Normally, a team on a five-game winning streak might not get the urge to "respond" to that many things, but on Tuesday, Claude Julien got big responses from a guy he benched and a guy he'd scratched in the previous game. It ended up being the difference between victory and defeat.

Brad Marchand could have chalked Tuesday up to a personal loss when he was benched late in the second period due to an ill-advised penalty he took when he tried getting into it with Adam Henrique. The stunt landed him in the box to watch David Clarkson score a 5-on-3 goal to give the Devils a 1-0 lead, and he played only two shifts for the rest of the period. Julien put Benoit Pouliot on his line and swapped Chris Kelly in for him on the power play. 

"Nothing was said. I got the hint by sitting on the bench," Marchand said. "He didn’t have to say anything. It’s just something you knew when you make mistakes and I know I made a couple tonight and I had to pay for it."

Marchand, who was riding a five-game point streak entering the night, could have let Tuesday just be the type of bad night that a player like him gets every once in a while. Instead, he changed his fortune by taking his first shift in the third period and scoring a breakaway goal to tie the game and give him points in six straight as the Bruins prevailed, 4-3.

"That's the way to respond, right?" Shawn Thornton said of the 23-year-old. "I guess he just said, 'Bench me anytime and I’ll respond,' huh? I know he was pretty upset with himself after that penalty. A penalty in the offensive zone is a tough one to take and I think he knows that. He did his time and then he came out and he did what he had to do to help the team out after that."

Then, two blown leads later, it was Pouliot's turn to respond. Pouliot was a surprise healthy scratch Saturday night when Julien opted to play Zach Hamill in his place against the Sabres. When Hamill was returned to Providence Sunday, it seemed pretty apparent that -- barring some miracle for Daniel Paille -- Pouliot would return to the lineup. A healthy scratch in previous stops in his career (Minnesota and Montreal), Pouliot admits he's had a hard time dealing with it in the past, but he buried his second goal of the season in game-winning fashion.

"Obviously I was frustrated," Pouliot said. "It sucks when you're out of the the lineup and you're ready to go, but you learn. Coaches talk to you, and the guys say, 'Keep your head up, you'll be back,' and that's what happened tonight. Hey, it paid off at the end, so I'm happy about that." 

With just over three minutes remaining in a 3-3 game, Pouliot went to the net as Joe Corvo threw a shot on Johan Hedberg from the half wall. The rebound bounced out to Pouliot, and he got just a piece of it. Disappointed that he didn't muster a strong enough shot to score, he watched the puck barely trickle past the right pad of Hedberg to give the B's the game-winning goal, and undoubtedly his brightest moment in a Bruins uniform. 

"It took a long time," Pouliot said with a laugh as he described watching the puck travel the short distance into the net. "I was looking at it, and I'm like, 'Oh, maybe it’s not going to get there.' But you never know what happens when you put the puck on net and it paid off tonight."

It was a weak shot, a quick play, but an enormous response from Pouliot. He knows that the healthy scratched might come here and there, but as long as he can stay as motivated as he's been, the scratches won't be as ugly as they were on teams past. 

"It's tough coming to a new team, when you've got to adjust to what they do. You don't want to mess up anything they did last year," Pouliot said. "I just try to jump in there, try to get on the same game plan as them. We're only -- what -- Fifteen or 16 games in, so there's plenty of hockey left. I've just got to keep my head up."

Say what you want about Julien, but his list of faults grows shorter and shorter as time progresses. Never mind the fact that he won some big trophy in Vancouver a few months ago, when he sends a message to his players, they respond.

The Bruins began the playoffs last season with Tyler Seguin, their most skilled player (but a long ways away from what he is now), up in the press box. It took until the Eastern Conference finals and a Patrice Bergeron concussion for Seguin to get in the lineup, and when he did, he was a different player. Despite playing sparingly in Game 1, his first-period move on Mike Lundin at the blue line and subsequent goal had B's fans wanting more and he delivered four more points in the second period the next game. It was the type of explosion the Bruins needed, and the perfect response to being scratched.

A regular-season win over New Jersey in November isn’t quite as emphatic an example as Seguin’s performance in May, but it was further proof that even a champion and folk hero like Marchand can still feel the need to respond and prove himself. That sends a pretty good message. 

"It obviously says a lot about their character," Julien said of his players. "Sometimes you don’t even have to say much; you just get to the stage where, as they say, actions speak louder than words."