In the morning before many Bruins games last season, it was interesting to listen to opposing coaches talk about the challenge of facing the B’s.

Typical was Anaheim’s Bruce Boudreau before the teams’ Dec. 1 game: “When you play the Boston Bruins, you’re in for a really tough game, no matter who’s in the lineup for them.”

Or Calgary’s Bob Hartley on Feb. 16: “Here is a team with lots of pride, lots of history. They’re built playing the game the right way. They’re solid, they’re physical. Plus they know how to win.”

Boudreau and Hartley are two very smart hockey guys, but you had to wonder: Were they seeing the same Bruins team we were last season? Or were they picturing teams of recent years past?

Johnny Boychuk, Jarome Iginla, Andrew Ference, Nathan Horton and Shawn Thornton are not wearing the “B” anymore. And what was left this season, with few exceptions, was a roster ridden with small guys and Lady Byng candidates.

For years, for decades, the Bruins were that solid, physical, hard team to play against. Not last season. Who is to blame for the loss of the age-old blue-collar identity? Well, it’s going to be new general manager Don Sweeney’s job to figure that out.

Sweeney does not toss words around carelessly, so we can only assume from the ambiguity he employed Wednesday about coach Claude Julien that he truly is not certain Julien is the right man to guide the team going forward.

“I have some things that I want to sit down with Claude and go through in a very orderly fashion as to where I think things needs to change, and what direction we need to change as a group,” Sweeney said at his Garden press conference.

Sweeney talked at length about the B’s difficulty to score goals, especially in the third period.

“I can sit up here as a career 52-goal scorer and tell you we can score more goals,” said Sweeney.

So the new GM will need to ask Julien: Why was this so? And what can be done about it?

No doubt there will be tweaks needed in the on-ice system. For instance, watching the Tampa Bay Lightning fly up and down the ice in their Eastern Conference title series against the New York Rangers, there’s a lot to like about how they execute — the breakouts, the transitions and especially the power play, where they have tremendous puck and player movement.

But a basic fact about Julien that many observers seem to miss is he’s always shown flexibility in his system. One way he’s remained an effective coach after seven years is to change the game plan in small ways every year. Players keep listening because it isn’t the same old stale message year after year.

And because they know it works.

Julien’s critics claim he is purely a defensive coach, stifling his players’ skills and creativity and forcing them just to back up and defend. Nonsense. The Bruins, at their best, demonstrate that good defense in all three zones leads to productive offense, and in most years under Julien, the B’s have been very good at scoring goals, finishing second or third in the NHL in goals in three seasons.

So Sweeney can discuss systems all day with Julien, and the answers are not going to change, at least not much. The problem with the Bruins last year was not the coach; it was not the system. It was that the Bruins too often got out-competed and pushed around.

Players loved to talk about all the character in the room, but it rarely was visible on the ice.

The players who made the Bruins the kind of tough and solid team those opposing coaches were referencing? An awful lot of them are gone.

If Sweeney & Co. want this past season to be remembered as just a brief, bump in the road, they better figure out a way to re-stock this team with players who know what it means to be a Bruin.

Claude Julien can only coach the team he has.