St. Pierre

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — If it seems like every time you see Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien makes a switch of personnel on his lines the move pays off, you’re eyes do not deceive you.

Moving to David Krejci’s line helped awaken Marco Sturm and then Michael Ryder. Moving to Stephane Yelle’s line jump started Milan Lucic, and the subsequent switch of Chuck Kobasew to Marc Savard’s line made an impressive impact.

Whether by design or forced by injury, Julien’s shuffles have all brought money-winning hands. In the Bruins’ 2-1 win over the New York Islanders tonight at Nassau Coliseum, Julien’s swap of two players on his third and fourth lines paid off handsomely.

Vladimir Sobotka started the night on a line with Yelle and Petteri Nokelainen, while Byron Bitz began the night flanking Martin St. Pierre along with Shawn Thornton. When the second period started, Sobotka and Bitz switch spots — a change that remained for the rest of the evening. (more…)

Julien

WILMINGTON,  Mass. — It seems that Montreal winger Andrei Kostitsyn’s hit from behind on Boston defenseman Aaron Ward last night has provided a little more fuel for the fire roaring in the rivalry between Bruins head coach Claude Julien and Canadiens bench boss Guy Carbonneau.

The hit resulted in a five-minute boarding penalty, which turned the momentum in the Bruins’ favor. Zdeno Chara scored the game-winning goal while Kostitsyn was in the box.

After the game, Carbonneau had this to say:

“I didn’t think it should’ve been a major; in fact, I’ve looked at it and I don’t think it was a penalty.”

You can read the rest of Pat Hickey’s story in the Montreal Gazette.

After the game, Julien expressed his disappointment with the hit and the fact that, he said, Kostitsyn had throw similar hits in the past. Today Julien lessened his anger but still didn’t side with his Habs counterpart and future All-Star Game coaching partner.

“I don’t think it was a vicious hit, as far as the league needs to look into it. The referee made a decision. And I think, honestly, that call could’ve gone either way,” Julien said today after his team’s optional on-ice practice.

When informed of Carbonneau’s opinion, Julien then said: “Maybe (it should’ve been) a two instead of a five. Saying everything is clean is maybe not that accurate. We’re trying to cut down on hits from behind.”

Last season, Julien and Carbonneau exchanged heated words from bench to bench during a March game. And then there were plenty of veiled verbal attacks during the seven-game playoff series in April. Now this. Oh to be a fly on the wall at the first Eastern Conference coaches’ meeting in Montreal next weekend.

Carbonneau

The Montreal media will have a field day with this one.

By virtue of their 5-4 win over Washington last night in Montreal, the Canadiens clinched the second-best points percentage in the Eastern Conference — earning the All-Star assistant coach’s position for their head coach Guy Carbonneau. Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette has the story.

That means that the Habs bench boss will aid Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien, who will be the East’s head coach by virtue of Boston’s conference-best points percentage, at the 2009 NHL All-Star Game in Montreal Jan. 25. It also means that two bitter rivals will have to share the bench. When Julien was fired by Montreal in February 2006, it was done with the intent of making way for Carbonneau to take the reins (although general manager Bob Gainey initially took over on an interim basis).

And last season, the Bruins and Habs met 15 times, including seven in the playoffs — with plenty of verbal jabs and blows flying back in forth. The rivalry really began to cook in the regular season when Julien swapped angry words with both Carbonneau and Montreal assistant Kirk Muller late in one game at the Bell Center. Let the drama begin!

Also in today’s Gazette, Red Fisher commends the Canadiens’ depth.

Julien

BOSTON — The NHL today officially announced what thebruinsblog.net already told you a week ago — Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien will be the head coach of the Eastern Conference All-Star team in Montreal Jan. 25.

The All-Star coaches are selected from the teams in each conference with the best points percentage. San Jose’s Todd McLellan will be the coach for the West.

Prior to the official announcement, Julien had refused to comment on the inevitable All-Star berth. Today he couldn’t avoid reacting to the honor.

