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New Bruins GM: Claude Julien is head coach ‘as of today’

AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File

After a “worldwide” search, as CEO Charlie Jacobs described it, the Boston Bruins named Assistant General Manager Don Sweeney as the franchise's eighth GM Wednesday. Team president Cam Neely said the process was narrowed down to four candidates (Sweeney, George McPhee, Jeff Gorton, Ray Shero?) before they chose the man who knew the organization best.

Now that Sweeney’s in the GM’s chair, all the focus will be on the future of head coach Claude Julien, who’s been left to wonder if he’ll be behind the bench next season.

Sweeney said he has spoken with Julien, but wasn’t fully committed to saying he would definitely return.

“I have some things that I want to sit down with Claude and go through in a very orderly fashion as to where I think things need to change and what direction we need to change as a group," Sweeney said.  "Also, [I] acknowledged to Claude during this whole process that I think tremendously of him as a coach, and as a person, so it’s just about aligning up philosophical approaches that I believe in, that he believes in, and that we can move the group forward.

“Some of that will involved personnel decisions. Some of that will involve staff member decisions and/or changes. That’s to be determined. He’s the coach of the Boston Bruins as of today, for sure.”

“As of today,” Sweeney says, since he added he doesn’t have a timeline in mind to make a final decision. The new GM is still to evaluate the organization from top to bottom and he said he’ll begin with Julien and go from there.

“I’m going to take the necessary time to evaluate and start with Claude and dissect a little bit of the personnel pieces that he feels in teams that he’s had in the past and had success with, what we currently have, what we need to identify that might be missing, and we’ll go from there.”

Now that the Toronto Maple Leafs have hired Mike Babcock, there are only four open head coaching gigs left in the NHL: New Jersey, San Jose, Buffalo and now Detroit. St. Louis could be added to that list if they part with Ken Hitchcock. The longer Sweeney waits to make a decision, the more it could affect Julien's job situation for the 2015-16 season.

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Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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