BOSTON BRUINS HEAD COACH CLAUDE JULIEN POSTGAME
On how he is feeling right now…
Drained, obviously is probably the key word. The emotions of this game had us going in all kinds of directions. I told the guys after the game that they didn’t let me down with the Jekyll-and-Hyde comment because in one game they were able to show that.
On what he told the players after the game…
I thought it was a good character win. When you’re down 4-1 with eight minutes left and get yourself back in the game to make it 4-2 – we shouldn’t forget that Tuukka [Rask] made a big save on that breakaway that would have made it 5-2. He kept us in there. Geoff Ward, my assistant coach, has done a great job with designing some plays with the extra attacker. We were able to score a couple tonight, one last night, and got ourselves back in the game. After that third period, I think our guys felt pretty good about our chances of winning and obviously we felt the momentum going our way, we felt the confidence. And, obviously, we felt the desire to go out there and end it on that positive note.
On what the victory means for his team going forward…
Well, that’s the one thing that I’m hoping, that we can grab that momentum that we had at the end and carry it into the next series. We know we have to be better, we can’t keep playing well in spurts and not so well in other spurts. There’s got to be some consistency. In the year we won, we had a 60-minute effort, that was our goal. We had more consistency throughout our whole game and right now we’re still battling with some inconsistency in our game, whether it’s one game to another, whether it’s from period to period, or shift to shift. We have to be a little better there and we’re aware of that.
On if he has any idea where that game stacks up with others he has been involved in…
Probably the most draining I would say, to be honest with you. There was a time halfway through the second there was a lot of frustration on the bench. At the 10-minute timeout, we kind of regrouped our guys and talked to them about having to switch our frustration to more of a determination and a focus. There was a lot of emotion throughout the whole night and there was a lot of emotion from last night to tonight, a lot of things happening. I give my players a lot of credit for handling what happened last night, from the loss to after the game, to getting here today and being able to handle that and push those distractions aside enough to find a way to win a real important hockey game.
On Patrice Bergeron…
I really was happy for him. He’s a hard worker, reliable player that we lean on every game, every year. I don’t think his stats were indicative of his series so far. For him to come up big like that when it really counted, I think is fitting for Patrice Bergeron.
On his thoughts of the Toronto Maple Leafs season…
Absolutely. You can’t walk away from here without honestly and sincerely giving the other team credit; I said that all along. They had us on the ropes, we’re not going to sit here and lie, they had us on the ropes. They’re a team that believes in themselves. I saw a team with a lot of players getting out of their comfort zone and doing what it took. I have no doubt they’ll grow from that. The run that they gave us was unbelievable. At the same time, we talk about the respect of that team, we finished fourth, they finished fifth; they weren’t that far away from us. I think for people who thought it would be lopsided, they were certainly a team that proved that it wasn’t going to be a lopsided series. I saw a team grow, I think Randy [Carlyle] will tell you the same thing about his team. As an opposing coach, I saw that team get better and better. We’re glad that we’ve gotten rid of them because they kept getting better.
On what the players and coaches were saying on the bench when the team got down 4-1…
Well, you have to stay in the moment. We felt going into the third period that if we could get a goal, we’d get some momentum going. Unfortunately it didn’t pan out the way we wanted to because they ended up scoring two and made it 4-1. Still, once we scored the second goal and we looked at the clock, we felt that we still had time. It was just a matter of staying composed and the experience we talked about throughout the whole series, that’s when it’s got to come through and it did.
On the job his defenseman did after Dennis Seidenberg went down…
I think [Chara] played about 36 minutes tonight or something like that. Those guys were so used to seeing those guys play those minutes more or less, and be able to handle it. But you have to find a way to give credit to those two young guys on the back end—Hamilton and obviously Bartkowski. [Matt] Bartkowski was moving the puck and carrying it so well tonight, and he scored a big goal for us. I saw Dougie Hamilton get more and more comfortable as the game went on as far as carrying the puck and making plays. You talk about people coming in, well we were minus three real good veterans in our back end, so that’s half your core, and those guys come in and do a heck of a job. They deserve a lot of credit, but again, we’re so used to a guy like Zdeno doing it night after night, sometimes we don’t give him the credit he deserves. If it’s not for Zdeno—the way he played tonight—we’re not sitting here going to the next round.
On an update on Seidenberg…
We’ll know better tomorrow whether it’s a short-term, or long-term.
On Seidenberg trying to continue after he was injured…
He wanted to, but when he couldn’t, it was better to take it out than to make it worse. It wouldn’t have helped us, plus, it would have made his injury probably even worse.
On what he tells his team during the intermission before overtime…
I think the guys were pretty focused on determined to finish it off. The only thing a coach says—and I said that before—is you can’t pass up on shots. You have to shoot everything you can, and you have to play on your toes, not on your heels. You have to play to win, and if you do that, you’re giving yourself a chance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s not a very complicated thing as you’ve seen, and in overtime, any shot on net is a good shot. Our guys did a great job. Tyler [Seguin], who has been criticized a lot this series, if you watched the winning goal did one heck of a job in front of that net before he [Bergeron] puts it in.
On his thoughts about this group of players and how special it has been…
Like I said earlier, they certainly keep you in check. I’m a tired coach, I can tell you that much. Trying to really find a way to get these guys to give us what we want out of them, and we make it tough on ourselves. We’re being honest here, not being able to close it in Game 5; we’ve have trouble. We’ve always had trouble with the killer-instinct. But that’s maybe a fault of ours, but a strength of ours is the character you saw tonight. There’s that fault, and then there’s that character. Somewhere along the way, you try to fix the faults, and hopefully keep that character going. That’s the biggest challenge for me right now.
On how much tonight was a testament to his team’s chemistry…
It certainly helped. Tonight was one of those nights where you saw a few line changes. In the start of the third, I put [Seguin] up on a line with [David] Krejci because I didn’t think that line was doing much. And then when I put Horton back out there, all of a sudden he caught fire. [Jaromir] Jagr I thought did a decent job on that other line. The thing with Jaromir [Jagr] too is he’s a unique player, and he plays a certain style I think is always important for guys playing with him to understand what he’s trying to do. That’s why he’s been such a great player. He spent a lot of time doing video with [Rich] Peverley and [Chris] Kelly as far as getting them to understand how he plays deep in the zone with everything else, and we thought we’re making progress there. That line was starting to build some chemistry, was getting chances, but then you get to Game 7 and as much as you hate tearing that line apart, that one line hadn’t been producing, and that was [Bergeron’s] line, so we made the switch and tried to do that. I thought it was a decent line for us tonight. But again, you look at the winning goal, and it’s the same old three guys: [Bergeron], [Seguin], and [Brad] Marchand on the ice for the winning goal. All of that was because we had a couple of right-wingers—[Nathan] Horton and [Jagr]—with skate issues. So a little bit by accident you put certain guys together who have played, and then the results.
