By now you’ve heard that Claude Julien will be behind the Bruins bench next season for a tenth straight year. You’ve heard what Don Sweeney and Claude have to say about this move, and as you can read, we at B2B saw little to no sense in firing him, but let’s take a look now at what the Twitterverse had to say about this important announcement.
Some of course were snarky:
So in essence the Bruins assistant coach that worked largely with the defensemen (Doug Houda) is taking the fall here in getting fired.
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) April 14, 2016
The 2016-17 Boston Bruins: Same team, better shooting lanes.
— Michael Hurley (@michaelFhurley) April 14, 2016
Press conference summery: if you take out our awful start and finish things were awesome!!
— Bruins Stats (@bruins_stats) April 14, 2016
But a lot thought that the Bruins made the right call:
Smart move by the Bruins to keep Julien.
— Joe McDonald (@ESPNJoeyMac) April 14, 2016
Don Sweeney is 1-for-1 as he begins the difficult off-season. Keeping Claude Julien is keeping one of the most valuable assets the Bs have.
— Jack Edwards (@RealJackEdwards) April 14, 2016
Far away from Boston but told that B’s leadership recognizes job Claude Julien did with what he had. Staying. pic.twitter.com/AhQQMM5QMF
— Kirk Luedeke (@kluedeke29) April 14, 2016
So what’s next for the Bruins? Don’t worry, Twitter is thinking of that, too!
Based on his work in Providence, Bruce Cassidy has to be strong candidate for promotion to Claude Julien’s staff. Asked him about it today.
— Mark Divver (@MarkDivver) April 14, 2016
His answer: ‘I have not been approached, but I would listen, obviously. …I love the organization. And it’s the best league in the world.’
— Mark Divver (@MarkDivver) April 14, 2016
New Puck Daddy: Claude Julien safe; Cam Neely in trouble in Boston? https://t.co/XKgtJIAWWw
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) April 14, 2016
#MyColumn: Bruins had little choice but to keep Julien, but don’t rule out them still hiring his replacement https://t.co/Nu3n33O9wO
— DJ Bean (@DJ_Bean) April 14, 2016
This is probably going to shape up to be an interesting off-season, personnel-wise. What are your thoughts on this first of what might end up being many, moves?
I feel relieved. Good decision.
I think Dale Arnold summed it up best for me:
Fact
The talk that bothers me more than this; is trading Rask. It makes waaaay more sense to fire CJ than to trade Rask. Not that I wanted either to stop being in Boston, but I was at least open to firing CJ. I mean, I heard out the detractors, gave them some points and decided I was against it. Rask trade talk just highlights how little that person knows anything. If you think you should we should trade Rask, keep it to yourself or people with even a mediocre sense of hockey will look at you like an idiot. Its like telling everyone you know you like Trump because of his wall or think vaccines cause autism.
The thing that gets me is that in the last week I’ve heard people with genuine hockey cred talking about losing confidence in Rask:
Luedeke, Pierre McGuire & Don Cherry.
It’s weird – none of them have had a good argument, but there it is.
I don’t give a crap about the WEEI morning crowd, or Felger & Mazz or SCOC or HFBoards visitors. The he’s not mentally tough argument seems misguided, and based on him not trying to tough out a 3hr performance (60 game minutes) when he’s got an unknown malady and there is another ‘tender who is probably better healthy than Rask is while sick. And most arguments have a built-in ridiculous expectation that because he isn’t having a year like Holtby-2015 or Price-2014, that he sucks.
But when you’ve got actual hockey scout types saying ‘Rask has to take a good long look at his performance’, there is something there.
Rask definitely came into the season really cold, and wasn’t bailing the team out much in the last month, but for a stretch in mid-season, he was keeping them in games that they should have lost.
There’s probably an article worth writing here, but I feel like I’m missing a piece.
At this point, I think trading Rask would mean OK, we are going in for a serious rebuild. They don’t seem to want to do that just yet. The people who were talking about him not caring earlier, I think he still cares, but as a goalie you need to let a lot of stuff roll off your back and if he’s not exploding much anymore, maybe he is trying to keep his focus that way. I don’t know.
I’d be interested in hearing what we could get for Tuukka now, but again, that would signal the start of a complete rebuild, and the return would have to match him.
I hope that Sweeney is aware that Tuukka’s situation with respect to goalies is the same as Claude’s with respect to coaches – there isn’t a better one of either available for the Bruins to acquire right now.
Yeah, I mean if you want to rebuild, you get rid of him. If you want to try to right your ship, then you don’t. It’s pretty much that simple.
Even then, I don’t think you trade him unless your rebuild is going to be something along the lines of a Stalinesque 5-year plan.
I agree in general — there’s quite a few miles you can put on Tuukka yet. $7M is a lot of cap money to sink into a goalie if you aren’t going to contend, but if you intend to contend any time soon, that is the sort of money you can expect to spend to get a high-end established goalie.
I dunno about Cassidy getting the Assistant nod is a good move for him- it generally seems that head coach in the AHL is a closer step to NHL Head Coach than NHL Assistant is. I like DJ Bean’s idea for hiring Nate Leaman as the new assistant.
Of course, theres no certainty that we don’t have 3 Assistant’s jobs open- Sweeney did make it clear that no decisions have been made on Jarvis and Sacco, and neither have contracts right now
He did say, and I didn’t add it cause I thought the Tweet list was getting plenty long, that if they talked to him about it, he’d listen, but as of now, he is fine in PVD.