The Bruins have parted ways with assistant coach Jay Leach, according to a report by the Fourth Period.<\/p>\n
The club would not confirm nor deny the report. His bio was removed from the team\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
In his second stint in the B\u2019s organization during his coaching career, Leach has run the defense in Boston the last two seasons. After a year as an assistant coach with the Providence Bruins in his first go-round, he took over the head coaching duties from the 2017-18 season through the 2020-21 season, posting a 136-77 record.<\/p>\n
He served as an assistant with the fledgling Seattle Kraken franchise under head coach Dave Hakstol for three seasons before returning to the Bruins organization in 2024, first under Jim Montgomery and then Joe Sacco in the bottom-out season of 2024-25 and then under Marco Sturm in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
While the B\u2019s surprised many by posting a 100-point season and getting back to the postseason, they were not as strong defensively as they hoped to be, leaning heavily on goalie Jeremy Swayman on many nights. According to Natural Stat Trick, the B\u2019s allowed the seventh-most high danger chances at 5-on-5 in the league. Of the six teams that had more than the B\u2019s, only the Anaheim Ducks made the playoffs.<\/p>\n
In the B\u2019s playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres, Boston\u2019s issues with breaking pucks out of their own zone came to the forefront, especially in their Game 4 blowout loss at the Garden that pretty much sealed their fate in the series.<\/p>\n
While those issues can\u2019t solely be placed on the defensemen, it\u2019s not a surprise that Sturm would want to bring in one of his own coaches. After being named as head coach last summer, he hired Steve Spott to run the power play but inherited the rest of the staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bruins have parted ways with assistant coach Jay Leach, according to a report by the Fourth Period.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,530,37,96,5263,5,1071,4],"class_list":["post-580727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-blackhawks","tag-blackhawks","tag-bruins","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-chicagoblackhawks","tag-hockey","tag-jay-leach","tag-nhl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116615585697132073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}