I went to Bruins practice today before the team held their media day. Practice was held at the Garden and from experience in past years, I would get there early only to find out there was no way to get inside and would have to turn around and go home (or back to school when I was attending Suffolk University).
Before committing to going to Boston, I e-mailed a source to see if doors would in fact be open for practice. The source responded promptly after contacting the team and said the doors would be wide open.
I was still a little hesitant, but since it came straight from the team, I had to have a little faith. Being my fashionable self, I was fashionably late, arriving at least a half hour after practice started. It seemed I missed quite a bit of action in some drills too, but that's my own fault for being late.
From the little I did see, this team is one of the closest I have seen in years. Before players would kind of branch off into their own little cliques after practice, or leave the ice early, and it would always be the same. Now it doesn't matter who works with who, what they're doing and they seem to generally have fun, even during practice drills.
Claude Julien speaks to his players on a one-on-one basis often. I haven't seen that since before Dave Lewis. The assistant coaches do the same thing. It's refreshing to see that.
The Bruins have two pre-season games left, tomorrow against the Islanders and Sunday in Washington. Manny Fernandez was the first off the ice today, so I would gather he is starting tomorrow.
I'll be going to the game and updating Twitter during the game.
