The Boston Bruins have fired head coach Jim Montgomery 20 games into his third season with the team.

Associate coach Joe Sacco will replace Montgomery on an interim basis, the Bruins announced on Tuesday.

The Bruins are fourth in the Atlantic Division with an 8-9-3 record to start the season.

Montgomery won the Jack Adams Award after leading the franchise to a historic 65-win season in 2023-24. The Bruins made the playoffs in each of his first two seasons at the helm.

He will depart Boston with an overall 120-41-23 record in the regular season, and a 9-11 mark in the postseason.

In the 184 Bruins games spanning between Montgomery's hiring and exit, the franchise boasts the most regular-season wins (120) and the highest regular-season points percentage (.715) in the NHL.

Those marks may have only increased Bruins leadership's expectations for the postseason, where Montgomery had yet to lead his team has the second round. Last season the team's playoff hopes ended with a first-round exit at the hands of the eventual champion Florida Panthers.

Although the Bruins remain in the postseason conversation at the quarter mark of the 2024-25 season— were the campaign to have ended on Monday, Boston would have claimed the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference— worrying downward trends may have contributed to the decision to move on from Montgomery.

Through 20 games, the Bruins ranked in the bottom five of the NHL in both goal prevention (3.45 goals against per game, 28th in the league) and goalscoring (2.40 goals per game, 31st in the NHL.) Those are disappointing results for a team that hoped to take a step forward by adding players like Elias Lindholm this offseason.

David Pastrňák and Brad Marchand are off to slow starts to the season. Jeremy Swayman meanwhile followed up a career-best campaign with a .884 save percentage through 14 starts, which Montgomery pointed out the night before his firing followed the goaltender missing training camp amid a holdout for a new contract.

Several indications, Pastrňák's NHL-high shots total and uncharacteristically low 9.8 percent shooting rate among them, show the Bruins are due for a resurgence. Boston leadership will hope that can take place under Sacco, who previously led the Colorado Avalanche to a 130-134-30 record in three and a half seasons as head coach between 2009 and 2013.