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Jagr: ‘It’s tough to play with me and play safe’

jaromirjagrgetty

Upon being traded to the Boston Bruins, the natural question regarding Jaromir Jagr was: how could he possibly coexist with defense-first (second and last) coach Claude Julien? That still remains to be seen, especially since the future Hall of Famer isn’t apologetic about his style.

He explained to CSNNE.com that sometimes you have to take risks to make plays, a philosophy that must turn Julien’s eyes red.

“Sometimes it’s hard for guys that haven’t played top six because they’re not used to making risky plays. But sometimes you have to take risky plays to make some great offensive play,” Jagr said. “But I know they don’t like to do that and they like to play safe. It’s tough to play with me and play safe.”

“I like to take the risky stuff. But the great thing about [Campbell] is that he’s so responsible defensively that me and [Marchand] don’t have to worry about it that much. It worked pretty well in the last game.”

(Go ahead, make a gambling joke. You guys are mean sometimes.)

The 41-year-old icon acknowledged that “the coaches don’t like it” when discussing his approach more than once in that article, but what does Julien think?

He seems pleased.

“He brings more offense,” Julien said. “There’s no doubt it. You see in the offensive zone that he’s strong on the puck and he finds players with great seam passes. Guys are slowly getting used to those because at first I think they were a little surprised it was coming to them. He’s had a great attitude. As you can see he’s very open to the concept of our team and he believes in what we’re doing. That’s very important.”

“He’s been a great addition. It doesn’t matter whatever has been said or not said about him; it doesn’t matter because we’re happy with what we’ve got out of him so far.”

We’ll see if that continues in tonight’s NBC Sports Network game between the Bruins and New Jersey Devils, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET.