Claude Julien no longer remembers the goals or the final score. But he remembers the feeling very well.
In his first season as head coach of the Boston Bruins, he led his team to the playoffs, and the Bruins overcame a 3-1 series deficit against the Canadiens to force a seventh game at the Bell Centre.
After taking the lead in the first period, the Canadiens fired 17 shots on Tim Thomas in the second period. Mark Streit’s beat him.
Julien remembers the noise, the atmosphere.
“It was quite a game in Boston in Game 6, but we came here to Montreal, and sure enough the crowd really cheered on this team,” Julien recalls. “We really got blown out … It was a seventh game that completely belonged to the Canadiens.”
Final score: 5-0. A carnival atmosphere outside the arena as well. Horns, flags, 15 vandalized police cars, all hell broke loose.
The Bell Centre has always had this energy to lift the…
