Sweeney said the coaching staff has his full support, and that he did not speak to any other head coaching position candidates.

Julien's fate had been in limbo since April, when the Bruins missed the playoffs and general manager Peter Chiarelli was fired.

“I needed to have conversations with each and every [coach] to know we were in agreement,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize for taking a little time to go through the process.”

Julien was hired by Chiarelli in June of 2007. In his eight seasons in Boston, Julien made the playoffs in all but one — this past season.


That is part of the reason that Julien entered this offseason with his job far from assured, despite a contract extension that begins with the 2015-16 season. But it is not the entire reason.

When Sweeney, the assistant general manager under Chiarelli, was named as the Bruins’ new general manager on May 20, he did not give Julien much of a vote of confidence. While he said complimentary things, he also said that they would have to sit down and discuss the future direction of the team and its coaching staff, as they have already done multiple times this offseason.

He added, at the end, “He’s the coach of the Boston Bruins as of today, that’s for sure.”

“I think we have a good coach,” team president Cam Neely said after that press conference. “It’s been reported that I have a problem with our coach. I think we have a good coach. I think over the years I would have liked to have seen some adjustments.”

That was part of the reason for some tension. There had been some question within the front office about Julien’s ability to make the adjustments necessary to coach in the new realities of the NHL, despite the team having won a Stanley Cup and having been to another Stanley Cup Final in his time in Boston, despite the Jack Adams Trophy he won as the best coach in the NHL in 2008-2009.


Asked if Julien could make the changes, Neely said, “He’s another smart hockey guy. I’ve seen him make adjustments. He knows the game extremely well. He’s had a lot of success. This is where Don is going to make those decisions with Claude, as far as the adjustments that he thinks we need to make.

“I know the comment that I made in 2010 about ‘you can’t win games, 0-0’ keeps getting played. Claude and I flushed that out in 2010. It’s 2015 now. This is why we gave the candidates [for GM] an opportunity to talk to Claude, and Don is going to have more conversations with Claude.”

While the Bruins have a generally good and reliable defensive philosophy — one that has served them well — their offense suffered this past season, though it had been in the top five in the NHL in goals per game in three of the last four season.

Now, though, the Bruins need to improve their transition game. They need to be better on breakouts. They need to be more aggressive, as Sweeney emphasized in his opening press conference. The question Sweeney then set out to determine was whether Julien would or could make those changes.


The disappointing 2014-15 season, one that was supposed to end in the playoffs and instead ended the final day of the regular season, had already cost one long-tenured Bruins employee his job. Chiarelli was fired four days after the Bruins played their last game, a victim of salary cap mismanagement and some poor drafting and questionable trades, also perhaps a victim of the gauntlet that Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs had laid down in January amid the team’s struggles.

And Julien wasn’t the only one whose future was in doubt because of the subpar season. The Bruins will also need to make decisions on players like Milan Lucic, whose underperformance was a factor in the team’s struggles, especially given the amount of the extension the impending unrestricted free agent could command after the season.

Follow Fluto Shinzawa on Twitter at @GlobeFluto.

Follow Amalie Benjamin on Twitter at @AmalieBenjamin.