As big a loss as it appeared losing captain Zdeno Chara for 17 minutes was, Claude Julien opened his press conference after Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the Canadiens saying it wasn’t the key factor.

“Well, it doesn’t help,” Julien said. “Again, we’re a good enough team that that shouldn’t be the factor and it wasn’t. We only gave them four shots in the third period, but two of them ended up in goals. I thought we could have done a better job in the D-zone. The way that they scored their goals was exactly the way they normally score them. I think we could’ve been a little bit more alert.”

Several times during the games, the Bruins appeared to be fighting the puck in their own end, especially Andrew Ference. He had a couple of turnovers and the normally sure-handed Dennis Seidenberg had another. Tuukka Rask picked up Ference and Seidenberg on all of them but couldn’t stop the Canadiens in the third.

“I didn’t feel like we were moving the pucks as well as we can,” Julien said. “Sure, they forecheck well, but for some reason passes weren’t as crisp coming out of our own end on a lot of occasions and it kind of got us in trouble a little bit. When we got the puck out and went and did the same thing in their end, we had our chances too. They were giving us those opportunities as well. I just felt that defensively when there were some breakdowns we weren’t really there to cover their mistakes and pucks ended up in our net.”

Then there was the lack of production from any line besides the top one of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin.

“That’s just it,” Julien said. “By far, they were our best line tonight. And that’s the unfortunate thing; we didn’t have enough of those other lines going for us. You can’t win big games like that relying on just that one line. We need more out of the other lines and tonight wasn’t a night where we got that. It’s a credit to them, I think Patrice had a great night. Obviously, Marshy with three assists, and Tyler I thought was skating well and competing well. That was a good line for us. Another line or two like that, with that same work ethic, we would’ve been fine.”