Appearing on Toucher and Rich Tuesday, Bruins center Patrice Bergeron said that the firing of Claude Julien provided a wakeup call that has helped give the team its recent 6-0-1 run.
“I think it was just one of those things where we started playing better hockey,” he said. “We had a new voice, I guess, and it was definitely a wakeup call seeing Claude go. It seemed like everyone kind of looked at themselves in the mirror and had to be better.”
Asked whether Bruce Cassidy taking over has allowed him to be a more offensive player, Bergeron disagreed.
“I don’t know necessarily if he allows [me to be more offensive],” Bergeron said. “Even with Claude, he would let us use our imagination offensively, but at the same time, I think [Cassidy] wants us to have a faster pace and kind of have Ds joining the rush. Obviously when you have defensemen helping you out on the rush and having four, even sometimes a five-man rush, it helps having more openings and more lanes to the net and, ultimately, having more scoring chances.”
Bergeron said that there was not a drastic transition from Julien to Cassidy, the latter of whom served as Providence’s head coach in recent years before beginning this season as an assistant in Boston.
“It was a pretty good transition,” Bergeron said. “Bruce has been there all year this year. He was in the organization for nine years. The system, there’s lots of similarities to it, so the change has been pretty smooth so far.
“Like I said, the biggest change is he really wants us to play with more tempo, more speed and go up the ice in a hurry. The practices are maybe a little different in that way. It’s always lots of energy and drills where you’re always moving your legs, which is a good thing. You kind of duplicate that in games.”