“I think it’s a great honor obviously,” Julien said before the game today at TD Banknorth Garden. “Those kind of things, honestly, it’s a great honor but it’s caused by the people around you. It’s the players. The head coach always gets the credit, yet his assistant coaches around him do an unbelievable job. And they make him look good as well. I think going there and representing our team is actually the right term – because it’s about everybody around me that I got the opportunity go to that game.”

The assistant coach slot on Julien’s staff will be filled by either Montreal’s Guy Carbonneau or Washington’s Bruce Boudreau, whose teams face one another tonight. The winner earns the berth. Either way, it’s hard to imagine the NHL not recognizing Carbonneau,  of the host Canadiens, in some way.

And in some way it’ll be a homecoming for Julien, who started his NHL coaching career in Montreal before he was fired in the winter of 2006.

“I know for a fact that I left there on good terms with everybody and whether it was the organization, the media, everything else, it was just one of those situations where you walk away from one job and jump into another one,” Julien said.

Detroit’s Mike Babcock,  McLellan’s former boss with the Red Wings, will be the Western Conference assistant coach.

Lemaire

BOSTON — After his team went through its morning skate at TD Banknorth Garden in preparation for its match-up with the Boston Bruins, Minnesota Wild head coach Jacques Lemaire — like most visiting coaches — was asked what he has liked about the Bruins’ play this season.

He echoed the sentiments of many of the other opposing bench bosses — commending the Bruins’ speed and skill and depth.  But then I asked him what he thought of the job head coach Claude Julien, a fellow former Montreal Canadiens coach, has done. And Lemaire really started to turn on the praise. (more…)

Julien

WILMINGTON — Although thebruinsblog.net proved that he cannot be passed in the race to be the Eastern Conference All-Star head coach, Boston Bruins bench boss Claude Julien declined comment on the matter today after his team’s practice at Ristuccia Arena.

“Not officially,”  Julien defiantly said when asked his reaction to coaching the All-Stars.  “There’s no announcement, I’m not talking about it.”

The coach is selected based on the team with the best points percentage after games of Jan. 10 and no team in the East can catch Julien and the Bruins. The game will be played in Montreal Jan. 25.

Julien

One loss by the Boston Bruins after a 10-game winning streak isn’t going to derail the club’s season. And the defeat to Buffalo Saturday also didn’t cost head coach Claude Julien a personal accolade, as after a brief crunch of the numbers thebruinsblog.net can confirm that the Bruins’ bench boss will be behind the Eastern Conference All-Star Team bench in Montreal Jan. 25.

The coach of the team in each conference with the best points percentage after games of Jan. 10 will earn the nod. The Bruins currently sit with 62 points through 39 games, and they have three games in the week ahead. Even if they lose all three, they’d have accumulated 62 of a possible 84 points for a percentage of .7381.

The closest competitor, Washington, has 55 points in its 40 games. The Caps also have just three games on this week’s docket — and wins in those games would give them 61 of a possible 86 for a percentage of just .7093.

The NHL will make an official announcement after those Jan. 10 games. (more…)

Thornton

Last week, Dave Caldwell of the New York Times detailed how fighting majors in the NHL are up 15 percent from last season and 75 percent over three years ago.

Oddly enough, the Boston Bruins — widely accepted as one of the toughest teams in the NHL — aren’t following that trend. Last season through Dec. 29, the Bruins had compiled 29 fighting majors, according to hockeyfights.com. The Bruins finished the regular season with 52 fighting majors. (more…)

Julien

WILMINGTON, Mass. — As the Toronto Maple Leafs proved last night, pulling the goaltender doesn’t always solve a team’s problems.

The Leafs made the move from Vesa Toskala to Curtis Joseph with results so disastrous they went back to Toskala for the third period. Of course, the Boston Bruins benefited from their own goaltender switch from Tim Thomas to Manny Fernandez for the game’s final 20 minutes. It was the first time the Bruins had changed goaltenders during a game this season, and the fifth and sixth times a Bruins opponent has made a switch (all to a negative result).

