit of, in his demeanor, of Mike Sullivan. They carry themselves in a similar way. I’m not sure that Marco is as fiery as Mike can be, but he’s intelligent and he looks at things from all different angles.”
