Welp, that atrocity of a football season is over, finally. I've seen enough shirtless Rob Gronkowski photos to last me easily until next August, the Bruins are busy being awesome with children during their time off, and tomorrow we finally get another game. FINALLY. The push for the playoffs is getting interesting, and while tomorrow's opponent might not really be a contender, every two points matters.

Plus, LOL - it's Buffalo. Brace for drama!

After the jump, some adventures to clear your schedule for, some players the Bruins probably won't be acquiring, and hey, Brooks Laich isn't as broken as we thought...

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Funny how, with almost exactly two months remaining in the NHL's regular season, the two teams in the Eastern Conference who have played the fewest games have the most points, isn't it?

While the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers will be engaged in a heated battle over the next 30-plus games for the first seed in the Eastern Conference, there is a very clear line being drawn in the Northeast Division, where three teams (Boston, Ottawa, Toronto) are within eight points of the top while Buffalo and Montreal are looking at longer and longer odds for the playoffs in 2012.

It was an ugly week for the Montreal Canadiens, which lost two-goal decisions to both Buffalo and New Jersey, but which really shamed itself by engaging in a petty war of words with the Sabres' Paul Gaustad over which team had taken a bigger beating from the division-rival Bruins. Such is the plight of two under-performing teams, I suppose, but where it really got bad was when Carey Price said that Gaustad "doesn't do much out there," just minutes after Gaustad assisted on two goals and scored the game-winner for Buffalo in the win.

Yeah, doesn't do much out there at all, I guess.

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3 - The number of Bruins currently ranked in the top four among plus/minus rating for the season. Tyler Seguin leads the league with a +33, while Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron are tied for third with +27 ratings.

It's been touched on before in the space, but revisited again today after yesterday's game that saw Seguin finish +2 and both Chara and Bergeron +3 on the afternoon. Expanded on even further, Boston has six of the top 10 plus/minus players in the league, with Boychuk, Kelly and Marchand all at +24.

Last time the Bruins were in the Nation's Capital...well, nevermind.

Claude Julien continued the sneaky strategery on Saturday by putting Tim Thomas in net in Saturday's 2-1 loss to Pittsburgh, thereby saving him from being thrown to the wolves at the Verizon Center on Sunday, where the Bruins look to end avoid just their second three-game losing streak on the season.

Washington came back from the all-star break slow, losing a 4-3 overtime decision to Tampa and a 4-2 bout with Florida before working over the Montreal Canadiens in Montreal on Saturday afternoon. The Capitals started with Montreal at 2 PM on Saturday, so while they have the advantage of home ice, Boston will have had more rest and less travel coming into the game.

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Having gone 4-5-1 in their last 10 and having lost their last two, the Bruins enter this afternoon's game against the Capitals looking to regain the form that got them to the top of the Eastern Conference. They'll have to go through the Washington Capitals and Alex Ovechkin in a 12:30 NBC marquee game to do it.

NBC also has another big game on later, with the Patriots in the Super Bowl against the Giants. I could go on about this but I think I'll spare everyone. NBC should get some ridiculously high ratings in Massachusetts today with both games on their network.

After the jump, reactions to the Bruins' recent struggles, Ilya Kovalchuk turns into Rocky Marciano, and a tribute to Scott Gomez.

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Close, but no cigar. While that statement has relevance to the comeback Boston almost mounted in the third period, it can aptly describe the problems Boston faced all afternoon when moving out of their own zone. In a theme carried throughout Boston’s 2-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Bruins inability to capably breakout of their third of the ice cleanly was a deciding factor in today’s outcome. When Boston was successfully able to move the puck out of their zone, many of the clears were poor passes or simply chips with no real intended target.

Pittsburgh’s game winning goal, scored by Matt Cooke, came as a direct result of a bad clear - Dennis Seidenberg, feeling pressure below the goal line, fired a hybrid saucer pass/clearing attempt about waist-high toward Zach Hamill, who was unable to control the puck. Immediately corralled by the Pens and moved back into the B’s zone in what amounted to a 3-5 by the Pens. In a scene that could well be a microcosm of Boston’s recent defensive struggles, Cooke was able to take two chips at a rebound from a foot outside the crease, while all five Boston players were below the faceoff dots and three – Corvo, Hamill and Kelly – formed a triangle around Cooke to watched him put away the game winner without so much as putting a body on Cooke.

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The Boston Bruins look to turn around a mid-season swoon that's seen them go 5-4-1 in their last ten games today as the red-hot Pittsburgh Penguins come to town.

Prior to a shutout loss on Wednesday against Toronto, Pittsburgh ended a six-game losing streak by winning eight games in a row, and has been playing some of the best hockey in the league since the calendar turned to 2012.

Evgeni Malkin (27-32=59 totals in just 44 games) has been playing some spectacular hockey in the absence of team captain Sidney Crosby, who continues to suffer from concussion-related symptoms. James Neal (27-21=48 51 games) and Chris Kunitz (14-18=32) have also been strong for Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile the Bruins, who had been playing the best hockey in the league in November and December, have been hampered by injuries, suspensions and the absence of strong fundamentals as they have fallen to inferior opponents time and again. After going 21-3-1 in the final two months of 2011, the Bruins are 8-5-1 since the calendar turned, and haven't won consecutive games since January 12th.

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Let's face facts: what happened to the Bruins on Thursday night was a long time coming. For too many games, they'd been on cruise control for entire periods and coasting with the lead instead of trying to build it and put their foot on the throats of their opposition like they'd done in the first four weeks of the season.

Against inferior opposition, the Bruins would skate around for 40 minutes, expecting their vaunted third period to buoy them to two points, except that vaunted third period just wasn't showing up like it had in November and December.

Sure, they won some games and in spite of their often lackadaisical efforts, the team is 8-5-1 since the calendar turned to 2012, a clip that would translate to a 100-point season and a surefire playoff spot (Boston won the Northeast with 103 points, seven ahead of Montreal in 2011). But that was pedestrian compared to their 21-3-1 November and December (a 141-point pace if it continued for an entire season).

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