The streets of Boston were flooded on Monday afternoon with the cheering crowds of Patriot fans, celebrating the historic victory on Super Bowl Sunday. Bostonians flocked to the sidewalks from Back Bay to Government Center despite the snow to catch a glimpse of Tom Brady, or the “greatest of all time,” as many fans call him. It was a fifth Super Bowl win for the Patriots under coach Bill Belichick.
The celebratory parade, however, wasn’t the only notable event in Boston’s sports sphere on Monday. Claude Julien, the Boston Bruin’s head coach for the past 10 years, was fired, according to an article from The Boston Globe. Bruce Cassidy was named as Julien’s temporary replacement with 27 games still left to be played in the Bruin’s regular season. This announcement was made as the duck boats holding the entire Patriot’s football team cruised throughout the city.
For years, there has been talk of firing Julien because his team wasn’t performing as well as they had been in past seasons. This decision does not come as a surprise, but rather on a surprising day. To fire a head coach of a major Boston sports team on a day dedicated to celebrating a different Boston sports team? It seems like the Bruins either wanted the parade to overshadow Julien’s exit or to take attention away from their fellow Boston jersey-wearing team.
Claude Julien was the longest running coach in National Hockey League history. He is the coach with the most wins in the history of the hockey franchise. He led the Bruins for 10 straight years. And he was fired on the Patriot’s parade day. What does this mean for Julien’s legacy? Coaches usually take the blame for a team’s poor performance, and it’s not wrong to say that the Bruins have left us wanting more in the past few years. However, it’s almost disrespectful to the coach who has been dedicated to this team for nearly a decade to announce this news on a day when all Boston sports fans will be focusing on something else. This news barely even made headlines in comparison to Brady’s arm, Edelman’s catch or Belichick’s plays.
The fact remains that if you’re a coach for a professional sports team, you can be fired. If Julien wasn’t creating a team that Bostonians could rally behind, he wasn’t doing his job well enough. Many will be happy to see him go and bring in a new age of potential success for the Bruins after years of underperformance. The Bruins found someone else to do the job with the hopes of bringing their team back to the top. It’s the end of an era, but the start of a new day.
Monday was meant to be a day to celebrate the Patriots, but also Boston in general. It was a day of pride for sports fans in Beantown, and that day of all days, an announcement was made to fire the Bruin’s head coach. It’s strange not only because it doesn’t seem imperative to do this, but also because the Bruins are in the middle of their season. It’s quite unusual for a coach to be sacked while he’s still trying to bring his team to a championship, even if his efforts weren’t doing much. Most Boston sports fan knew this news was coming, but no one expected to hear it yesterday. Julien wasn’t fired in a way he deserved after serving the team for so long. But perhaps this was a classic case of bad timing.
