TORONTO – Kirk Muller, behind the bench of Montreal Canadiens as interim head coach on Friday, was too emotional to check his phone between periods, even though he had expected a text like two.
He knew the man he replaced, Coach Claude Julien, was watching from his home in Montreal, where he was recovering from the emergency heart surgery he underwent Thursday afternoon in Toronto.
But after the Canadiens put together their most inspiring game of the postseason, by routing the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-0, Muller finally checked his phone. He found that Julien was one of the first to submit his congratulations.
“To Claude, I’m sure he listened, this was for you,” Muller said after the match.
On Wednesday night, after the Montreal Canadiens lost 2-1 to the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 1 of their first-round series of the NHL playoffs, Julien began to experience chest pain.
Julien, 60, was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where doctors placed a stent in a coronary artery. He is expected to make a complete recovery.
Montreal’s Tomas Tatar and Jesperi Kotkaniemi each scored two goals and Carey Price got the shutout at the start of Friday afternoon. The Flyers never bounced back to Montreal’s first goal 1:02 in the first period. After trailing 4-0 late in the second period, the Flyers picked up goaltender Carter Hart and replaced him with Brian Elliott. But the damage was done.
Flyers Coach Alain Vigneault is close friends with Julien. The two teamed up as minors in Salt Lake City in the early 1980s and coached against each other in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011 when Vigneault coached the Vancouver Canucks and Julien sat behind the bench with the Boston Bruins. Vigneault said he had planned to reach Julien.
How Montreal would react to the scary turn of events was someone to guess. Heaps in Montreal were high round as the Canadiens shook the Pittsburgh Penguins in the play-in round. In contrast, the team closed the series in the evening when they knew Julien’s operation was successful
“We have a right group,” Muller said. “I think the good news about Claude’s health was a great relief to everyone.”
Muller showed no reluctance at his Friday morning briefing because he took the giant from one of Canada’s most iconic franchises. Smiling through the 15-minute session, he said he had talked to Julien Thursday night, mostly about hockey. He said Julien was ‘fired’ over the game.
Although Muller has never been a head coach in Montreal, he knows the team well. He was a leader there as a player on the 1993 Stanley Cup winning team, the last from Montreal. This is his second stint as assistant coach in Montreal after serving as head coach for the Carolina Hurricanes from 2011-2014, where he set a .500 record.
“My job is to win this team,” Muller said. “We have to recognize which boys are going and which boys are not.”
In the club’s public statement about Julien’s status, general manager Marc Bergevin addressed the fact that Muller does not speak French, while Julien is fluent in both English and French. An unwritten rule with the Canadiens is that a head coach must speak French so that he can communicate with the French news media and the people of Quebec, where French is the mother tongue of nearly 80 percent of the population.
Randy Cunneyworth was the first coach in decades to speak English only when he was hired in 2011 after the club sacked Jacques Martin. The appointment caused a stir among Quebec journalists. At the end of the season, Cunneyworth was replaced by Michel Therrien.
But while Muller only asked questions in the morning briefing Friday, he made his opening statement in French. Translated, he said, “Happy Claude is in better health, but we need to stay focused.”
As the Canadiens pass the Flyers, no one seems to be counting on a comeback for Julien.
“We want to roll this thing so we can get Claude back here,” Muller said. “We have a group of guys who want good for Claude.”
