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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: BRUINS v BLACKHAWKSJune 20, 2013Claude JulienCHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions for Claude. Q. After the game last night, you were asked how you were doing, you naturally said you've been better. Then you described your team's play as average. Today how is your mood, and if your team play was average last night and you still made it to overtime and had some chances, how do you feel moving forward? COACH JULIEN: Do I look like a happy guy? Every time you ask that first question you put me in a bad mood. (Laughing). I mean, this is‑‑ I said it last night, you move on. It's one loss. We've got two wins, we've got two losses. It's about preparing for the next game, and our mood is fine. Who wouldn't be happy to be in the Stanley Cup Finals? You've got to remember where we are and what's at stake here, and certainly not hang your head over a loss. Last time I looked it was an overtime loss, so it's not like we didn't play well, but it's not like we were pushed out of a game here. We had a chance to win that anyways. Q. Did you sense a jolt in your team throughout the series at any point with getting all this push‑back after what you did against Pittsburgh and New York or were you prepared for it? COACH JULIEN: No, I think we were prepared for a tough series. What it is right now is what we expected. I said it all along, I was a little surprised that Pittsburgh was four straight, and I explained why. I thought some games could have gone a different direction. But what's happening right now I think is very fitting. Anybody who's watched this series so far probably realizes that both these teams are pretty well‑balanced and match up well against each other. For fans that are watching hockey, I think that's what they want to see, and that's what we're providing, both teams are. So from our end of it, we're working on being a successful team, but I think for a hockey fan, I would have to think that three games in overtime and being this close would be something that would be great for the game. Q. A lot of players are talking about how the pace of that game kind of favored Chicago in that some of it came from you guys not moving your feet early. What I want to know is if both teams are playing their best, how does the pace of the game get settled? COACH JULIEN: I think if both teams play their best, you're going to have an exciting game anyways. I think you saw that in some of the games so far in this series, that it was close, low‑scoring I know at that point. But I'm not going to sit here and complain about the high scoring. My point is on our game, the mistakes that we made, or the decision‑making wasn't very good last night, and that's not just on goals against. It was a lot of it, even in the neutral zone. I thought we gave them a lot of space. It doesn't mean they don't have a pace to their game, but it means we gave them too many options. And the neutral zone for me, not just on the forecheck but even our neutral zone on the counter wasn't very good. So our counterattack wasn't as good as it could have been or should have been in regards to that. So when we talk about neutral zone, we're not talking about closing a game up and seeing a boring game. We're talking about doing something so that we can regain possession of the puck. And when we regain possession of the puck, we want to get that puck moving in the right direction so we can get a good pace to our game. Sometimes it's misconstrued, I guess, that the neutral zone is about slowing everything down. It's about taking options away. I think Chicago did a great job last night. They put pucks in deep, and they came after us. They were forcing us very well. And because they got some speed in the neutral zone, it didn't mean they had to make plays, but they put pucks in the right places. Q. Kind of on the same topic, you talked yesterday about not playing Bruins hockey. How important is it for you guys to have that style of play in the game, because it looked like when you did open things up to come back, you were able to skate with them. COACH JULIEN: Well, you know, again, it depends‑‑ you're talking about Bruins hockey. I'm talking about our team's game. Because people construed, again, Bruins hockey as being rough and tumble and not much else. But I talk about not playing our game, and our game was more, as I mentioned, getting our transition game going in a better direction. A lot of times we just were standing still, weren't moving. That's part of what we were talking about, the pace of the game. When we received passes we were standing still, either stopped because we didn't move it up quick enough, and even in the neutral zone on the forecheck, again, we weren't pushing players to the areas where they either had to really dump it in where we could get it back or we gave them too much space where they were able to come right through it and get a real good attack going. That's what I meant by Bruins hockey, or our game. At the same time we scored five goals. We should be happy with that. The goals that we gave a lot of times were just guys not being in the right place where they should have been. Instead of stopping in our positions, we did a lot of curling last night, which is usually a sign of our team struggling. Q.  