As Claude Julien spoke of his team's first period play in a 3-2 loss on Saturday night (game recap), he wasn't saying anything the room didn't already know. 

"I didn’t think we had a real good start to the game," Julien said. "They had a couple lucky goals, but those lucky goals probably wouldn’t have happened had we had a better start. I just felt that we were a little slow out of the gate, second to the puck and because of that we dug ourselves a hole. We were fortunate because we seemed to get a little better after that, but you know, it’s never easy to dig yourselves out of a hole in this league."

The lucky goals part is right on the money -- Artem Anisimov's batted puck and Mark Stuart accidentally smacking a puck into his own net is hardly something for Tuukka Rask to spend hours breaking down. The Rangers were able to jump out to an early lead thanks to the two iffy goals, but inconsistent play early on made it possible for the plays to come to fruition. 

"We dug ourselves a whole whether the goals bounced in funny or not," Andrew Ference said after the game. 

The B's got goals from Zdeno Chara and Nathan Horton, the latter of whom continued a blazing start to his Boston career. It was the Bruins' second loss of the season, both of which have been started by Rask. 

Here's the hat trick of shorelines coming from the game:

RUST NOT THE PROBLEM FOR RASK

No team should have to think too hard about whether they're better off with Tim Thomas or Tuukka Rask in net, because the simple answer is that they're  two of the best goaltending options in the league. The Bruins' problem is that it isn't the goaltending that really differs with each decision. It's the rest of the club. 

The Bruins, for whatever reason, haven't played the same in front of Rask as they have in front of Thomas. With Thomas behind them, they seem to be a wiser team that's less prone to making mistakes. With Rask in net -- and this could very well be a coincidence given that it's been just two games -- they're a lethargic team out of the gate. They need three first period fights to get the crowd to make any noise outside of absurdly unwarranted chants to bring Thomas in. 

Rask said following the game that he felt more comfortable as the game went on, but did he really appear to be uncomfortable at any point in the night? The game wasn't lost by whatever rust Rask may have had after not playing since Oct. 9, it was lost by a slow start for the team and a couple of the flukey goals that Rask might as well come to expect based on the way the season has gone for him.  

“We kind of left him out to dry both times he’s been in net and haven’t gotten great starts and got down both times he was in net,” Milan Lucic said following the game. “You can’t say anything bad about his game tonight. He played well for us. He kept us in it. He kept it 3-2 the whole way, and he gave us a chance.”

Is there a solution? How do you remedy turnovers and unusual goals? You seemingly can't fix the latter, but the Bruins will likely make a note of coming out strong in whatever game Rask's next start may be. They definitely owe him. 

NATHAN HORTON CAN'T STAY OFF THE SCORING SHEET

Though one may not be able to guess who will be in net or how the team will play in front of whichever goalie, betting on a Nathan Horton point is likely the safest prediction for this Bruins team one could make from night to night.

Horton scored his fifth goal of the season and picked up an assist on Chara's first period goal, giving him at least a point in each of the team's six games and making solidifying him as the team's most consistent and potent scorer. It's hard to pick out trends as to how and when these goals come -- half of them have been in Rask games, the other half in Thomas games -- but the fact that they come often is something the Bruins will take and something they'll need as they sort out putting a more consistent team in front of Rask. 

Asked about the placement of his shots following the game, Horton didn't say much aside from, "I just kind of try to get the puck and make it stop rolling and shoot it as quick as I [can]." 

It seems that should be exactly Horton's scouting report. He doesn't take many shots, but when he does get the opportunities in front of the net, it isn't long before the goaltender's toast. His five goals on 13 shots seems to explain that pretty well. 

LOSSES MIRROR ONE ANOTHER

It's a pretty good thing that the Bruins have only one other loss to compare Saturday night's game to, but there were quite a few similarities between the Rangers tilt and their 5-2 season-opening loss to the Coyotes.

Besides Rask being in net, Horton scored, the team admittedly came out flat, and the B's found themselves trying to make a third period comeback while fighting off a Gregory Campbell penalty. There was plenty on Saturday that could have reminded the B's of their season-opening 5-2 loss to the Coyotes. The biggest similarity was the team's failure to set the tone early. They came alive in the second period, but came out lacking energy in the first and watched as they fell behind on a couple of goals Rask couldn't be blamed for. 

"It was almost like we weren’t working smart," Horton said. "We were skating all over the ice, but we weren’t in position we weren’t making good clean crisp passes and I think that’s what hurt us. You look at their first two goals [that were] a bit of some lucky bounces, but we have to take it upon ourselves not to make those mistakes like we did in the first 10 minutes there. If we had minimized them it could have been a whole different game."

The line of thinking following the Phoenix loss was understandable: This isn't the type of hockey the Bruins play. They're a smarter club and this type of sloppiness isn't something you should expect often. 

The problem is, the more it happens, the more it loses its flavor as a rare occurrence. The things you'd rarely expect become trends, and habits are formed. The Bruins shouldn't be afraid of going down that road yet, but there are definitely things they can knock out right now. Take Gregory Campbell's high sticking late in the second period. He said following the game that it was unintentional, but at the end of the day that's six penalty minutes the Bruins have had to deal while playing from behind. 

Then there's the sloppy play. Mark Recchi picked up an assist on Chara's goal, but he struggled to control a puck at the point right after Marc Staal's penalty, and the play led to what ended up being the game-winning goal. 

The Bruins have proven to be a very capable team this season in all areas of the ice, but it just hasn't been there consistently in either of the two losses. David Krejci's mind-blowing pass aside, the Bruins will be better off without another repeat performance.