In addition to Liles being out, Chara remains sidelined by a lower-body injury. He suffered the injury on Nov. 22 against St. Louis. He will miss his fourth straight game on Tuesday night.
It is not an easy task for the Bruins to play without their two most veteran defensemen.
For two periods on Sunday afternoon against the Lightning, they proved they could handle it. Julien was pleased with the defense corps coming together and saw his blueliners playing a big role in Sunday's 4-1 win.
"I think our guys answered the challenge really well last game, and we're going to need that to happen again," Julien said. "And there's nothing we can do except ask those guys to play extremely well and step up their game as best as they can."
Kevan Miller helped fill in the void on Sunday, logging 26:42 in ice time, a 10-minute jump from the 16:50 he logged in his first two games this seasons. He's played in three straight games after missing the first 19 game of the season following hand surgery.
"Some guys took on bigger minutes than they're used to, and it wasn't any crazy efforts out there - it was just guys being themselves and playing within themselves," said Torey Krug. "And when you do that, you work hard and you don't have time to think about it in between shifts."
Based on the morning line rushes, Miller will start the night on the left side (his off side), with Brandon Carlo on the right.
"I think for him to step into the left side, and do the job - and he said he had no issues with that, he said he played there before at school and played a little bit for us last year on the left side - so it was great he was able to step up and play the amount of minutes he did and play as well as he did," said Julien.
"So, guys that play well that like deserve to get ice time and deserve to be on the ice. We're all here with the same goal, it's to win hockey games, and put your best players on the ice."
