This certainly wasn’t the start anyone had envisioned. 

Through eight games, the defending Stanley Cup champions are 3-5-0, with two wins in six games at TD Garden. The latest loss came at the hands (fins?) of the Sharks, and if the Bruins do not sweep their upcoming home-and-home series with the Habs, they will have gone the first month of the season without stringing together back-to-back victories. 

“We haven’t played our best,” Chris Kelly, who has four points in the last two games, said after Saturday’s loss. “There have been moments that we have played the way we’re capable of playing, and we haven’t done that on a consistent basis. I think as a group we know what our identity is and what brings us success, but for whatever reason we’re just not doing that on a consistent basis.”

Kelly certainly isn’t among those who are to blame for the Bruins’ slow start. In fact, it’s Kelly’s line with Tyler Seguin and Milan Lucic that has been among the pleasant surprises this season, both for its mere existence and the fact that the trio have been able to light up the scoreboard in the last two games since being put together. 

“With Looch, he makes it so much easier for you out there. He’s such a big body and he goes in the corner and wins battles,” said Seguin, who scored his third goal of the season Saturday. “For a guy like that size to have as much skill as he does, it’s hard to find it out there. He does a great job. Kells is probably one of the best positional forwards I’ve played with. So our line seems to be clicking and hopefully it stays that way.”

The line clicked in the third period when Lucic and Seguin scored within 29 seconds of one another to tie the game at two, but a goal from local product Benn Ferriero gave the Sharks a lead that they held before Patrick Marleau scored an empty-net goal to make it 4-2, that game’s final score. 

The season is still young, and with the vast majority of last year’s team still in Boston, there’s no need to worry about what the 2011-12 Bruins are capable of, but so far they haven’t been able to show it consistently. They’ll have plenty of time to figure it out for the Canadiens, as the B’s will be off Sunday before having three straight days of practice from Monday-Wednesday before returning to game action Thursday against their arch rivals. 

STREAKING, THE WRONG WAY

The Bruins are searching for consistency in plenty of different ways their mediocre start to their title defense. Unfortunately for them, one of the few things they’ve done consistently of late is allow the first goal. 

The B’s have given up the first goal in six consecutive games, with Sharks forward Joe Pavelski being the most recent Bruins’ opponent to get his team on the board first. As a result of Pavelski’s goal, which occurred 72 seconds into the game, the Bruins found themselves in familiar territory playing from behind. 

Though the two-goal shift from Kelly’s line was as explosive as you’ll see for a 29-second span, the Bruins were stopped on good opportunities in the first period and found themselves sleepwalking at points in the second period. They finally got some offense with that shift, but the B’s could stand to get some scoring sooner rather than later in these games. 

“We’ve got to find a way to get that first one,” Lucic said after the game. “… I don’t think our starts have been bad, We just need to find a way to bear down on our chances when we do get them, especially in the first period.”

The Bruins definitely saw at points in the postseason last year that scoring the first goal wasn’t everything (heading into Game 7, the team that scored the first goal in the Eastern Conference finals was 3-3), but there’s no denying that the road to victory is a lot less bumpy when they can get on the board first.

“It’s tough to put yourself in a hole that way,” Kelly said of falling behind early. “You’re playing catch-up all night. It’s an easy game when you’ve got the lead. You can dump the puck in and chase it at the right time and you feel good about yourself, but when you’re playing from behind you need to make those plays and try to make something happen every shift.”

COUTURE STRIKES AGAIN

Peter Chiarelli will probably never be able to have a bad reputation in this town after building last spring's championship team. He’s the man who brought Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard to Boston, turned Phil Kessel into Tyler Seguin, Dougie Hamilton and Jared Knight, and added the pieces in February that completed the championship puzzle in Chris Kelly, Rich Peverley and (arguably) Tomas Kaberle. 

Yet there’s no denying that one move the Chiarelli regime would like to have back is their selection in the first round of the 2007 draft. With the Bruins picking eighth overall, Boston selected Everett Silvertips (WHL) center Zach Hamill. It’s bad enough for the B’s that Hamill hasn’t come close to panning out (four career NHL games and not a single AHL season with 35 points), but the fact that Logan Couture went to the Sharks with the very next pick makes it all the more painful. 

As a rookie, Couture took the NHL by storm last season, losing the Calder Trophy to Hurricanes forward Jeff Skinner in a campaign in which Couture racked up 32 goals for San Jose. In addition to proving that he was the better player of the guys on the board when the B’s picked, he’s rubbed it in with goals in the last two meetings between the teams. 

Couture’s latest strike against the Bruins came in the second period when he took a feed from Martin Havlat behind the net and beat Tim Thomas, who was lunging out of the net to disrupt the second-year player. 

The goal was Couture’s first goal of the season, but there figures to be plenty more from the 22-year-old. Unfortunately for the Bruins, they’ve got one more against the Sharks this season.  Couture and the Sharks will host the B’s on March 22.