Tuossa aiemmin penäämäni motivoivat harjoitteet sekä Savardin ja Krejcin paikkojen vaihto toteutui Ducks-löysäilyn jälkimainingeissa. Atlantaa vastaan mennään ilmeisesti seuraavalla hyökkäyskokoonpanolla:
Lucic – Savard – Horton
Recchi - Bergeron – Seguin
Wheeler – Krejci – Ryder
Paille – Campbell – Thornton
Savard siis ykkösen keskelle. Krecji palaa Wheelerin ja Ryderin väliin ja kolmikko joka toimi hyvin yhteen kaksi vuotta sitten, Bruinsin ollessa sarjan toiseksi paras runkosarjajoukkue, on taas kasassa (Krejci 22+51, Ryder 27+26 ja Wheeler 21+24 sillä kaudella).
Toivomani Lucicin ja Hortonin erotus ei vielä toteutunut, ovat mielestäni niin samanlaisia että joku nopea ja teknisempi pelaaja (mallia Buffalon Tyler Ennis, omista Seguin tai Marchand kävisi myös) toisi ketjuun lisäarvoa. Hyää kautta pelannut Brad Marchand ei ole täysin pelikykyinen Subbanin kovan taklauksen jäljiltä vaikka sitä seuranneessa pelissä mukana olikin, Paille jatkaa siis nelosessa.
Huonot otteet kentällä toivat odotetusti lisää intensiteettiä harjoituksiin joka taas johti useisiin pieniin nahinoihin. Lisäksi Savard ja Bergeron ottivat enemmänkin yhteen. Viimeinen ottelu ennen joulua ja sen jälkeen koittavaa vieraskierrosta pelataan Atlantaa vastaan ja mielenkiintoista nähdä mihin suuntaan joukkueen energia suuntautuu, toivottavasti Kane saa seisovat taputukset TD Gardenilta.
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Bruins saa ansaitusti keppiä joukkuetta seuraavilta tahoilta:
Bruins aim to get in line - Julien shakes up combinations (Boston Heraldin artikkeli)
The Bruins are 1-3-1 with nine goals in their last five games. They bottomed out in Monday night’s embarrassing 3-0 loss to the Anaheim Ducks before a disgruntled capacity crowd at the Garden. The B’s lack of intensity and passion and their inability to score on their 45 shots were the concerns Julien addressed in the exhausting practice.
“We tried to create more intensity and more compete level and show a little bit more emotion that hopefully we’ll get this thing turned around,” said Julien. “I think the (line changes) are necessary when you are not getting the results that you want. You have to make changes and that basically is what we did this morning.”
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Neely: Everyone with the Bruins is accountable (csnne.com artikkeli)
Cam Neely ei ole tyytyväinen viime viikkojen otteisiin. Valmentaja Julien ei tunnu myöskään nauttivan sataprosenttista luottoa mutta artikkeli arvioi kelkan kääntämiseen annettavan ajan kuukausiksi eikä viikoiksi.
“At times I feel like for whatever reason we play much better when we’re down and we know we have to score some goals. I don’t understand at times why we can’t start out games like that and want to claim the lead right away. It’s frustrating when I see the pattern over the course of a number of years where we seem to play – and it’s not just our team – but you see our team play with a bit more urgency in the third period."
“Yeah…but everyone is accountable. We’re all accountable here,” said Neely when asked a direct question about his coach’s job security.
“I think our players should understand who we are. We’ve had some young guys that have been here for a few years, and now maybe it’s time for some of those young guys to step up and take ownership,”
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Struggling Bruins get testy at practice (New England Hockey Journalin artikkeli)
Following their setback to the Ducks, B's coach Claude Julien looked like a defeated man.
"Well I think that’s what we’re asking ourselves right now. We had all the reasons in the world to want to compete tonight—an opportunity to move up five spots," the head coach said when asked about the glaringly obvious lack of emotion.
"We didn’t have enough guys going tonight, there’s no doubt there. But, you know, we got to be a lot better than that. Right now we got to find that intensity and that emotion that is needed for us to compete the way we want to compete."
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Forwards have dull edges (Boston Globe artikkeli)
The Bruins aren’t in a good place right now, and that’s not limited to their tenuous grip on eighth place in the Eastern Conference. They’re just not good. They are stale, ineffective, predictable, and often lackadaisical, all of which was on display last night in their weak-cup-of-tea 3-0 loss to the Anaheim Ducks.
Now, there is no mystery to how the Bruins play, and that is part of the problem. Is it most of the problem? Hard to say. At this point, even out-of-town Zamboni drivers, pizza vendors, and Ice Girls know that coach Claude Julien rarely, if ever, deviates from rolling four lines and divvying up ice time in predictable portions (far too much time to third- and fourth-liners, in the opinion of your faithful puck chronicler). Everyone knows the boilerplate Boston method. There are no surprises.
Only some 10 weeks into the season, the Bruins have gone soft and stale; they are in freefall. They would have been here earlier if not for the stellar netminding of Tim Thomas, but last night their bacon-saving backstop had little chance of preventing any of the Ducks goals.
If they no longer want to put it out there for this coach, then a bad place is only going to get worse.