Embattled Julien sticks with inconsistent team ‘We’re not pretending to be a top team in this league because we’re not.’ — COACH CLAUDE JULIEN On this season’s Bruins
No practice for ‘weary’ B’s
If Monday afternoon’s terrible home loss to the New York Islanders was one that produced some soul-searching, the Bruins did most of that behind closed doors yesterday after the scheduled 10:30 a.m. practice at Warrior Ice Arena was canceled.
Still, the B’s, who will get back on the horse tonight in Detroit against the Red Wings, felt like a team in crisis yesterday after they frittered away two more points they should have had in the ugly matinee loss at the Garden. And the coach was in a circling-thewagons mode.
Claude Julien canceled practice because he had sensed fatigue both in the 4-0 loss to the Islanders — though he said it wasn’t the only reason for the defeat — and when the team arrived at the Brighton facility. He instead opted to have a video session for the players.
If there was any airing out of those players, Julien did not bring it into the media room. But some of the B’s top players had particularly bad games Monday. Linemates Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak all had minus-3 ratings. David Krejci, David Backes, Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug all were minus-1, and Tuukka Rask allowed a bad goal that set the course for a disastrous afternoon. There also were youthful transgressions: Joe Morrow coughed up a breakaway that led to a goal, and Ryan Spooner was a complete nonfactor.
Julien kept everything inhouse.
“Those are the easy things to do, to go after the top guys. It’s a natural thing to do. But again, I deal with those things internally,” Julien said. “I think now, I know we’ve played a lot of games, but we’re still in the playoff hunt. We try to play with the expectations that we have, and that’s to do the best with what we’ve got. We’ve got a lot of new faces. I talked about that last week. We’re trying to build with what we’ve got here, and we’re going to continue to do that as we move forward.”
The Bruins have been models of inconsistency this season. They have not won more than three games in a row. They haven’t won consecutive games since Dec. 29-31, a home-andhome against the last-place Buffalo Sabres.
Asked about the inconsistency, Julien gave a sobering state of his team.
“(Inconsistency) happens in every sport, mostly with teams that are in the middle of the pack, and we’re not pretending to be a top team in this league because we’re not,” he said. “But we deal with inconsistency because of different reasons. Sometimes it’s injuries, sometimes it’s other reasons.”
But Julien also expressed his big-picture view that, with the right amount of work, this team can make the playoffs. In fact, in the previous five games before the Islanders loss, it appeared as though the team had turned a corner in its play.
“I still believe in this group; never have not believed in this group. Having said that, I understand there’s work to be done, and there’s challenges ahead,” Julien said. “I said that last week . . . we’re trying to build on certain things here, but it’s a challenge. And we knew that from the get-go. We accept it. We accept the challenges in front of us. It doesn’t mean we accept the things that happened (Monday), but we still have to accept that there’s work to be done and we keep doing our work.
“Perfection is not something that you have in sports, yet you have to have perseverance and have a commitment to work on things to make your team better. With this group that we’ve had, from the start of the year until now, we’ve grown. But we’re still not perfect. We’re working on trying to be perfect.”
Julien has seemingly been on the hot seat since he took the Bruins job a decade ago. Most of that talk has been silly. But these are tense times for the B’s, and few can really predict what will happen if this team truly trends toward missing the postseason for the third straight season.
Asked if he had the support of general manager Don Sweeney to complete the hard work in front of him if the results aren’t there, Julien shot back: “You can ask him that.”
Asked the question again, he said, “I feel that I’m doing my job, and I feel that (the bosses) are there, and so far I think we’re working through it together. There’s no questions there.”
But until this team starts winning consistently, other questions will remain.