Julien earns 500th NHL win as Bruins beat Wild

ST. PAUL, Minn. --Boston Bruins coach Claude Julien has accomplished a lot during his 12-plus seasons as an NHL coach.
A Stanley Cup champion in 2011 and Jack Adams Award winner as coach of the year in 2009, Julien earned his 500th career NHL win when the Bruins defeated the Minnesota Wild, 4-2, at Xcel Energy Center on Saturday.

Julien has 381 victories since joining the Bruins prior to the 2007-08 season and has guided Boston to the postseason in seven of his eight seasons behind the bench. He won 72 games in three seasons as coach of the Montreal Canadiens (2002-06) and 47 more with the New Jersey Devils in 2006-07.
Julien, 55, tied Toe Blake for 22nd on the NHL all-time wins list.

"I've said it before, I guess it's just my personality; I want to reflect on those things when I'm done doing this game," Julien said. "You can look back and see what you've accomplished, that's probably a lot more fun than when you're in the middle of things. Now, I prefer focusing on what I need to do as opposed to what's happened."
David Krejci had a goal and an assist and Brad Marchand, Loui Eriksson and Zdeno Chara also scored for the Bruins, who have started a season-long six-game road trip with consecutive victories.
Boston won without forward and leading scorer Patrice Bergeron, who missed the game with an undisclosed injury.
Goaltender Jonas Gustavsson made 31 saves.
"Whenever you lose a guy like [Bergeron], you can't replace him. But if everyone picks it up a little bit and plays a little bit better then you can fill that gap," Marchand said. "I thought we played a pretty sound game tonight and we got the two points, which is huge, and now we can move on."

Thomas Vanek scored his 15th goal for Minnesota, which tied a franchise record with its eighth consecutive home defeat. The Wild, who have lost eight straight games and 13 of their past 14, could set a new mark next weekend when they host the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2016 Coors Light Stadium Series at TCF Bank Stadium on Feb. 21 (3:30 p.m. ET; NBC, TVA Sports, SN).
Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper made 15 saves.
"It's good energy in the room before the games. Guys are saying the right things like, 'Let's go, let's turn this around, we're still in this,'" defenseman Ryan Suter said. "Every game, the further you get into this, the more difficult it is. It's no fun, that's for sure.
"We have the urgency. It's frustrating when you don't get the result."
Marchand and Krejci connected on a short-handed give-and-go at 6:18 in the first period to take a 1-0 lead. Marchand carried the puck into the zone and dropped a pass back to Krejci in the high slot. Marchand circled back to the left post and was wide open for a tap-in for his team-leading 27th goal.
"Anytime you're able to get a goal on the penalty kill, you don't want to force it, but if it happens then it's big, especially when it's such a big game," Marchand said. "When you're able to get that first goal of the game, it is big. It was good to get and the guys did a great job following it up."

Vanek corralled a turnover behind the Bruins' net midway through the second period and banked the puck in off Gustavsson's right pad to tie the score at 1-1 at 11:13.
Less than a minute later, Krejci scored off another rush, taking David Pastrnak's pass on the back door and banking the puck off a sliding Nino Niederreiter into the net for his 13th at 11:48. Niederreiter knocked the net off its moorings and the goal was confirmed after a video review confirmed Krejci's shot would have gone in had the goal stayed on its pegs.
"I actually didn't see it when it happened," Krejci said. "But the way it happened, you kind of put it together. I knew there was a pretty good chance it was going to be a goal, so luckily that's what happened."
Ryan Spooner sprung Eriksson on a breakaway at 6:58 of the third, with Eriksson finishing off his 200th NHL goal by slipping the puck through Kuemper's legs.

"It's almost more difficult to do what we are doing right now than it is to win a whole bunch of games. We just keep finding different ways to lose hockey games," Wild coach Mike Yeo said. "[On Saturday], we give up a [short-handed goal], we give up a breakaway goal and we give up a 2-on-1 with a forward defending it. It's not exactly a recipe for winning hockey."
Chara added an empty-net goal at 18:18 before Wild defenseman Mike Reilly scored his first NHL goal with 35.8 seconds remaining.
Minnesota outshot Boston 33-19, continuing a recent trend. The Wild have outshot and out-attempted each of their past four opponents but have gone 0-3-1 during that stretch.
"I'm disappointed in that game, very disappointed in that game," Yeo said. "We had three games where the outcome could have been different. There was three games where it looked like we were coming, and I was expected a much different performance from our group today."