HOW COULD JEREMY AND SON CHARLIE JACOBS AND DON SWEENEY AND CAM NEELY BY DEFAULT (BUT HARDLY BLAMELESS) BE SO WEAK?
Claude Julien deserved so much better.
Way better.
Firing Julien on the morning of the Patriots Duck Boat Parade and scheduling a news conference coincidentally at the beginning of the well-publicized celebration is absolutely unconscionable, unacceptable and downright cowardly.
They should be drowning in their shame.
You coach only as well as your players can play.
Bill Belichick has a keen eye for talent. That’s why he is also the Patriots GM.
Why should Julien, a most respected coach with a pretty, pretty pretty good resume (thank you Larry David) have his head served on a silver platter?
The longest-tenured NHL coach to the tune of 10(+) years.
The winningest coach in Bruins history.
Stanley Cup Championship in 2011.
Stanley Cup Finalist in 2013.
Company man. Not his fault. Unfair.
The B’s presently sit a single point out of the eighth and last playoff position in the NHL’s Eastern Conference after 55 games. But somebody had to take the fall. Can’t fire the players. Won’t fire the executives. Blah, blah blah.
An egregious injustice has been perpetrated here. And the timing? The worst.
Fuggedaboutit. Call Tony Soprano to restore some order.
Don Sweeney Harvard ’88, a longtime Bruins defenseman and the club’s current GM thought that it was “mightily (“vitally?”) important” to have a couple of days of practice under the ‘new’ regime’s watchful eye in a weak and veiled attempt to defend the unforgivable timing of the move.
Confirming ownership support along with the backing of team president Cam Neely, Sweeney cited the Bruins’ Public Relations Department and their professional advisement as a contributing factor to the multi-layered and insensitive decision to do this when it was done.
[They] “explained that once you make a decision in that regard you need to stand up in front of people and acknowledge the reasons behind it and move on from there.”
What, you couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate time?
Any other time, just not at this time?
What hooey, hokum, hogwash and blather. Unfathomable. Unacceptable.
And disrespectful to both Julien and the team’s fans, not to mention the Patriots organization.
Even the most objective sort should be livid with rage in response to the timing of this classless and selfish act.
To inflame the already incendiary, Neely the pugnacious Hall of Fame prototypical power forward with prodigious punch — both goal-scoring and with his left — seemed to isolate himself from the distasteful situation when he remarked that “these decisions are not easy, and Don has my full support…”
How could Neely not have had input and how could he throw Sweeney under the bus that way?
The Boston Bruins have been playoff outsiders the past 2 seasons. This is Boston, the new millennium’s indisputable Titletown with educated, demanding and loyal fans who incidentally pay top dollar for the privilege of watching in person their vaunted professional teams.
So clearly the Bruins had to do something to shake things up a bit because by Boston’s standards they were consistently underperforming.
Or are they? In 2013-’14, the last time the B’s made the playoffs, names like Milan Lucic, Loui Eriksson, Jarome Iginla, Reilly Smith, Carl Soderberg, Johnny Boychuk, Dougie Hamilton and Chad Johnson dotted the roster.
Their replacements either don’t exist or simply couldn’t carry the aforementioned group’s equipment. David Backes, Jimmy Hayes, Matt Beleskey, John-Michael Liles, Anton Khudobin, Dominic Moore, Riley Nash, and Tim Schaller represent a diminished and compromised present-day roster.
Hardly upgrades.
And somehow this is Julien’s fault?
Claude Julien will land on his feet. He will be paid by the Bruins and he’ll be offered NHL head coaching jobs elsewhere. He is out of work only as long as he wants to be.
But he earned and deserved more respect than to be shown the door in this fashion.
Neely and Sweeney should be on the firing line; their personnel evaluation has been poor and lacking. It’s as simple as that.
Right Jeremy and Charlie?
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in February 2017.]
ADDENDUM: Claude Julien was fired by the Bruins on February 7, 2017 and hired by the Montreal Canadiens on February 14, 2017 where he remains;
Bruce Cassidy, Julien’s replacement in Boston, had a career Bruins win percentage of .670 in 191 games (117–52–22) entering the 2019–2020 season. In the Covid-19 aborted season the team played 70 games finishing with a mark of 44–14–12 good for 100 points, the most in the NHL.
