Capitals assistant coach Mitch Love has continued to be a hot topic on the coaching rumor carousel this spring.
TSN’s Pierre LeBrun reported Thursday that Love was among the candidates the Boston Bruins had interviewed for their vacant head-coaching job. Others in the mix include current interim head coach Joe Sacco, Bruins assistant coach Jay Leach, the Ontario Reign’s Marco Sturm, former Edmonton Oilers bench boss Jay Woodcroft, and former Chicago Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson.
Per LeBrun, the Bruins will hold their final round of interviews next week.
The Bruins fired then-head coach Jim Montgomery in November after the team went 8-9-3 in the first 20 games of the 2024-25 season, with Sacco filling his role for the remainder of the campaign. Boston finished the year ranked 28th in the league with a final record of 33-39-10 to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
Boston GM Don Sweeney told the Boston Herald’s Steve Conroy on Wednesday that he expects to hire a head coach “well before” the 2025 NHL Draft begins on June 27.
Love has attracted plenty of interest from around the league this offseason, reportedly interviewing with the Pittsburgh Penguins and coming up as a candidate for the Seattle Kraken’s head-coaching position. A back-to-back AHL coach of the year winner, Love joined the Capitals soon after Washington hired Spencer Carbery in 2023 and has spent the last two seasons in charge of the team’s defensemen.
“He’s done a tremendous job for us and very similar coaching path to where I came from, having been an assistant a couple years,” Carbery said of Love last week. “Hoping that he gets an opportunity at some point. He deserves it. He’s earned it. He’s done a great job coaching our D-corps the last two years, has had a ton of success as a head coach. He is a head coach, and so it’s just a matter of him getting that opportunity.”
With the Chicago Blackhawks naming Jeff Blashill as their new bench boss on Thursday, only the Bruins, Kraken, and Penguins still have open head-coaching jobs, and Love’s name is now linked to all three.
