Erik Christensen didn't have any inkling this was going to be one of those nights.

Chances are few, if any, his teammates did, either.

But what became a 2-1 loss to Boston at Mellon Arena last night was only a few minutes old when it was obvious that the Penguins were having problems. With everything. All over the ice.

"We were sort of rah-rah in the [dressing] room, and then when we went on the ice, I think a lot of guys weren't feeling it and, before you know it, you're in a hole," Christensen said. "You're trying to find momentum, and, when you start off so bad, it's really hard to start playing well."

So difficult, in fact, that the Penguins never really managed to do it last night. Aside from some solid penalty-killing and good work by goalie Ty Conklin, who finished with 31 saves, there were precious few positives for the Penguins.

"All of our game was not sharp," coach Michel Therrien said. "We played a team that was hungry to play, and we weren't. It's pretty simple."

While there is no good time to fizzle the way the Penguins did last night, it had to be particularly frustrating for them to have it happen against a team that has been eminently beatable of late. Boston had lost four of its previous five games.

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Scouting report

• Matchup: Penguins at Carolina Hurricanes, 7:08 p.m., RBC Center, Raleigh, N.C.
• TV, radio: FSN Pittsburgh, WXDX-FM (105.9).
• Probable goaltenders: Dany Sabourin for Penguins. Cam Ward for Hurricanes.
• Penguins: Are 8-3-2 vs. Southeast Conference. ... Are 6-2-2 in past 10 road games. ... RW Petr Sykora has 15 goals, 29 points in 33 career games vs. Hurricanes, including 4 points in 3 games this season.
• Hurricanes: Coming off 2-3 road trip. ... LW Ray Whitney has 32 points in 32 career games vs. Penguins. ... Through yesterday had worst penalty-killing in NHL (82.1 percent).
• Hidden stat: Ward has made 11 consecutive starts, tying his longest regular-season streak.

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"Certainly, we respected their skill and their talent," defenseman Rob Scuderi said. "But, at the same time, it was kind of a tough one to give away. They were struggling. This is a game we thought we should have."

Although the defeat ended a three-game winning streak for the Penguins (32-20-5), it did not cost them first place in the Atlantic Division or second in the Eastern Conference. They are one point ahead of New Jersey in the Atlantic, four behind Ottawa in the East.

Perhaps the Penguins' only good news of the evening came from Norfolk, Va., where goalie Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 30 of 31 shots while leading their Wilkes-Barre minor-league team to a 3-1 victory. It was Fleury's first start in his rehabilitation stint with the Baby Penguins.

Defenseman Alex Goligoski, one of the Penguins' most highly regarded prospects, made his NHL debut and logged eight minutes, 40 seconds of ice time. The Penguins opened a spot in the lineup for him by scratching center Kris Beech and dressing just 11 forwards.

The Penguins started the first period sluggishly and went downhill from there until the first intermission.

Petteri Nokelainen gave the Bruins a 1-0 lead at 12:58, when he put in a Glen Metropolit rebound from the right hash mark, and Vladimir Sobotka got the winner by chipping a Jeremy Reich feed over Conklin's shoulder at 14:43.

"The first period was probably one of the worst we've played this year," Therrien said. "Our concentration was not there. Our work ethic was not there."

Bruins defenseman Aaron Ward left the game with an unspecified throat injury at 4:05 of the second period and did not return. He's an integral part of Boston's defense, but the Bruins got by without him quite nicely, primarily because the Penguins generated few serious scoring chances and squandered most of the ones they had.

They failed to score on their first seven power plays, a run of futility that lasted until 13:02 of the third period, when Evgeni Malkin whipped a shot past Bruins goalie Tim Thomas from below the right dot for his 32nd of the season.

Conklin kept the Penguins alive with a couple of spectacular saves in the waning minutes of regulation -- he denied the Bruins on a 2-on-0 break, then stopped Phil Kessel when he broke in alone -- but they never really threatened to generate the goal that would have forced overtime.

"The second and third, we did play better," Scuderi said. "But we still weren't ourselves, like we'd be playing the previous five or six games."

Any comeback hopes they had were snuffed when winger Ryan Malone was penalized for tripping with just under 52 seconds to play. That didn't cost them the game, certainly, but was the final addition to a lengthy list of costly physical and mental errors.

"We took too many penalties, we weren't strong on our power play, the first period was terrible," Christensen said. "There weren't too many things that were too positive."

Including having their winning streak on home ice end at four games.