Tomorrow, the Boston Bruins will have one of their final press conference of the 2015-16 season. Bruins GM Don Sweeney chose to delay the usual final press conference for a few days. Maybe he wanted to mix things up, or maybe he just wanted to get all the exit interviews with the players done first. Don Sweeney will be joined by Head Coach Claude Julien for the press conference.
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Bruins owner Charlie Jacobs and President Cam Neely will have a separate press conference sometime next week. The Bruins front office have a lot to answer for, and tomorrow’s press conference will be the first chance for the leaders of the organization to truly answer why the Bruins failed to make the postseason for the second straight year.
Claude Julien’s presence for the press conference could indicate that the Bruins bench boss will be back for his 10th season as head coach. Then again, Peter Chiarelli was a part of the exit interviews and the final press conference. He was fired several days afterwards. So, it’s still a toss-up to see if Julien will be coaching next year.
Claude Julien still has two years on his current contract. It’s highly unlikely that the Bruins coach would resign his job, especially since he’d be giving up $2.75 million dollars a year. (Although the odds of staying on at the end of his contract are extremely limited at this point.) It’s also possible that the Bruins front office could just be waiting to see if any other team is putting out feelers about acquiring the Bruins all-time leader in coaching wins. As Julien is still under contract, the other team would have to offer up draft picks in order to get Julien.
It will likely be an uncomfortable affair for all the Bruins attending this conferences. Don Sweeney will certainly be grilled about the most serious mistakes made by the B’s front office. Why did the B’s not move any of their first round draft picks? Why John-Michael Liles and Lee Stempniak? Why did they not move Loui Eriksson at the trade deadline? Why did they ever think Zac Rinaldo would be a valuable acquisition?
Hopefully the Bruins front office will have some answers to why the season played out the way it did.