But a 6‑5 game, is that something that is not advantageous to you? COACH JULIEN: Well, 6‑5 game, it could have been 6‑5 for us so we wouldn't have been talking about advantageous. It's almost like saying we're not allowed to score or we don't want to score, and that's not right. I'd like to win 5‑1 instead of losing 6‑5, but we want to score. It's probably the way we gave some of the goals up. They're a good team, I've said that all along, and they're going to get their chances. We've just got to minimize them. Q. You often talk about layers and structure. What happened last night, did they peel away at their layers or was that more self‑inflicted? COACH JULIEN: No, we peeled away a lot of times. Let's not take credit away from Chicago, they played an outstanding game last night. They deserved to win because they were the better team last night. I'm talking about my team and what I think my team could have done better. But it doesn't take away from them having played a really solid game. Q. Just kind of on a related, they got off the first seven or eight shots. Seemed like it took you guys a while to find your game and get going. Just in terms of when the pace did get there, did it feel like you hadn't gotten the chance to establish your game or you didn't establish your game early and that kind of fed into what happened later? COACH JULIEN: Yeah, I think if there's one thing in this series so far, they've definitely had the better starts. And that's an area where we keep talking about having a better start. But they've had the advantage on us in that department, and we're working on hopefully having some better starts. Like I said, there's a maximum of three games left. Hopefully we're‑‑ we get better starts in those games. Q. Sometimes plus/minus isn't indicative of how a player played the game, but when you see Zdeno in a minus 3, was that indicative of his game or was that overall the way the team ended up playing? And was putting Kane and Toews back together a factor? COACH JULIEN: Well, again, putting them together gave them a good boost. At the same time I'm not going to say it was a tough game for Zdeno more than you have to look at where the mistake was made and where the goals came from. And sometimes you just happen to be on the ice for those goals against. Same thing with Patrice Bergeron. Was Patrice responsible for a goal against last night? I don't think so. But he was a minus player. So I think you have to look at the game itself and look at where the mistake came from before you start dictating whether a guy was struggling, not based on the plus/minuses. It works the other way around. I've seen guys that were plus players and I didn't think they were good players. I think he was okay. There's no doubt they went after him and he was okay because our whole team was okay. I don't think anybody on our team can stand up today and say I thought I had a great game, and that's why we're sitting here today tied 2‑all. Q. You talked about the need to move on, but with human nature being what it is, sometimes it's hard not to think about some of the things that just happened. Is it hard for you to coach, and a player, to put those things behind you or is it part of the mindset of what you do? COACH JULIEN: It is part of the mindset. You have to. I think it's important that you put yourself in that position and you believe that you have to put that game aside because otherwise you'll just drag it on for a couple of days. I don't think anything positive will come out of just worrying about what happened last night. Like anything else, we could have lost 10‑0 or you lose in overtime. A loss is a loss in the Playoffs. You hear people saying that all the time. We just have to look at ourselves here, what can we do to be better for the next game versus what could we have done better last night. Nothing you can do about it today, but you can do something about if for the next game. Q. Five goals seems like a million in the Playoffs. With that being said, going forward, knowing that you can score that many if you can solve some of the defensive problems, do you take some positives away from last night? COACH JULIEN: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of positives to take from last night. The loss really is what's really negative, maybe the fact that we didn't play as well as we could have. But at the same time, I said it last night, you give credit to guys for bouncing back twice from two‑goal deficits and getting ourselves back in the game. A lot of times you could have seen the game being over at that point. But our guys showed a lot of character. And, you know, we scored some power play goals. Penalty kill was good again, although there was a goal scored on that. But there's a lot of positive, I think, to take from that game. Like I said, if you take the positives and you keep working with that and just work on the little negatives that we need to fix, it's not as big of an issue as everybody thinks it is. Q. Rich Peverley, did you see boost in his game after scoring? COACH JULIEN: Yeah, Rich was skating well last night. That's why a few times I bumped him up. He was taking some face‑offs for him, and the guy has got a really good quick release on his shot. So it was nice to see him score that goal. Q. I think there's no doubt you guys have proven you can skate with Chicago. The speed seems to be there on each side. But you seemed to take offense earlier in one of your answers about what we consider to be Bruins hockey. COACH JULIEN: Am I wrong? Q. Well, no, but is it still not the case when you guys are at your best you establish your forecheck, pound the D, produce turnovers that way. You don't really want to go up‑and‑down all night? COACH JULIEN: Absolutely not. I don't know if Joel wants that, too. You might have to ask him that. I don't think any coach likes the back and forth exchanging chances. Although it's exciting for the fans, you're looking for some zone time. You want to be in the offensive zone a lot longer spend more time there. If you do, you get a chance to score. That also it means the other team has less time in your own end. So I think that's what coaches mean when they say they don't like the back and forth. That's what happens. You're trading off chances. But at the end of the night, both teams are tired, a lot more tired than they would have been had they been working in a certain area. That's what I was saying. Do you think we're slow? Q. No, I don't. COACH JULIEN: Just for the record. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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