DETROIT — Bruins coach Claude Julien was adamant Tuesday afternoon that there wasn't a huge difference between his team's performance in Game 1, a 1-0 loss to the Detroit Red Wings, and Game 2, a 4-1 win for the Bruins.
Forget the tone-setting hits, the number of scrums, or the Red Wings' ability to skate faster at times, the physicality was still there in the Bruins' playoff series opener, Julien said. So for him to project what kind of team will hit the ice Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena was difficult to ascertain.
"I don’t even know if I agree with your analogy," Julien told a reporter. "That first game could’ve gone either way. I don’t think that there wasn’t any physicality in the first game. The second game there was more but the few scrums there was, if you look at the replay, I don’t think we started those.
"We just have to go out there and play our game," Julien said. "I consider us a pretty good skating team too. We didn’t score that many goals and we didn’t allow that many goals because we weren’t able to skate. Tonight is just a game of will. Whoever is going to have the will to play their game the best. And that’s all … It certainly has nothing to do with what I think has been out there lately. We’re big, we’re physical, that’s the way we built our team. And we shouldn’t apologize for it because Bruins fans and the city of Boston loves us for it."
Julien said defenseman Matt Bartkowski, who was on the ice for morning skate, will take part in the team's warmups tonight but his status is still uncertain. He has missed the first two games of the series with the flu.
Both Chris Kelly and Daniel Paille did not participate in morning skate.