Bruins made the right call by firing Claude Julien — but the timing was wrong
COMMENTARY
Among the many accomplishments that Claude Julien can boast about during his 10 years spent in Boston, there’s now one, final achievement.
He leaves the Bruins full-circle from his arrival.
Not only is it once again the dysfunctional, underachieving franchise that was handed to Julien in 2007, but the Bruins can clearly add the following to their current symptoms chart: Gutless. Disrespectful. Exploitable.
After all, the team’s spineless decision to relieve head coach Julien of his coaching duties, with Tuesday’s press conference scheduled during the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory parade, allows for hiding behind only a transparent Black and Gold curtain.
It was time for Julien to go. But he deserved better on the way out.
What the Bruins gave him instead was an appreciation that reeked of cowardice and an inherent inability to explain the franchise’s institutional direction.
At least they didn’t make him catch a taxi to the airport like Florida did poor Gerard Gallant.
Of course, Gallant was not the Panthers’ all-time coaching victories leader, and he never won Miami a Stanley Cup title.
“Sort of like the weather in New England, I did not necessarily pick this day to take away from a great accomplishment by the New England Patriots,” Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said upon arrival to his (delayed) press conference Tuesday morning.
“Take away from.” Yeah, those million or so people in the streets of the city nearly didn’t show up because the Bruins fired Claude Julien.
Sweeney insisted that he wasn’t trying to “mute” the news by timing the announcement during the parade, throwing the public relations department under the bus in describing that team’s need to address its decision with some immediacy. He also apologized to the media on hand that they weren’t able to watch Duck Boats roll down Boylston Street.
“But outside of that, I don’t believe I’m downplaying the impact of this decision and how difficult it was at all to be honest,” Sweeney said.
The Bruins released other, brief, farewells to Julien from team executives.
“I am confident in the direction and vision that Don has for our team, and look forward to seeing the results on the ice,” team owner Jeremy Jacobs said in a statement.
“As a management team, we set a high standard for ourselves, and I believe that our organization is moving in the right direction towards meeting and exceeding those standards,” Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs said in a statement.
“This decision does not in any way diminish Claude’s legacy as a Bruins coach. I would like to wish him and his family all the best moving forward,” Bruins president Cam Neely said in a statement.
I hope they made the parade.
But while the timing of all this was abhorrent, the decision was not.
Julien is going to have his pom-pom crew weeping on his way out of town, but this was still a Bruins team in transition, one with a desperate need for different leadership behind the bench. This is a team that is flailing through the current hockey season, one point out of a playoff spot and coming off a loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs over the weekend that ended with another trademarked breakdown. After back-to-back late-season chokes and with a team seemingly headed in the same direction in 2017, the need for change was discernible.
Whether that can be achieved with new interim head coach Bruce Cassidy remains to be seen.
“I think there’s an opportunity for a new set of eyes to come in and a new voice for our players to sort of start to hear, and hopefully their ears are perked up,” Sweeney said.
OK, but it isn’t like Cassidy is exactly “new.” Players Torey Krug, Colin Miller, Kevan Miller, Joe Morrow, David Pastrnak, Ryan Spooner, and Frank Vatrano were all under his tutelage with the Providence Bruins, and it isn’t exactly like Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, and Brad Marchand need a new voice to get themselves in gear.
“It was a communication level that I could not get past the fact that I wasn’t committed in my own mind too short of going beyond where we are right now with Claude,” Sweeney said. “Where we are as an organization, I don’t know if those two things lined up, as to the level of success he’s had, the way we were playing, if the roster wasn’t built — wasn’t necessarily a complete and finished product.
“Are we an elite team? No. We’re a very competitive team, which we were last year and as I described, we have areas and gaps in our game that exist. Whether that’s strictly personnel-related or whether those are some tweaks that we need to make, and continue to make, that’s what’s going to unfold here.”
Julien was a great coach here, but the time had simply come, this despite his never-ending defenders in the media who simply point to the roster as one that has an impossible structure for winning in the NHL. Well, we’re about to find out if they’re right. If they are, then Sweeney is next on the firing line.
But Julien wasn’t returning after this season anyhow, opening the door for the Bruins to make a last-gasp assessment of what they have on their roster and in their organization as we hurtle toward the trading deadline in a few weeks. Status quo was going to do nothing for the Boston Bruins this season, nor next.
“It’s an important period of time that we can continue to allow it unfold instead of waiting until season’s end just seeing if we hadn’t done nothing, whether or not it would have worked,” Sweeney said while Patriots players were punting foam footballs into crowds 10-deep in the city of Boston. It wasn’t so long ago the Bruins were in the same position, of course.
When the team was on its Stanley Cup runs in 2011 and 2013, perhaps only the Patriots surpassed them in popularity. The Red Sox had yet to secure John Farrell’s job for life with their miracle World Series win in 2013, and Mookie Betts was still a middling prospect. The Celtics were in transition from the Big Three to…well, we’re still kind of waiting.
Today, just like they were when Julien arrived a decade ago, they’re the least-discussed professional team this side of the Revolution.
They made sure that was the case on Tuesday.
“We never run or hide,” Sweeney said. “The expectations have not changed.”
Julien was one of the best coaches the Bruins have ever hired.
But everything has a shelf life, including the Bruins’ rise from irrelevancy.
Welcome back.
