Claude Julien

Uh, a guy who has been able to play a lot of his early part of his career as the shutdown center, the third line guy.

A lot of years that, well, not a lot of years, but significant years in the build-up toward the Stanley Cup run where Claude Julien had to make sure that Mark Savard had the wingers that made Savard the best player he could be, and then take care of the David Krejci situation, so we're gonna get him the best wingers.

And then Bergeron got what, what fell to him.

And, and until he was Brad Marchand's babysitter upon his entry-

And then...

It's a counterpoint to that where you have multiple iterations of the Boston Bruins under Claude Julien, under Bruce Cassidy, under Jim Montgomery, where they would rattle off a 12-game winning streak in the middle of the regular season where they peaked too early.

And I do think you can peak too early as an NHL team because the season is so long.

Case in point, last year's Anaheim Ducks team, they had a 12-game winning streak, they lost eight in a row, and then they had another big winning streak in the second half of the season.

And that's, what's, different today is just you know spending more time with the players building relationships you know tell them hey i'm in your corner and and we're in this together and and i think that's what i see with their staff is they do a great job starting with marty is just you know connecting with the players the today's players and saying hey you know we got your back we're here to help you we're here to make you succeed and if you succeed we as a team and we're we're that much better

Boy, you're talking about the player getting benched, and all of a sudden I flash back to the bubble during COVID when you stepped in for Claude Julien, who was sick, and you benched Brendan Gallagher for a good chunk of the game because you knew he was having a bad night, but you knew what that would lead to in the next game.

Well, I knew Gally was having a tough game, but I also knew that he's the one, you know, guy that I have tons of respect for.

I know that, you know, he's a character guy.

But the first team that I covered was the All-Olympics.

So seeing Pat Burns in Montreal, seeing Alain Vigneault in Montreal, seeing Claude Julien, that is the first coach with whom I travel on a daily basis because I was covering the All-Olympics on a day-to-day basis because there was a lockout in 1994 in the NHL for the first half of the season.

Seeing those guys in Montreal was something special on a personal point of view.

On a professional point of view, all the big names, You know, sitting down with Jean Bédivou when he was having his fight against cancer and spending 45, 60 minutes with him and having Jean Bédivou calling me le petit gars de Québec.