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DETROIT -- Let's be honest: It's hard to get excited about a game against the Detroit Red Wings on Oct. 15. Nonetheless, the Boston Bruins earned a critical two points with a 3-2 shootout victory to snap a three-game losing skid Wednesday at Joe Louis Arena. It was Boston's best game of this young season and it needed to happen. "I thought we played a real good game tonight," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "It was a tough win, but a win I thought we deserved. It was nice to see us come up with the win, probably the best game so far this year and we did a lot of good things."  But there's no time to enjoy it, because all the focus is already on Boston's next opponent -- the Montreal Canadiens, who host the Bruins on Thursday night at Bell Centre.
Last season, the Bruins were considered the odds-on favorite to win the Stanley Cup, but the Canadiens defeated Boston in the second round of the playoffs. To make it worse, Montreal beat the Bruins in Game 7 at TD Garden. If it was possible for this storied rivalry to become any more intense, it has. And now the teams will play their first regular-season game again each other since the playoffs. "We'll be ready," Julien said Wednesday. "The emotions tonight were high and we're going to need that tomorrow. But tonight also [our emotions] were under control and we'll need that as well tomorrow. Emotions have to be high against one of your rivals, but if [emotions] are in control, we'll be OK." The Canadiens began the season with a four-game road trip, going 3-1-0, so Thursday's game against the Bruins will be Montreal's home opener. While the Bruins will be playing back-to-back road games, the Canadiens have been off since Monday's 7-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. At the center of Thursday's game will be Bruins forward Milan Lucic, public enemy No. 1 with Montreal fans whenever he takes the ice. Canadiens players criticized Lucic after Boston's Game 7 loss last spring for some nasty comments he made in the handshake line. The situation blew up, but after Wednesday's win in Detroit, Lucic said he's focused on more important things. "Right now I've got zero points and I'm a minus-1, so I'm more worried about winning a game here and producing," he said. "If anything happens, it'll happen, but I'm looking forward to playing hard and winning a hockey game." The day the Bruins held their exit meetings, Lucic addressed the situation, and he was not happy that the Canadiens were complaining about what was said. Lucic called it "unfortunate," feeling that what is said on the ice should stay on the ice. Lucic said a "code was broken" and he would not apologize. "I'm not the first guy to do it. I'm not the last guy to do it," he said at the time. "I'm not sorry that I did it. I'm a guy that plays on emotion and this is a game of emotions. Sometimes you make decisions out of emotion that might not be the best ones. I didn't make the NHL because I accepted losing, or I accepted failure." Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli and president Cam Neely backed Lucic. Neely understands that emotions run high on the ice. Things are said during the course of the game, between whistles, and after the game. "I can tell you this, in handshake lines there's probably worse things that have been said that just don't get public," Neely said during his season-ending news conference. "In the history of handshake lines I can almost guarantee that." On Wednesday, winning in the fashion the Bruins did against the Red Wings will help Boston's confidence going into hostile territory. "It helps a lot," Lucic said. "You see when we play determined to win and when we focus on just playing a hard, heavy game it gives us success. We have to have the same mindset going into tomorrow night. We know we're heading into Montreal, their home opener, they beat us last year in the playoffs, but we can't think about that. We just gotta think about going in there and winning ourselves a hockey game and coming out successful on this road trip." In situations like these, Julien always preaches to his players the importance of focusing on the task at hand and eliminating outside distractions. With a victory in the first game of this three-game road trip, and now playing against the Canadiens, Julien isn't thinking about revenge. "You've got to turn the page," Julien said. "You can't live in the past. It's about doing what you've got to do this year. We've got to go in there and do what we have to do to come out of there with a win, it's as simple as that in my mind."
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