The Bruins wrapped up a might-as-well-have-been-perfect month Wednesday night, beating the Toronto Maple Leafs going away in front of a full house at the Air Canada Center by a 6-3 tally.
The win capped off the Bruins' first month without a regulation loss since January, 1969.
With Boston out of action for the past four days, beat writers did what beat writers are good at doing: stirring up trouble on Twitter. This time, that trouble came in the form of trade rumors involving Anaheim Ducks' center Bobby Ryan and the Bruins' own David Krejci, who had been struggling of late as his line found themselves stuck in a rut.
But like Tuukka Rask three weeks earlier against Columbus, being the subject of trade rumors brought out the best in a Bruin, as Krejci gave the Bruins a much-needed lift, registering a three-point night, scoring Boston's second goal and assisting on Zdeno Chara's fifth goal later in the second period.
Chara also recorded an assist on Milan Lucic's opening tally for Boston, a power-play marker that tied the game at one after Toronto got on the board first when Mikhail Grabovski - long the Bruins' blue and white nemesis - opened the scoring at 7:29 of the first period.
But it was Benoit Pouliot - who as recently as two weeks ago couldn't find a line - that had the deciding goal, wristing a puck past Jonas Gustavsson at 3:03 of the third period just seconds after the Leafs had successfully killed a tripping penalty to Jake Gardiner.
Lucic ended the drama early, knocking in a perfectly-placed pass from Krejci on the goal line with 4:39 left in the game to give the Black and Gold some breathing room as they look to take the season series from Toronto on Saturday night at TD Garden.
Toronto got a highlight-reel goal from Joffrey Lupul in the second period, when Phil Kessel broke into the Boston zone and threaded a pass to Lupul in front of the crease that Lupul knocked home. It was Kessel's first point on the season against his former team, but he finished a minus-3 on the night.
Brad Marchand scored on an empty net to bookend the scoring for Boston.