His blueprint is blue-collar

Hard workers make Julien's system work

When Claude Julien makes a point, his Bruins listen. This season, ''We haven't had to explain why as much,'' the coach says. (John Bohn/Globe Staff)

By John Powers

Globe Staff / January 6, 2009

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This is not the same frat house where Espo and E.J. and Cheesie and the Chief cavorted 37 years ago, when the Stanley Cup was the team punch bowl. A Savard, a Kessel, a Sobotka, a Nokelainen all dress side by each in the Bruins locker room these days.

The spoked-B brethren come from Germany and Slovakia and Sweden and Finland and the Czech Republic as well as from Newfoundland and British Columbia and Minnesota and Michigan, but they have one thing in common besides a black-and-gold jersey.

"Everyone's on the same page," says right wing Phil Kessel.

The fraternity bylaws, as set down by second-year coach Claude Julien, are an update of the original blue-collar version that produced two championships in three years in the early '70s plus five more trips to the finals by 1990.

"A lot of it is about the pride that this franchise established many years ago," says Julien, whose club is off to its best start (29-6-0-4) since 1929-30. "It's funny how everybody talks about this game having changed so much - and it has - but the one thing that hasn't changed and is still giving us success is the old identity of the Boston Bruins."

The old excitement has returned to Causeway Street too as the club has skated to the top of the Eastern Conference, scoring the most goals and conceding the fewest, while adopting Julien's version of the eternal Bruin virtues, which come with a lunchpail.

"It seems like a group that thinks about the game and cares about the game and each other," observes NESN analyst Mike Milbury, the 12-year defenseman who was coach when Boston last made the Cup finals in 1990. "That close-knit team has been a part of the Bruins."

An A in chemistry

No member of this edition was born when the Bruins won their last championship in 1972. Only three of them (left wing P.J. Axelsson, center Patrice Bergeron, and goalie Tim Thomas) were here before the 2004-05 lockout, and 17 of the players have been on hand for less than two full seasons. Yet they quickly developed a chemistry that has rarely been seen since the champagne-swilling days.

"I've seen teams with the best team on paper that couldn't work on the ice," says Julien. "In order to make it work on the ice, it's got to work off the ice first. So we do team-building activities."

The Big Bad Bruins were all Canadians. This bunch is Team NATO, as is most of the modern NHL.

"You've got people coming from different countries, from different types of programs," says Julien. "You've got to bring them together and put them on the same page."

The best way to start is to take the egalitarian approach.

"Our coaching staff has always made sure that the 20th player is as important as the first player," says Julien. "Everyone's treated the same. They all have roles, but most of all they know that, No. 1, the work ethic has to be there."

Julien's coaching philosophy and style have changed little since his days with Montreal or with Hamilton in the AHL or with Hull in the Quebec junior league.

"He always stressed hard work," says right wing Michael Ryder, who played for Julien at all three places. "He wants you to be strong defensively, and the offense will come after that."

Those familiar emphases, along with a knack for working younger players into the lineup, was what convinced the Bruins to hire Julien after New Jersey abruptly let him go just before the 2007 playoffs.

"We wanted a team with a really good work ethic, and that's part of what Claude's about," says general manager Peter Chiarelli, who knew Julien from the coach's summer conditioning camps. "He comes to work every day, he rolls up his sleeves and he stays late."

After nearly a year and a half on the job, that hasn't changed. At practice in Wilmington with stick and whistle, Julien points and prods, cajoles and corrects, remaining on the ice as long as there's a player and a puck still on it. Last season was about creating a structure for a club that had none and getting the players to win games by not losing them, which meant playing from the goal outward.

The challenge was in getting these Bruins to embrace the demanding but rewarding joys of two-way play and to check the plus-minus column more avidly than the points column.

"Everyone has to buy in," says Axelsson. "It's not enough with 14, 15, 16 guys. You need every single guy to buy in, and the guys in here have done that."

Sold on his approach

Last season was primarily a sales job. At first, the players couldn't quite see how preventing goals would lead to scoring them.

"It's about selling the players, them seeing the results and buying into it," Julien says. "The more they see, the more they believe."

