There is always the argument that too much time off for a given team can be a good thing or a bad thing. It was evident on Thursday night that the four-day layoff for the Boston Bruins was too long a time to keep the ball rolling.

Everything was right in the world leading up to their matchup with the Colorado Avalanche (3-0-0). The black and gold were 2-0, Tuukka Rask only let in two goals and the team had a nice little break to rest their bodies. However, the B’s could not light the lamp and fell 2-0 at the TD Garden.

The Bruins ran into a hot goaltender and a hot team, but head Head coach Claude Julien was not making excuses afterwards.

“They’ve got good speed and we talked about that for the last couple of days,” he said. “It’s one of those things where you really have to grind it out. We didn’t do a good enough job of creating traffic when we were in front.”

The B’s were off to a sluggish start, but picked it up in the second and third periods. It was not enough, however, as they couldn’t get that one break or gain momentum to turn the tides.

“We’ve been off for four days and it showed that first period- we were a little rusty,” Julien said. “But, those aren’t excuses, those are facts and you have to work on those things. You have to be ready. We got a lot of chances, but we just ran into a hot goaltender.”

Julien knows the long layoff did not help his team, but liked how his teams’ effort progressed after the first period.

“From the second period on, I thought we had spent more time in the offensive zone,” Julien said. “I thought we took away a little bit of their speed through the neutral zone that they had in that first period. So, the adjustments were good and our guys got better. Unfortunately, they scored a nice power-play goal in that first period and we couldn’t overcome that.”

Newcomer Loui Eriksson chimed in on the fast paced game after a four-day layoff, but was not making excuses either.

“It’s nice to play more games than rest with four days, but I thought we did-we had some good practices on those days so we were ready to go,” Eriksson said. “It’s just Colorado played really good too. They are a strong team right now.”

The B’s will not have to worry about a big layoff for their next game as they will travel to Columbus to bounce back against the Blue Jackets on Saturday.