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Almost two months after their season came to a crashing end, the Boston Bruins have made a decision on head coach Claude Julien, as general manager Don Sweeney has confirmed that Julien and his entire coaching staff will be back in the Hub for the start of the 2015-16 season.
In his eighth season behind the Boston bench, Julien coached the salary cap-strung Bruins to a 41-27-14 mark, good for 96 points but not enough for the club’s eighth straight playoff appearance.
Along with Julien, Sweeney confirmed that assistant coaches Doug Houda, Doug Jarvis, Joe Sacco, and goaltending coach Bob Essensa will remain with the club.
The confirmation that Julien was safe came after weeks of ‘philosophical’ discussions between Sweeney and Julien, reportedly centering around the style that the Bruins, whose seven-season playoff streak came to an end this spring, will have to begin to play if they’re to compete for a Cup moving forward.
“It will start with Claude [Julien], and we’ll dissect a little bit of the personnel pieces that he feels on teams that he’s had in the past that he’s had success with, and what we currently have, what we need to identify that could be missing — and we’ll go from there,… Sweeney said of any changes to the staff at his introductory press conference as the team’s general manager. “From a staff standpoint, there’s a bit of a shift that needs to come — from our transition game, from our ability to create anxiety in other teams, because I think we, at times, had a retreat mentality. You can be the best defensive team in the National Hockey League, and all four teams playing — as I referenced earlier — are very good teams.
“They suppress what we call shot value and scoring opportunities very, very well. Their goaltenders are a big part of it. We have a very good goaltender. But if you don’t create anxiety in the other team and have the ability to score goals in a time fashion or generate quality chances, then you’re going to find yourself chasing the game. And this year, we chased the game too much. We were behind in third periods, we didn’t score enough third period goals as to what we normally have in the past, and there are reasons for that. So the staff, to answer your question — it takes some time to evaluate the pieces that we need to get in place that can take the group forward.…
And if you ask me, keeping Julien behind the bench is the right call for the Black and Gold.
With every other job opening filled, letting Julien go now would be silly for a number of reasons.
One? A guy like Mike Babcock, one of the few coaches I’d consider a potential upgrade over Julien (and even then I’m not so sure when you look at Julien’s recent playoff success versus Babcock’s), was off the market. And even when a guy like Todd McLellan went off the board, I just couldn’t see another coach out there that I’d point to and say yeah, that’s a legitimate upgrade over Julien. Everybody left on the market was either an NHL failure or a league retread making his fourth or fifth stop somewhere in the NHL. At that point, how could you say that it’s an upgrade?
Two? It’d be straight-up disrespectful to let Julien, a coach that’s led you to two Stanley Cup Finals since 2011, walk once every other job opening dropped off the board. He’d deserve a far better fate than that.
Three? You don’t fire a coach after one bad season. It sets a dangerous precedent moving forward. To put that sort of logic into perspective: the Bruins bailed on Tyler Seguin after a down year, no? Granted they felt that there were certain personality issues that couldn’t be worked out here in Boston, but overall, if Seguin produces even a bit more than he did in 2012-13, he’s probably still a Bruin. I think the same should be said about a coach that’s taken you to the postseason in all but one of his eight seasons behind the bench. Hell, Julien has taken you to the second round in all but two of his seven postseason appearances with the Black and Gold, too. You don’t just let that go after one season in which you missed the playoffs by two points en route to recording the most points by a non-playoff team in league history. You can’t overreact to years like that, ‘cause you run an obvious risk of making things worse in the long-term picture by searching for a quick fix that might not be necessary.
Having Julien stick around means that there’s an agreement of sorts as to the tweaks that Sweeney wants him to make. What the tweaks are exactly, though, will be interesting to see. B’s brass obviously wants more speed and aggression in their game, and likely want the young guys to have a bit more of Julien’s trust in late-game situations. In essence, I think they’ll lose their minds if they begin the 2015-16 season with their fourth-liners logging more ice-time than a David Pastrnak or Ryan Spooner.
And keeping Sacco, who was the coach in charge of a Boston power play that finished 18th in the league (17.8%), puts an end to the rumor that the B’s front office wanted to bring former Bruin teammate of Sweeney, Adam Oates, in as an assistant coach to help run the man advantage.
The leash that Julien and his staff are on to begin the season, however, remains up in the air.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com