BOSTON — Claude Julien knows that his return to Boston after a decade of coaching the Bruins can’t be considered just another game.
As much as Julien would like to pretend there’s nothing more to Wednesday’s game between his Montreal Canadiens and the Bruins than the two precious points available to his team, during a recent one-on-one with Sportsnet he acknowledged the occasion will be a special one.
“There will be butterflies, there’s no doubt about it,” Julien explained. “You don’t spend 10 years in a city you enjoyed coaching in and had success in, one you built a family life in, without feeling something about it. I have a lot of respect for that city. I love that city.
“A city that supports four major teams the way they do… you have to give them credit for that. Baseball, football, basketball — the buildings are always full. It’s a great sports town. There’s a lot of jealousy from other cities about all the championships, but the fans deserve them and the teams earned them.”
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Julien’s return should be significant for Bruins fans, too. They lived the highs and lows with Julien as he forged his way to becoming the winningest coach in Bruins history, including a Stanley Cup in 2011. They’ve waited over 11 months since his firing to welcome him back at TD Garden.
Julien’s 2008 Bruins — a club that had no business making playoffs — is a group and a memory he holds dear. That year his Bruins pushed the East-leading Canadiens to the brink of elimination in a first-round, seven-game series loss. He considers the series a “major overachievement,” and a big stepping stone toward the Bruins recapturing the ‘big, bad’ identity associated with it during its most successful periods in the past.
Julien also pointed to a key moment in his development as a winning coach — one that comes sharply into focus whenever he thinks of his time in Boston.
“A player was struggling for a week or two,” Julien said. “I called him into my office, and I remember this and will always remember this. For some reason the first thing I did was ask him if everything was OK. And as it turned out, his mother had been diagnosed with cancer and it wasn’t good, and it affected him. To me, that explained a lot of his play. So instead of bringing him in to tell him I wasn’t happy with his play and then finding out afterwards, I was happy I asked him that question.
“I learned no matter what you do, you treat players as people first before you treat them as players.”
His compassion in moments like that made him a beloved figure with his players in Boston.
“I could sense how much it meant to the people of Boston,” Julien said in response to a question about what it meant to him to achieve his lifelong dream of winning a Cup. “You see the effect you had on the fans and the city and everything else, and that’s what I had my focus on. Having your name on the Cup somehow was secondary to that. It’s just the way I feel.
“And when you look at your players and all the work they put in there, or you look at a trainer who was there for over 20 years and never thought he’d see a Cup and he’s hugging you and crying like a baby — the impact it had on everybody else really meant the most to me.”
Julien performed under tremendous pressure—and unrelenting scrutiny at times — in Boston, which makes him now appreciate his longevity with the franchise that much more.
“I know about the white noise that surrounded me,” Julien said, referring to the general consensus he would be fired had the Bruins lost their 2011 first-round playoff series against Montreal after losing their first two games at home. Or had Boston lost its first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2013 after falling behind in the series 3-1.
The people of Boston may have known little of Julien’s galvanizing speech to the players following the Bruins’ Game 2 loss in 2011, but they witnessed his leadership after a win in Game 3 — when he decided to take the team out of Montreal and to Lake Placid, N.Y., for the two days leading to Game 4.
“I knew staying in Montreal for two days wasn’t a good idea,” he explained. “We just needed to get away somewhere close, where it wasn’t too busy. I think the guys really were able to rest, relax and get away from all the pressure of the playoffs. We came back refreshed and won the game. The rest is history.”
Letting the players take care of their own predicament against the Leafs in 2013 was an example of Julien’s versatility. He knew when to take his hands off, and his decision to do so gave him a memory that never strays far from his mind — one that will likely surface as the Bruins pay tribute to him Wednesday.
“When you feel that the room’s got control of themselves and you know they’re in the right place, then you back off,” Julien said. “I give a lot of credit to Milan Lucic, who stepped in front of the bench during a TV timeout and yelled. The F-bomb came out. We were down 4-1 in the third period and he said, ‘We’ve got lots of time here and let’s [expletive] go.’
“Then he, Nathan Horton and David Krejci went out there the very next shift and scored and got us back in the game. They got the ball rolling, and then all I can say is that as we scored and scored again, and you could really feel the Leafs tightening up. Panic was there, and you could feel the building and feel the belief.
“It’s another situation where you walk out of there and realize how thin the margin of error is. If we don’t win that game, there’s a good chance I’ve coached my last one in Boston.”
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Julien would go on to coach another 329 games with the organization after that Game 7, and though things didn’t end as he had hoped, he enjoyed far more triumphs than tribulations in Boston.
“I was fortunate to last that long in a city like Boston,” Julien said. “You can only hope for that. It just makes your job so much more fun and makes you so appreciative.”
Feelings that will resonate with Julien throughout a game that will be far different than any other he coaches this season.
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