Kalman: Julien Needs To Get Bruins Singing Different Tune After Uncommitted Loss To Sharks
You've gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are sayin' you'll never win
That's when the grin should start
-Manager Van Buren, "Heart" from the musical "Damn Yankees"
BOSTON (CBS) - One can almost picture Bruins coach Claude Julien belting out the lyrics above. Or at least we can dream that's what he'll be doing at practice Wednesday because he wouldn't divulge the scheme he has to turn the Bruins around after they turned another home game into a goal-scoring exhibition for an opponent Tuesday.
After the Bruins lost to the San Jose Sharks 5-4, they've now allowed 35 goals in nine home games. No wonder Julien is against making the nets bigger or the goaltending equipment smaller.
Based on some of his comments, though, you could draw some conclusions about Julien's ideas to turn his 8-8-1 club into winners.
"There's potential here and if everybody really takes charge of their own jobs, and then shows up every night and are willing to play whatever game is out there – there's some teams that like the speed game, there's some teams that like the game. We've got to be willing to be able to play and adjust to all those kinds of games, but more or less master ours so that it works against any team," Julien said. "Ours has proven in the past to work against any team.
"But right now I don't think we've got the focus or commitment of the whole group. I'm not saying anything that nobody knows here. I think it's pretty obvious."
Commitment or heart, call it what you want. It has to be fixed soon. Maybe, like in the musical, Julien or one of his team leaders is planning on a deal with the devil to get the Bruins on the winning track. Perhaps they should raise their expectations and make a deal with general manager Don Sweeney, who might make a move or two here to bring in some NHL-caliber players to fill in the holes in the roster.
Outside of casting his lot with Satan or going on a demon-like tirade against his players in the dressing room, Julien is going to have to hope that the leadership group can find a way to light a fire under themselves and the rest of the loafers in the group.
"We know that we're not all playing our best every night and we have to," said Bruins forward Brad Marchand, who doesn't wear a letter but might as well because he's one of the few players who speaks with emotion and says anything worth listening to in public. "I think right now, if we're going to get out of this, we're going to start putting a few wins together, we have to have everyone going every night. We can't have any passengers at all. If we have one, it's enough to cost us a game. Right now we have way too many."
Last week's theme was the Bruins' lack of focus. Despite spending almost the entire third period playing in their own end, they seemed to have solved the focus problem in their 3-1 win against the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday.
Then the Bruins took one look at Joe Thornton (three points, including the game-winner) and the Sharks and their focus problems turned into commitment problems. Scoring slumps and defensive struggles with missed assignments can be expected. When a team lacks will, changes have to come.
The last time the Bruins' penalty kill, which allowed the Sharks to score twice in five tries, was this bad, GM Peter Chiarelli shipped Chuck Kobasew out of town and imported Daniel Paille in October 2009. Boston was better the rest of the season when shorthanded. Sweeney has to be on the lookout for a similar move and do it fast. Chris Kelly's not coming back and the defense corps, which again looked like the Keystone Cops, is going to take longer to repair. Of course, the players that won't be replaced were at fault for some of the biggest problems. Patrice Bergeron was on the ice for four goals against. Zdeno Chara was way out of position on Melker Karlsson's even-strength goal. So there's no use just picking on the supporting cast or the penalty killers that don't have Selkes or Norrises.
Julien can't control what Sweeney does with personnel and the coach also can't make any pacts with celestial beings to suddenly make Kevan Miller or Adam McQuaid into reliable puck movers. All he can do is reach into his coaching bag of tricks and do whatever it is he thinks he has to do but can't tell us because he's the coach and we're not.
"We'll see tomorrow," center David Krejci said.
Maybe the Bruins should brush up on those lyrics to "Heart."
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.