There was much anticipation on Opening night, not only for the Boston Bruins roster, but for their special teams as well.

With new faces all over the roster as well as on the bench with new Assistant coach Joe Sacco stepping in, new personnel was needed on their power-play and penalty kill units. Head coach Claude Julien was in a predicament with no David Krejci due to injury and no Johnny Boychuk who was traded last weekend or Jarome Iginla who is now in Colorado, but he pushed all the right buttons against the Philadelphia Flyers seeing his penalty kill go a perfect 3-3 on the night while his power-play unit scored once in two tries on a goal by Reilly Smith.

With limited options ,the special teams’ personnel had much to make up for and they did just that especially in the third period when the momentum was shifting in a 1-1 game towards the Flyers side. Patrice Bergeron went off for a holding penalty leaving the Black and Gold without their best penalty killer, but the PK units stepped up keeping the score at bay.

The hero from Wednesday night’s opener Chris Kelly was in on the penalty kill when Bergeron was in the box. He joked after the game.

“Did you guys gasp like we did? It’s always difficult,” Kelly said with a smirk. “He’s our best penalty killer besides Tuukka. I thought we did a good job stepping up and killing it off. He kills so many for all of us it was the least we could do.”

It was a handful of players stepping up on the special teams and that is what this team has preached all along especially Bergeron reiterating the team may have changed players, but if they stick to their system in all three phases of the game, they’d be fine.

Julien was satisfied with his penalty killers tonight in the 2-1 victory, but made it a point to praise Craig Cunningham in the process.

“I thought a guy like Cunningham did a great job tonight-him and Paille,” Julien said in a post game press conference. “But for Cunny (Cunningham), for a young player coming in did a great job and then we had to kind of double shift certain guys. We killed with four, but kept them short for the most part. I thought a guy like Cunningham really saved us from more damage by being so good on the penalty kill.”

Cunningham was modest after the game referencing Paille quite a bit giving him the credit for his success on the night.

“I thought I got a pretty good opportunity tonight and just tried to take advantage of it,” Cunningham said. “I’ve done a lot of video with coaches and tried to work on those little parts of my game. Killing with Piesy (Paille) is easy. He’s a great killer and he’s usually in the right spot. I just kind of let him go and read off of him and he helps you out all over the ice.”

Tuesday was a night to get acclimated to your new line mates and for the Black and Gold it was a lot due to injuries and players leaving for other teams. But if we learned one thing on opening night, it’s if the B’s kill penalties and score on the power play, they will continue to have success. We know how good of a team they are five-on-five. The differences will lie in the man advantage and with the man disadvantage.