Bruins weather early nor'easter, right the ship

Were you among those who thought the Boston Bruins 15 minutes of fame -- the hockey version -- was over a month ago?

No shame in that. Maybe you were even right, although only time will tell.

Marc Savard's return stokes the Bruins and nets a big contract extension. (US Presswire)

Clearly the conclusion was easier to draw at the end of October than say now, because the Bruins have been playing their best hockey of the season lately. They're getting key players like Marc Savard and Tim Thomas back in the lineup too, and the team's anchor captain Zdeno Chara is starting to hit stride, which theoretically means even better days lie ahead.

It's not all perfect obviously because the Bruins still aren't scoring very much. No one in the lineup has approached double digits in goal totals, and if you take away the shootout markers, Boston has actually been outscored 60-59 so far.

But offense has been a season-long problem for a variety of reasons, most notably the extended losses of Savard and Milan Lucic from the top line. The Bruins' punchless power play has shown signs of life in the last few games, and they have scored three times with the man advantage to win their most recent game.

More important though, the Bruins have gotten back to coach Claude Julien's roots over the last month, playing the kind of defense that makes them effective, if not necessarily exciting. It was enough for Boston to go 7-3-4 in November and get back in the hunt for the Northeast Division title and a top three playoff seed.

"You gotta try to claw and scratch your way up the standings, I guess; that's what we've done lately," Julien said. "If you can get points in every game, it's huge at the end of the year."

Now too. The conventional wisdom is that teams start moving after Thanksgiving, making it tough to dig out of early standings holes. A month ago Boston seemed to be in one, or maybe just a one-hit wonder that somehow ran off with the Eastern Conference title last season. The Bruins were a .500 team at the end of October, barely around the playoff cutoff, and the three forwards who sparked the NHL's second-best offense last season were missing.

Making matters worse, their award winners, Thomas and Chara, were struggling. It wasn't where one of hockey newest 'it' teams was supposed to be. Despite being upset in the Game 7 of the playoffs second round last spring and losing top goal scorer Phil Kessel over money during the summer, the general sense was the Bruins organizational depth and talent level was still championship caliber.

But a lackluster five-game homestand to launch the season and the injuries to Savard and Lucic got things started in the wrong direction and raised a lot of questions. And it didn't help that Julien and general manager Peter Chiarelli complained about the players' intensity level while Boston spent the first 30 days muddling near the bottom of all the key statistical charts.

"At the beginning of the season, we were probably there playing for 20 minutes and it wasn't our game," Bruins forward Steve Begin said. "If you want to win games, we have to show up for those 60 minutes, and lately we've been doing that more."

Actually the Bruins have been showing up for a lot more of late. Boston has gone to overtime in 11 of its 26 games so far, including seven of the past nine. But they've gritted their way to win four of those, and the points they've secured have quietly gotten the Bruins back in the race. "We're not the kind of team that can breeze through a game and get by on talent; we have to work hard," defenseman Andrew Ference said. "The times we've been most successful was not by playing pretty hockey but by doing the little things, being smart and going to the tough areas."

Getting your best players back helps too. For the most part, Boston has been hit with relatively short-term injuries this season, and has managed to deal with them with call-ups. But Savard, the team's overall scoring leader for the last two seasons signed a seven-year contract extension Tuesday, spent 15 games on the sidelines. Lucic went down for 14 games after breaking his finger, and the impact on the offense was obvious.

Lucic returned two weeks ago but played only four games before spraining his ankle and landing back on the injury list, but Boston has gone 3-0-1 since Savard came back. Meanwhile Thomas returned over the weekend after missing six games and picked up a shootout win for the Bruins, who filled his gap nicely with rookie Tuukka Rask.

"When your team is well structured, no matter who's in lineup, we're going to try to keep our game the same way," Julien said. "We've kept our heads above water and hopefully as guys get back we'll get that extra push."