The Bruins team that played Sunday afternoon was the one that was really expected on Thursday night.

In a game thick with playoff implications, Boston bested the Rangers 2-1 in a Sunday matinee at TD Garden (click here for the full recap). Tuukka Rask picked up his 17th win for the Bruins while Miroslav Satan and Dennis Wideman provided the offense.

When Boston fell flat on its face in the much-anticipated grudge match with Matt Cooke and the Penguins on Thursday, fans, media members and a lot of the players wondered where the emotion and energy had gone with this team. It was one of the most disappointing performances of the year for a squad that has caused a lot of frustration this season and had the eyes of New England hockey fans on it heading into Sunday.

But in the grand scheme of things, the Pittsburgh game did not have a lot of meaning in the standings. Yes, every point the Bruins accumulate is important, but how the Penguins fare at the end of the year does not affect Boston’s playoff fate directly. On the other hand, allowing the Rangers to pick up two points at TD Garden would have been borderline disastrous, especially if Boston failed to show up.

That did not happen. The Bruins came out with more pep and more emotion and played a solid game to best the Rangers and create a five-point separation between the teams for the eighth playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

“Obviously, it was a very important game in the standings. We are playing for a playoff spot and you could see that it was a big difference to be either five points up or just a point difference. So that was, for sure, one of the reasons,” Zdeno Chara said. “One game where we fought for every puck, every inch. Right from the get go it was very physical, very emotional.”

So, the Bruins temporarily have buried the Rangers — but it does not end there. The Thrashers have snuck back into the playoff race and have jumped New York to come within three points of Boston. It just so happens that the Bruins play in Atlanta on Tuesday … meaning the whole situation that played out on Sunday will be revisited once again Tuesday.

That is the way it is down the stretch, as every game and every point is magnified. How Boston comes out for each contest will tell a lot of about the true makeup of the roster.

Here is the Hat Trick of lessons from Sunday’s matinee.

WHAT IS THAT NET FOR AGAIN?

It’s no secret that neither the Bruins nor the Rangers are proficient at putting pucks in the net. Heading into Sunday, Boston was dead last in the league with 2.38 goals per game, while New York was not much better at 23rd with 2.58.

That is how this game played out. The teams traded penalties through the first two periods, but could not find a goal if it meant saving their mother’s from a gory death at the paws of a pack of wild hyenas. By the time that Satan scored at 16:36 of the second period, Boston had gone 104:09 of ice time without a goal (since the 12:27 mark against the Hurricanes on Tuesday).

“Yeah, that was huge. Definitely. [Andrew] Ference made a great play there. They were — it seemed like they had three goalies in front of the net all night,” Mark Stuart said. “They do a really good job of blocking shots and collapsing in front of the net, and [Ference] showed some great patience there and found [Satan] on the backdoor.”

The goal was set up nicely by Ference when he took the puck down the left wing — almost to the goal line in the corner — before zipping it back across the crease to the one-timing stick of Satan on Henrik Lundqvist’s backdoor.

“He is, for sure, a good player when he wants to be,” Chara said of Satan. “He can stick-handle the puck, he can hold the puck and he can play. That is what we need him to do.”

Then, at 10:20 in the third, Dennis Wideman got out of his scoring draught by whipping a backhanded, spinning wrist shot off a feed from Vladimir Sobotka to make it 2-0 and give the Bruins a near-unbreakable advantage. (Boston is 18-1-2 this year after taking 2-0 leads.)

“[Wideman] played a really, really solid game and he was supporting the attack and supporting the back end,” Chara said, “especially on those kills. And he was rewarded with a really nice backhand shot on goal.”

It was Wideman’s first goal since scoring against the Rangers on Jan. 9, a span of 25 games.

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ASSERTING THEMSELVES WHEN DOWN A MAN

Where would Boston be this year without its league-leading penalty kill? Certainly not in playoff contention, that much is sure. The Bruins held the Rangers pointless on six power-play opportunities on Sunday, but that does not mean they did not give them ample opportunity.

The aforementioned emotion and intensity? Yeah, well that manifested itself in the form of nine penalties for 23 total minutes, eight of which were served by Chara. But these were not your normal interferences, hookings and holdings. The Bruins were called for four roughings, one charging and a double minor high-sticking penalty that put Chara away for four minutes in the middle of the second period.

That is where the game turned. Boston deployed every forward pairing that it could to kill off those four minutes, with the usual suspects of Daniel Paille and Steve Begin leading the charge. The Rangers did not register a single shot on Rask to keep the game scoreless, and then went on to score on Satan’s lamp-lighter four minutes later.

“You just have to survive one at a time. I think the guys blocked three or four shots in that stretch,” Rask said. “It was a huge [penalty kill] for us because those guys showed up to block those shots and we won the game.”

And it was done with one of the best defensemen in the league serving the penalty.

“Yeah, exactly. I mean, he is our best penalty killer so it’s hard when he’s in there, so I thought guys stepped up in his absence,” Stuart said. “That was big. I mean, we gained some momentum off that. Any time you kill a penalty, you hope that you go out the next shift when it’s 5-on-5 and carry over and I thought we did that.”

SURPRISINGLY EFFECTIVE

The Incredible Disappearing Forwards Club has had numerous members from the Bruins this season. Milan Lucic has been part of that club. So has Satan. They each tip their hat to Michael Ryder when they walk in the door.

Quietly though, the Satan-Sobotka-Lucic line has played well the last couple of contests. The unit was partly responsible for both goals on Sunday and has earned some trust from Bruins coach Claude Julien.

“Well actually, I think that line has been good, and that’s it why we’ve kept them together. You can see them coming around and getting better and better all the time,” Julien said. “Sobotka, the way he played today with some grit and some determination and [Lucic] who I think we saw a closer version of what he can be, definitely helped and I thnk Satan, with his experience, and he finds places, spots to go where he can score some goals. So, it’s been a pretty decent combination.”

The instigator has been Sobotka, who is short (listed at 5-foot-10, 183 pounds) but is thick and plays the game like a runaway cannonball.

“He is strong, he is really strong,” Lucic said. “He may not be the tallest guy on our team but, you know, he is one of the strongest guys on our team from the waist down and he needs to keep working on that. Me and him we do a good job getting in on the forecheck and getting the puck down low and creating plays like that.

“[Satan] does a good job of complimenting us and getting open and using his shot … we can’t be satisfied with what we did tonight. We have to want more and do whatever we can to contribute to this team’s success.”

Lucic has fared better recently, probably for a variety of reasons. First, the pressure of being a score-first forward has been diminished as he is no longer on what is considered to be the top line with the injured Marc Savard. Second, his nagging ankle injury has been feeling better and he has been skating well the past week or so.

“I feel like I have been moving my feet a little bit better the last couple of games,” Lucic said. “If you go back to that tough injury that I had, that ankle injury and it does take a big toll on your body, a big toll on your skating and I feel like I have been able to be stronger and better on my feet and try to be a physical presence every night.”