BOSTON (AP) — The Bruins emerged from a hardfought first-round playoff series convinced that the resilience they showed will help them avoid a repeat of last season’s epic second-round flame out against the Flyers.

Boston squandered a 3-0 series lead to Philadelphia last spring, allowing the Flyers to become just the third team in NHL history to accomplish such a comeback.

The Bruins earned a rematch this year by downing archrival Montreal in the first round, rallying from 0-2 down in the series and 3-1 down in Game 4 before winning a Game 7 in which they lost two leads.

That performance has Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli confident that his team isn’t carrying any baggage from last year’s collapse against the Flyers going into Game 1 Saturday in Philadelphia.

“I wouldn’t think it would be too much harder than this past series,” Chiarelli said Thursday during a news conference at TD Garden. “This past series had a terrific amount of hype for a number of reasons and the common denominator for me in this past series was the players more or less were calm in their own way for all the series.

“You’d see some frenzies here and there, but they were able to respond after those frenzies and settle things down. I like the way they handled that frenzy and I anticipate the typical playoff environment to this series. Of course, there’s history there from last year.”

History hasn’t been a problem for this Bruins team. The Boston franchise had never won a playoff series after trailing 0-2. The Bruins’ last three seasons had ended with Game 7 losses. And no team had ever won a seven-game series without scoring a power-play goal (the Bruins were 0 for 21 against the Canadiens).

“We stressed it going into this series,” Chiarelli said of his team’s poise. “You see this quiet confidence and you try and bottle it and have them do it and display it. Maybe that’s (the reason for success) because I thought we showed it.

“Listen, this was a tightly fought series and it could’ve gone either way. I’ve got to give credit to Montreal because they just kept going. Having said that, we were in three overtime games and we won those three. That’s like the highest pressure point in a playoffs, and we managed to win those three.”

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