When it was over, when the most anticipated Bruins season in recent memory officially had begun, Claude Julien must have been smiling on the inside. The coach of the Bruins must have concluded his press conference, as he did at the TD Garden last night, knowing that he already possessed all the ammunition he would need over his hockey team.

"I’d be very disappointed if I had to go in there and explain to them what happened,’’ Julien had said – rather succinctly, in fact – only a short time earlier. Added the coach, "I don’t think that’s the kind of game you want to play in your home building in front of your home fans."

And what kind of game was that? A stinker, really – the kind of game that made you think back to the Dave Lewis era, when the Bruins always seemed to have too many men on the ice and when three-goal defeats were the rule rather than the exception. The Bruins of last season lost just six home games in regulation, just one of those by as many as three goals. That was a 5-2 defeat to the San Jose Sharks and Joe Thornton (ugh) on Feb. 10 during which the Bruins gave up four goals in the third period.

And so now, one game into the Bruins season of great hype and expectation, Julien already has had the opportunity to walk into his team’s locker room after the game and deliver the a most clear and direct message: You’re good, but you’re not that good.

At least not yet.

This year as much as any other in recent memory, we all know the stakes in what colleague Kevin Paul Dupont long ago dubbed the Hub of Hockey. It’s pretty much Cup or bust. Everyone from Julien to general manager Peter Chiarelli to owner Jeremy Jacobs has acknowledged that the Bruins have lofty expectations this season, which is something most developing teams do not do. And yet the Bruins have admitted that the entire success of their season will be determined in the spring, that time of year last season when they when were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs last year by the Carolina Hurricanes.

Here’s the obvious problem: between now and then, the Bruins still have 81 more games to play. Maybe getting positively spanked in the opener is a healthy reminder more than it is a bad omen. The Bruins of 2008-09 were talented and disciplined, hard-working and unrelenting. As disappointing as it was for their season to end against Carolina, they probably weren’t going to beat Pittsburgh or Detroit (or both) to win their first Cup since the Nixon administration.

Between then and now, despite the departure of Phil Kessel, expectations grew. In retrospect, the hype really was starting to get a little ridiculous. Goalie Tim Thomas said as much following an Opening night defeat that clearly stuck in his craw, which is hardly surprising given the kind of career Thomas has built, where he has come from, what he has learned.

Almost nothing comes easily, let alone success.

"You know what? It’s out of the way and we can stop talking about opening night now," Thomas said with a touch of irritability. He added, "We have to be prepared. You have to play hard. That’s how we had out success last year and that’s how we have to have our success this year. Any thoughts that it was going to be easy have been proven wrong."

With regard to last night’s game, in particular, the Bruins looked interested for about 10 minutes. After that, the B’s got schwacked by a Washington team that has every bit the championship hopes the Bruins do. After being credited with 10 shots on goal in the first 12:57 of play, the Bruins managed just 10 more in the next 47:03. In five power play opportunities encompassing 8 minutes, 25 seconds, the Bruins managed one shot on goal. One. The one Bruins goal was a gift, Patrice Bergeron sneaking off on a breakaway from center ice after Washington defenseman John Erskine whiffed on a bouncing puck.

By that point, thanks largely to the efforts of windup toy Alex Ovechkin and the far more committed Capitals, the Bruins were down 4-0. Possessors of a 2-0 lead after two periods, the Caps decked the B’s with a pair of goals in the first two minutes of the third period. One of those was scored by Ovechkin, who had a pair of goals on the night and played with more speed, ferocity and, well, energy than just about the entire Bruins roster.

The bottom line? If the Bruins were starting to believe all the wonderful things people were saying about them, they certainly shouldn’t believe them now. Managing the expectations of this season were the chief concern of Chiarelli and Julien entering this season, and last night the Bruins got pushed off the ice as if the Caps were toting squeegees. If the Bruins are going to meet those expectations, they certainly must look far more interested than they did in Game 1.

In the end, what more ammunition does a coach need than that?