How the 2025 Boston Bruins are Shaped by the Philadelphia Eagles?
In the high-pressure world of professional sports, inspiration is a funny thing. It rarely comes from where you expect it. You would think a hockey coach preparing for a grueling NHL season would have his nose buried in game tape of the Oilers or the Panthers. You would assume he is breaking down power plays and forechecks until his eyes bleed. But for Marco Sturm, the blueprint for the Bruins did not come from a frozen pond or a historic rink in Canada. It came from the gridiron. It came from a team that plays a completely different sport in a city that Boston fans usually view with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Before he even coached a single shift for Boston, Sturm received a digital care package from Cam Neely. It was not a highlight reel of Bobby Orr. It was a peek inside the locker room of the Philadelphia Eagles. And just like that, an NHL head coach found himself taking notes on Nick Sirianni.
The unexpected playbook for the Bruins
It sounds a bit ridiculous when you say it out loud. A German hockey coach studying an American football team to learn about roster cohesion feels like a Mad Libs plot. But that is exactly what happened. Sturm did not just watch the video Neely sent him; he obsessed over it. He treated the Philadelphia Eagles like a thesis project.
The focus was not on X’s and O’s, obviously. Sturm was not trying to figure out how to run the “tush push” on ice. He was looking for the intangibles. He was looking for the glue. The Eagles had just made a run to the Super Bowl, and Sturm wanted to know what made them tick. He wanted to understand the alchemy that turns a room full of millionaires into a family.
“In team sports, chemistry is everything,” Sturm noted after a recent win. And he is right. You can have all the talent in the world, but if the locker room is fractured, you are going nowhere fast. The Bruins needed that spark. They needed that sense of unity that seems to radiate from championship squads. Sturm saw it in the way the Eagles talked to each other. He saw it in the way Sirianni connected with his players. He realized that the sport might be different, but the human element remains exactly the same.
Why Sturm obsessed over Philadelphia
Sturm admits he was already a fan of American football, but he had no special allegiance to the Eagles before this. That changed quickly. He started digging into everything he could find about the team. He looked at the owner. He looked at the players. He looked at the “mix of everything” that defined their culture.
It is rare to see a coach be so open about borrowing from another league. Usually, coaches have too much ego to admit they are looking elsewhere for answers. But Sturm is clearly different. He saw a winning formula and decided to steal it. He was impressed by the “brotherly love” aspect of the team from Philly, ironically enough.
He liked the comments coming out of that locker room. He liked the vibe. He wanted the Bruins to feel that same connection. “We all have to connect,” Sturm said. “We all have to be like a family.” It is a cliché in sports to call a team a family, sure. Every coach says it. But few actually achieve it. Sturm looked at Philadelphia and saw a group that actually lived it. He realized that to get Boston where they needed to be, he had to replicate that emotional infrastructure.
Translating gridiron culture to the Bruins’ ice
The real test, of course, is getting the players to buy in. You can preach about culture all day long, but if the guys in the room roll their eyes, you are finished. Sturm did not just keep his findings to himself. He brought the evidence to the team.
Before Game 1 in Washington, Sturm played a clip from that Eagles video for the Bruins. It was a gamble. Hockey players are creatures of habit. They are skeptical. Showing them a football video could have fallen flat. But it didn’t. Sturm loved it, and it seems the message landed.
“It starts with our leadership,” Sturm explained. He credits the veterans for setting the tone and the young guys for following suit. That is the “buy-in” every coach dreams of. It is the difference between a team that clocks out when the whistle blows and a team that runs through a wall for each other. The Bruins are showing him that right now. They are starting to look like that family he envisioned when he was watching those clips last summer.
The results on the rink for the Bruins
So, is it working? The numbers suggest it is. The Bruins are sitting at a respectable 20-14-0 record. They just came off a dominant win over Utah. The product on the ice looks cohesive. It looks connected.
Sturm mentioned that he wants to keep a certain tradition alive in Boston, something he felt was “missing a little bit in the past.” That is a loaded comment, but it speaks volumes about his goals. He is not just trying to win games; he is trying to fix the soul of the team. He is trying to build a culture that can survive the long, grinding winter of an NHL season.
It has been fun, he says. And you have to believe him. When you see a plan come together, especially a weird plan involving NFL game tape, it has to be satisfying. The Bruins still have a long way to go before they can claim a championship as the Eagles did. But they are modeling their game after a winner, and in a copycat league, that is usually a smart bet. Who knows? Maybe next year, Nick Sirianni will be showing his guys clips of the Bruins.
