Art Ross’ record for wins as a Boston Bruins head coach stood for more than 70 years. It fell Monday night.
The Bruins defeated the Florida Panthers 5-4 in overtime Monday, giving head coach Claude Julien the 388th victory of his tenure in Boston and unseating Ross, who helmed the B’s from 1925 to 1945, as the franchise’s all-time wins leader.
“First off, that’s a huge accomplishment of him, so I’m really happy for him,” winger Lee Stempniak, who scored the overtime game-winner, told NESN sideline reporter Sarah Davis after the game. “But he’s pretty calm. He lets the guys play. I think he’s got a veteran group here of leaders and guys who know how to play the game. He manages the system, but he sort of lets guys control it themselves, which is good. You can’t have a coach that’s too up and too down, and he kind of has that even-keeled demeanor, which helps.”
Julien isn’t one to shine the spotlight on himself, but the Bruins will take care of that later this month by recognizing the coach’s achievement in a pregame ceremony before Boston’s March 24 matchup with the Panthers at TD Garden.
Some additional notes from Monday’s action:
— The win over the Panthers brought the Bruins to within one point of first place in the Atlantic Division — a spot they haven’t possessed all season and one few expected them to after their abysmal 0-3-0 start. Even Julien admitted back in October that he didn’t envision his team being a win out of first in early March.
“Certainly not,” the coach said in a postgame interview with NESN’s Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley. “And I think our guys have worked hard to get better. This team has a lot of potential. I think it’s just a matter of tapping into it and trying to get — as I always say — some consistency there in our game. … We’re a team that, from the beginning of the year to now, has really improved a lot.”
Boston can grab the Atlantic’s top spot with a win Tuesday against the first-place Tampa Bay Lightning.
— Though his four goals against might suggest otherwise, Tuukka Rask was phenomenal in net for the Bruins. His 47 saves were a season high and his most in a single game since March 30, 2014, when he stopped 49 shots in a win over the Philadelphia Flyers.
“He played great,” Stempniak told Sarah Davis. “One 2-on-1 jumps into my mind — in the second period, I think he made a post-to-post save. We were just standing still a little too much. They’ve got a good time — they’ve got a lot of speed, a lot of skill — and when you’re standing still, they make plays. And Tuukka was there to balance that.”
Rask, who must be the Bruins’ best player for them to have any serious chance of contending come playoff time, is 6-1-1 in his last eight starts. He’s faced 40 or more shots in three of those starts and won all three.
“We got the lead — a very comfortable lead — in the first period,” Rask told reporters after Monday’s game, during which the Bruins squandered a three-goal lead. “We created some chances off turnovers, but we also gave up a lot. And then in the second, we were just kind of passive. They scored a goal, they scored two goals, and we never regrouped from that. We stayed very passive and couldn’t get anything going offensively. But the third period was better, and we escaped with the win.”
— Defenseman Zdeno Chara played one night after attending the birth of his twin sons, Ben and Zack. The latter shares a name with another Bruins baby: Patrice Bergeron’s boy, who was born hours before Boston’s Oct. 21 loss to the Flyers.
Chara spoke after the game about the two new additions to his family:
— Rookie Noel Acciari recorded his first NHL point in the win, assisting on Brett Connolly’s first-period goal.
Thumbnail photo via James Guillory/USA TODAY Sports Images