Once the Bruins made the playoffs without Bergeron and goalie Manny Fernandez, then came back from the dead to push Montreal to the limit, Julien had made the sale.

"A lot of people thought we didn't belong there," he says. "The fact that not only did we make it but we took the best team in our conference to seven games was a big turning point for our organization. It helped us move forward and reinforce what we were trying to get across to everybody."

By now, the sales job has been done and the buy-in is complete. Last season, the goal was modest.

"We wanted to be a hard team to play against," says Julien, "and we became that as the year progressed."

This year, the Bruins need to win at least one playoff series, which they haven't managed since 1999. And while they're off to a monster start, they've won nothing yet.

"We remind them that two years ago they were in sixth place at the end of December," says Chiarelli.

The season lasts for eight months and requires up to 110 games, and the graveyards are full of teams who led the conference at Christmas.

"The one thing I've always preached to our hockey teams is that this is a very humbling game," says Julien. "You're on top of the world one day, but you can be right at the bottom if you're not careful."

So Julien's approach is to go microscopic, starting with winning one shift.

"He tells us to go period by period," says Ryder. "Go out and win the first 20 and go from there. He doesn't let us look too far ahead."

That's how Julien's Canadiens, down, three games to one, to the Bruins in the 2004 playoffs, came back to take the series, winning two of the last three at the Garden.

"He said, 'We win this, we go back to Montreal, then we win the next one,' " recalls Ryder. "He tried to get us into that mentality. Instead of looking at the series, just take it one game at a time."

That's how Julien's Bruins forced a seventh game last year for the first time in franchise history after being down, 1-3.

"It's always about the small picture, because the small picture is not as scary as the big picture," he says. "When you take care of the small details, the bigger things take care of themselves."

Even the rookies quickly learn Julien's modus operandi by heart.

"He expects you to bring 100 percent every night," says left wing Blake Wheeler, who was playing for the University of Minnesota Gophers at this time last year. "That's just a given. It's not debatable. He's accountable to us and he expects us to be accountable to him."

It's what Julien calls "clarity of expectation," and this season there has been no doubt or debate about what's required to get on the ice and stay there.

"We haven't had to explain why as much to the players because they know what the expectations are," says Julien, who didn't hesitate last season to sit Kessel for three games during the playoffs or to send David Krejci down to Providence for 25 games. "We're pretty clear with everybody."

The bylaws are reinforced by the assistant coaches and by captain Zdeno Chara and his core of veterans.

"A lot of times, you don't have to convince the players," says Julien. "They know. You see guys nodding their heads. They acknowledge it. A lot of times, I don't have to say much."

Everybody in the room knows how the Bruins are supposed to play because that's why they were drafted, traded for, or signed as free agents.

"When [Marc] Savard buries his head and backchecks, when Chara goes and fights [Atlanta behemoth Boris] Valabik because he was whaling on Kess, those are the types of things that you look for," says Chiarelli, who wants the scouts to prospect for those very qualities.

A matter of pride

The Bruin virtues have remained constant for decades, even if they haven't always been practiced.

"You've got to take pride in putting that jersey on," says vice president Cam Neely, who got to the Hall of Fame by playing with pugnacious persistence. "It's been a tradition for years and years and years. This team plays a certain way."

For too many seasons, the Bruins weren't playing like the Bruins.

"There's no question there was a loss of identity," says Milbury. "The Bruins were supposed to be hard-hitting, supposed to fight once in a while, supposed to be committed to defense and committed to each other."

Julien's club has been checking all of those boxes, with Chara's showdown with Valabik in bold.

"When Z sees that happen, he shouldn't stand for it," Neely agrees. "It sends a message not just in here, but across the league as well."

The Bruins are back, and everyone from the captain to the coach to the front office to the latter-day Gallery Gods is on the same page again.

"The blue-collar approach to this team is what the fans in Boston love," Julien says. "I feel as comfortable here as I've ever felt anywhere. This is a perfect environment for me because a lot of what the fans expect here is a lot of what I want out of our hockey team. It was a good fit for me and the Bruins."

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com