It was easy to question Milan Lucic’s conditioning entering the season because he didn’t play in Europe or make a ton of appearances at practices organized by teammates during the lockout. Maybe those questions were warranted, and maybe they weren’t. Either way, they were proven wrong as he turned in a big game in Saturday’s season-opening 3-1 win over the Rangers.

Lucic did appear a little thicker after the lockout ended, and when asked two weeks ago about being in game shape, he replied, “We’ll see,” adding that he wouldn’t know until the games were actually played. 

Given all of that, seeing Lucic move well and drive to the net Saturday had to be an encouraging sign for the B’s. The 24-year-old, who was absent from practice for the birth of his daughter Thursday, scored the Bruins’ first goal of the season when he banged home a rebound off a kick-save from Henrik Lundqvist on a David Krejci slapper in the first period. He turned in a strong overall performance, registering three shots on goal before eventually getting a 10-minute misconduct with less than five minutes to play for some choice words he had on the ice. 

It looked like the same old Lucic out there on Saturday, and though he said he felt strong in the game, he admitted he was concerned about the shape he was in during training camp. 

“To be perfectly honest, this is the best I’ve felt all week,” he said. “I was a little worried at the start of the week, especially in that Monday practice that we had here. I go back to that Tuesday [scrimmage], and just getting the kinks out, and knowing where you are on the ice again. I remember I tripped on the boards a couple of times. It’s just one of those things. 

“As the week went on, it got better. I know it wasn’t much of a day off on Thursday, but I think that had a lot to do with it too, that I just got to sit back and get my mind off hockey on Thursday, and focus on something else. And then Friday, I had a great work day with [assistant coach] Doug Jarvis, just working on some little things that I haven’t really worked on in a bit. I felt good, and I’m hoping to keep it up.” 

Though he essentially admitted that he had to make some strides to get to where he was Saturday, Lucic said he never took the chatter of him being out of shape seriously. 

“It is what it is. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about it,” he said. “I feel good; I’m just going to go out there and play my game. You guys get to watch from upstairs, and you guys can make your own judgments and opinions about it.” 

Said Claude Julien: “The microscope was on him for a long time because he didn’t play and people thought that maybe he wasn’t in the best of shape. There was a lot of question marks on him, but I thought he played a solid game and, not only did he score that goal from driving the net, but physically and everything else.”

Of course, Lucic had more on his mind Saturday than proving that he was in shape, as he and wife Brittany welcomed their daughter, Valentina, in on Thursday. Lucic said he wanted to keep the puck from his goal for her, but it was deflected into the stands on the next play. Puck or no puck, scoring the goal was a perfect exclamation point for a number of things that Lucic said had been on his mind -- the end of the lockout, the start of the season and his family. 

“That’s the first thing I thought of when I scored the goal, was her,” Lucic said of his daughter. “That was definitely emotional. I’m sure you could see it in my face when I scored the goal, how happy I was. I’m just happy that my wife and the baby are healthy and happy and everything’s gone well to this point.”

Here are two other things learned in the Bruins’ season-opener:

Penalty kill prowess outweighs power play treachery: Well, treachery is probably a little harsh, but the Bruins went 0-for-7 on the power play Saturday night. Given how many penalties were called throughout the league on the NHL’s opening day (interference call after interference call, it seemed), the B’s will have plenty of man advantages going forward, so they’ll have to hope for better results. 

Yet the most critical special teams work of the night came from the Bruins’ penalty kill, specifically early on in the third period when Boston had to kill off a 90-second 5-on-3 with their most important penalty killer in the box. 

Thirty seconds after Lucic went off for boarding Carl Hagelin in a 2-1 game, Zdeno Chara was whistled for hooking Rick Nash, who had split the D of Chara and Dennis Seidenberg and was in position to potentially even the score. That put the B’s in a tight spot, but a revolving door of Seidenberg, Patrice Bergeron, Andrew Ference, Chris Kelly, Adam McQuaid and Johnny Boychuk got the job done. Ference even ended the 5-on-4 early when he drew a hooking penalty on Nash with 20 seconds left in Chara’s penalty. 

“That was huge for us to kill that 5-on-3, and if we didn’t kill that it would be a totally different game,” Boychuk said after the game. “It was a good kill and a kind of momentum-shifter and got us a beat.”

Though the Bruins weren’t able to score on their 1:40 power play that followed the critical penalty kill (David Krejci was robbed by Henrik Lundqvist on a play that was reviewed), the B’s kept the pedal to the metal and cashed in on a wrist shot from Boychuk that hit a Rangers player before sailing past Lundqvist. The goal gave the Bruins a two-goal lead from which they never looked back. 

The Bruins got the Merlot Line of old: The line of Gregory Campbell between Shawn Thornton and Daniel Paille (originally Brad Marchand) was huge for the Bruins in their Stanley Cup-winning 2010-11 season. It provided energy that other teams couldn’t match, so much so that it was a shift from them -- the fourth line -- that helped swing the momentum in the Bruins’ favor after the Canucks outplayed them in the early going of the first period in Game 7 of the Cup finals.

Yet the trio admittedly took a step backwards last year (perhaps because they were all in the last years of their contracts, or perhaps because they were as exhausted as everybody else) and hoped to start out the new season on a positive note. They made a good first impression Saturday. 

Paille had a particularly strong game for the B’s, sending a pass to Gregory Campbell in the second period and racing to the net to deflect Campbell’s shot past Lundqvist to make it 2-0. When the Rangers eventually got on the board with a goal from Brad Richards, both Thornton and Campbell dropped the gloves three seconds apart from one another with Mike Rupp and Stu Bickel, respectively.

“They did a great job,” Julien said of the trio. “I thought Piesy had a real solid game, a real good asset to that line. Not only did they score the goal, they did a lot of good things. Every once in a while they were out there against some of their big lines and if you remember a couple of years ago, they were able to handle that. They were doing the right things and I felt like they were showing that again tonight, so they got that opportunity.”