Start was a bit harrying

OK, hold on, folks. As of early last night, the Bruins were but three games into the 82-game NHL season, and despite sandwiching two abject stinkers (Capitals and Ducks) around last Saturday’s easy win over the Hurricanes (the club that knocked them out of the playoffs in May, mind you), it is far too small a test sample to begin thinking about how to unload your Winter Classic tickets or depositing your Phil Kessel No. 81 Black-’n’-Gold sweater in the Goodwill box.

What we have here, in part, is the typical early-season shakeout that comes with working new players and personalities (see: Derek Morris, Steve Begin, and the rehabbed Marco Sturm) into the mix. We also are witnessing a hangover symptomatic of a team that battled its brains out last season, rattled off 116 points, drubbed Montreal in the playoffs, then hit a wall of fatigue, injuries, and ill-timed playoff blahs when confronted by those sprightly Hurricanes.

However, we are also witnessing something we haven’t seen here in some time. Call it Club Comfort. Through training camp and now one week-plus into the 2009-10 schedule, the club so many of us (hand up here) penciled in for a top-four seed in the East this year is acting as if preseason prognosticators actually know what they’re talking about (hand . . . down . . . here . . . and . . . deftly . . . slipped . . . into . . . pocket . . . while . . . whistling . . . U2’s . . . “Beautiful Day’’).

In other words, they’re good, but they started a bit lazy, lackadaisical, playing without purpose, engaged neither physically nor mentally. They have been window shoppers, eyeing the goods behind the glass while outside on the sidewalk, not knowing how to find the front door. Going into last night’s game against the Islanders, their fourth straight at home, they had started this season the way they ended last season, underperforming all expectations, including their own.

“I think we’re too comfortable,’’ said general manager Peter Chiarelli, reached prior to last night’s game, and clearly displaying an edge, an intolerance, that hasn’t been there in three-plus years as the club’s boss. “We’re too comfortable in our preseason predictions, where we are in our [player] contracts.

“We’ve taken things for granted in two of the first three games. Each time we played a good first period, and then that was it. That’s like putting in a six-hour day, which means you are not putting in a full day’s work, in my mind. I know guys are trying to get out of it, that’s good. We’ll see how long I tolerate it.’’

Chiarelli, 45, rewarded with his own contract extension over the summer, sounds as if he is taking his own game to a new level. Good timing. The front office needs that edge.

Departing the press box Thursday night, with the fetid stench of the 6-1 loss to the Ducks heavy in the air, I couldn’t help but think of the old Garden days when Harry Sinden was the GM. On nights his club was bad, Sinden was the best show in town. Perched in his luxury box in the old joint’s rafters, with his jacket off and tie loosened like a lasso, he would pop out of his chair with every bad goal or misplay, working himself into an emotional lather.

A performance akin to Thursday’s would have had Sinden hotfooting it down to ice level immediately after the loss, and within minutes he would have barged his way through the exiting crowd and the media members gathered outside the dressing room. Grim-faced and sweating profusely, he would have swung open the huge black dressing-room doors, then turned right to the coach’s office for a blistering review of the night’s crimes perpetrated against the Spoked-B. Sensational.

Well, it’s not Sinden’s club anymore, and Chiarelli isn’t about to launch an emotional tutorial on Claude Julien, who, truth be told, has an ample storehouse of Sinden-like ire in his emotional reservoir. Until now, Chiarelli has been reluctant to reveal much more than his lawyerly persona, time and again clipping sentences short in media scrums or press conferences, making it painfully obvious that he feels like the witness and some of us in the media are trying to lead him where he doesn’t want to go.

Sure, he’s probably right to keep a lid on it. But what fun is that? Sinden got led where he didn’t want to go sometimes, but he usually, if not always, delivered the message he wanted to get across, and it made him the best quote in town - even when he had the worst team in town.

So what’s ahead here for Chiarelli’s team if the lethargy prevails? Callups? Trades? Kicked butts and rolling heads?

“We all know the options, right?’’ said Chiarelli. “I think it’s too early for that, but . . . two of our first three games were exactly the same, and that’s not good. Yes, it’s early, but I’m not content. Certainly the light bulb’s gone on.’’

Keep an eye on that ninth-floor management suite, folks, the one NESN likes to showcase when Cam Neely starts high-fiving everyone in sight. If Chiarelli loosens his tie, and starts wheeling back in his rolling chair with each bad goal, or yelling to Neely, “Hey, Sea Bass, what’s going on here?!’’, we really might start having some fun on Causeway.

Washington is hurting in defense department

“We all have to play the same way without the puck,’’ he told his high-flying charges after the workout.

The Capitals reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals (Round 2) in the spring, but were embarrassingly bounced (6-2) on home ice by the Penguins when Boudreau couldn’t get them to cobble together the slightest sense of a defensive posture. Either they had trouble following orders, or they were a lawless bunch not schooled in the back half of the game. The game’s most electrifying offensive team was short-circuited on defense.

Following Thursday night’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers, the Capitals still had more goals (18) than any club in the league. They also had allowed a league-worst 15. Ah, yes, Team Trick or Treat, yet again.

“We want to correct it in Game 4,’’ said Boudreau, “rather than Game 44.’’ He also made a distinction, an important one, between what he referred to as “high-talent’’ and “high-effort’’ players. Hmm. A shot at some of those slick forwards? All of them, including Alexander Ovechkin?

The underlying truth is that the Capitals have highly questionable goaltending in the likes of ex-Hab Jose Theodore and the young Semyon Varlamov. Theodore is just not an elite stopper, and some nights he struggles to be just an OK stopper. Varlamov, 21, showed some great flashes in the postseason, and maybe he’ll carry the load eventually - provided Boudreau can coax more of that bothersome defensive responsibility out of everyone.

Until then, the Capitals are a tasty treat full of empty calories.

Etc.

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at dupont@globe.com.