The day after he was hired, Julien mentioned how his most important task was to get the Canadiens to believe in themselves again, and he did that by placing a constant emphasis on positivity.
It quickly changed the way the Canadiens saw themselves.
"He's a motivator, he's a good speaker, he wants his players to be happy and have fun and enjoy being at the rink," forward Andrew Shaw said. "When you enjoy being at your job and working hard you're going to produce the best you can. He's a player's coach. He likes to joke around and have fun, but come game time it's business."
An example of Julien's positive approach can be seen in how he recently explained his decision to play forward Alex Galchenyuk, the Canadiens third-leading scorer in the regular season with 44 points (17 goals, 27 assists) in 61 games, on the fourth line with Steve Ott and Andreas Martinsen in Game 1 of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference First Round series against the New York Rangers on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVA Sports, MSG).
Rather than criticize Galchenyuk's game, Julien said he liked having someone with offensive skill on that line so that he can have four dangerous forward lines. It's a subtle thing, but it's there.
"It's the way you carry yourself, it's what you do day after day," forward Brendan Gallagher said. "You don't define character in one day or one outing, it's something that you always have. It's a trait that I think he has. He's brought a positive outlook to our group.
There have been tactical changes by Julien, most notably instituting a more aggressive style in the defensive zone and on the penalty kill to shore up problem areas, but the confidence he has instilled in the group appears to have had a bigger impact.
How many coaches in the NHL would answer a question about tactics with this level of detail the day before the start of a playoff series, as Julien did Tuesday?
"I wanted us to tighten up a little bit, we were giving up a lot of goals, a lot of chances. So we tightened up," he said. "I think when you look at our [defensive] zone, how everyone comes in and they stop, they don't just curl away and [are] in a rush to get out of our zone. I think that's really improved our game defensively. We've really been able to crush the plays quicker and been able to come up with the puck quicker than usual, and that means puck possession.
"Even the stuff they were doing before, I tried to fine-tune the stuff, whether it was the neutral zone where we played a 1-1-3 and just fine-tuning that, making sure we got better. That's all I wanted to do. I certainly didn't want to overload them with too many changes, but that's one of them I would say has made a big difference."
