John Gruden is back where it all began with the Bruins.
Gruden, who was named Boston’s assistant coach Wednesday, played in 59 games over the course of three NHL seasons with the B’s. He was drafted in the eighth round in 1990.
He now rejoins the team that gave him his shot at an NHL career. Though it didn’t work out the way he planned over his six-year career, Gruden said he has “no regrets” about how everything panned out.
Gruden spent the last four seasons with the New York Islanders as an assistant before being hired by the Bruins to complete new head coach Jim Montgomery’s staff for the 2022-23 season.
“(It was) a lengthy process … and they came to the conclusion that I would be the best guy for the job,” Gruden said during his introductory Zoom press conference Thursday morning. “I’m very excited to work with Jim and the rest of the staff, and be back with the tradition and the great Bruins organization.”
Gruden’s already been in touch with Montgomery. The duo have quite the challenge ahead of them to begin the new season with Brad Marchand, Matt Grzelcyk and Charlie McAvoy all sidelined for an undetermined amount of time.
“We’ve talked about it a little bit,” Gruden said. “Jim’s a great hockey mind and I think he’s talked to all the staff about maybe tweaking some things. I can’t talk too much further about that, but I think he is going to try to tweak a couple of things from the D zone and probably all parts of the game.”
The Bruins certainly could benefit from some tweaks, especially generating more offense.
But we’ll see what Gruden and Montgomery have up their sleeves soon enough.
