The Boston Bruins were on the wrong side of a 1-0 game in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It happens, and for a B’s club whose core has faced just about everything playoff hockey can thrown at one over the last five years plus, there’s no panic in the room.

“We’re fine. It’s a seven game series and you certainly don’t get down on yourself for a one – nothing loss that could have gone either way,” said Head Coach Claude Julien after Saturday’s practice. “It just shows you how close and tight it is. I think we just have to be better in certain areas that we talked about this morning that we hopefully will be able to bring to [Game 2].

“If we do that, then hopefully the outcome will change.”

Friday night started the 15th series that the Bruins have been in with Julien behind the bench, and they’ve now started out with a loss in seven of those series. They’ve ended up winning four of those previous six series, with two of those series coming in the first round (Buffalo in 2010 and Montreal in 2011). The Bruins did not have the home ice advantage in the two series losses that began with a loss, going all the way back to 2008’s first round series with Montreal and last year’s Cup Final.

This isn’t the end of the world for the B’s.

But there are changes that’ll need to be made by today's puck-drop, too.

“I know we have to get more pucks to the net, I know we need net front presence, that’s something that always needs to be done,” Julien said on Saturday. “But overall I think there are certain things that we are going to adjust for tomorrow that we hope will help us but at the same time, scoring chances they were low on both sides. It’s about finding ways to create more offense and that is what we looked at this morning, that is what we discussed and that’s what we tried to work on a little bit.”

But if the Bruins are to tie this series today -- something they’ve done three times in six series that started with a loss -- they’ll simply need a better performance from their top line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci, and the Cupless, 36-year-old Jarome Iginla. To be blunt about it: The Krejci line was basically a total non-factor for the Black-and-Gold on Friday.

Finishing the night with a combined four shots, their only real chance came with Lucic’s near miss of the net with just under four minutes to go in the third, the biggest and most noticeable problem for the Krejci line was that they spent way too much time chasing the puck around the ice. That looked to be a matchup issue against the Wings’ second line featuring Gustav Nyquist, and something that was kickstarted by Krejci’s ineffectiveness at the faceoff dot (he went 2-for-8 on Friday night).

This is a line that loves to control the pace of play, and they simply couldn’t do that in Game 1. They’ll have to do that in Game 2, actually.

For the Bruins to go anywhere this spring, the Krejci line is going to be have to step their game up, and allow the third line of Justin Florek, Loui Eriksson, and Carl Soderberg to be a skillful complementary line. Just look at Friday night’s end result for instance -- Pavel Datsyuk scores with 3:01 to go in the third, and Julien sends the third line out there to look for the equalizer. That’s not going to be a recipe for success most nights, but with the Bergeron line focused on Datsyuk and the Krejci line struggling, there wasn’t much of a choice.

“I think your third and fourth lines play against other third and fourth lines so that doesn’t mean that the other lines aren’t trying and they're playing against better lines, so that is a little bit tough. But in my mind, our third line had more scoring chances than our top two,” Julien admitted. “So we have to find a way to get our top two lines to get better scoring chances. I’m sure that they are probably looking at the same situation from their end.”

Based on practices, injuries and everything else, it doesn’t sound as if anything’s going to change a Boston bottom currently featuring the 6-foot-4 Florek and 13th skater Jordan Caron in for injured veterans Danny Paille and alternate captain Chris Kelly. While Paille joined injured defensemen Dennis Seidenberg and Adam McQuaid prior to Saturday’s practice, he didn’t take any consistent rushes with Merlot linemates Gregory Campbell and Shawn Thornton, making his return for Game 2 seem unlikely.

On a bit of a more positive note, defensemen Matt Bartkowski and Kevan Miller, two players that basically missed a week of practice due to undisclosed ailments, joined practice yesterday morning and could be ready for action, though Julien won’t tip his hat one way just yet.

“It’ll depend on how they feel tomorrow,” Julien said of their situation. “We’ve got contingency plans here, whether they play or not. So confirmation, I can't give that to you today.”

If these guys can’t go, expect another dose of Corey Potter and Andrej Meszaros.

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