Today after practice, Bruins head coach Claude Julien acknowledged that deciding to make that in-game goaltender change is one of the tougher aspects of his job.

“It’s never a good situation because, first of all, if you do it in the middle of a period it’s obvious to everybody. If you do it at the end of a period, obviously they’ve announced the change. So it’s never fun for the goaltender to hear himself being pulled out. But it still goes back to every tough decision a coach has to make you’ve got to make it for the right reasons. That’s what I did yesterday, I tried to bring some attention to our team and give Timmy a break for a night where pucks seemed to be getting by him and nothing seemed to be hitting him. Some other nights, there’s been a bunch of deflections but they were hitting him. So it’s just the nature of the game and some nights it goes your way and some nights it doesn’t.”

Julien

When the Boston Bruins hit the ice tomorrow night for their match-up with Toronto, it’ll be their first game since last Saturday’s win over Atlanta.

Most of the Bruins spent two of the four days off the ice — with only a handful of  players taking advantage of an optional skate Tuesday and everyone taking Monday off. But head coach Claude Julien isn’t worried about his team losing its edge, especially after what he saw in today’s practice at Ristuccia Arena in Wilmington.

“I thought we had a good practice today. We had a lot of things, some fine-tuning, a little bit of competing drills and that kind of stuff,” Julien said after practice. “I think, when you look back at what we had gone through, two days off the ice was probably a good thing for them at this stage. Yesterday they had a pretty good off-ice workout. We really felt that mentally, physically it was the right thing to do. I thought they looked like they had energy. And tomorrow again, a good morning skate, and hopefully be ready for tomorrow night.”

Julien

Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien said that today’s practice was constructive in light of the team’s shaky effort in Monday night’s win over Tampa Bay.

“I think the guys understood that we didn’t really have a good second half and we needed to rectify those things because Washington is a pretty good hockey club,” he said before the team departed for our nation’s capital. “Even though they have a lot of injuries, they’ve found ways to win hockey games.  So it’s a matter of us — we talked about mental toughness and mental toughness is not just through tough times, but also through good times. When you take a 3-0 lead, you have to be mentally tough enough to sustain your game plan for 60 minutes and not drift away from it, which I thought we did last night.”

Although gambling on the NHL is discouraged, you could’ve received long odds on wagering that the Boston Bruins would emerge from their 10-game-in-18-night stretch with an 8-1-1 record.

But after the Bruins took down the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings to end the difficult stretch of game Saturday, you would’ve been able to cash in on that bet. The Bruins lost just once in regulation (at Buffalo) and once in a shootout (at New York) during the group of games that amounted to a simulation of a playoff series with an average of one game every other night. (more…)

The Bruins held Slap Shot Night tonight at the TD Banknorth Garden to honor what’s widely regarded as the best hockey movie ever. And the Hanson Bros. own Steve Carlson was in the house for the festivities. Before the game, he recalled the one season (1987-88) that he was an assistant coach with the Baltimore Skipjacks of the American Hockey League and Bruins head coach Claude Julien was a player on the squad.

“Thank God I only had him for one year,” said Carlson with his tongue firmly in his cheek. “What’s good about coaching Claude is, if we needed an extra pilon, we just let him out there.”

“Claude was a good hockey player, a hard-working hockey player. But I’m glad I only had him for one year. Thanks God he’s telling his players, ‘Do as I say not as I did’ because they’d be walking around him all night.”

Earlier, Carlson had some serious praise for his former pupil’s job with the Bruins.

“When you have four lines that work hard, play the system, you don’t have to worry about nothing because you can outwork the other team. Man for man, Boston doesn’t have the best team in the league. But I guarantee you, they’re going to be one of the hardest working teams in the league. And that’s what’s going to get them over the top.”