Not every game the Bruins play in the second half of the season is going to be like Tuesday’s 3-2 win over the Hurricanes at the RBC Center (recap). They aren’t going to go entire games without a single power play (Tuesday night was the second time it had happened all season), they won’t always expect offensively active nights from Daniel Paille in which the winger gets the scoring going, and Tim Thomas will usually have his mask on as he makes key saves. But hey, if the B’s can win on those odd nights (which also featured an uncharacteristically poor showing early on from Tyler Seguin -- even for a 19-year old rookie – that led to him getting just 6:37 of ice time for the whole game), they’ll take it. 

Patrice Bergeron said in his NESN postgame interview that the B’s had “vacation” legs early on, and that it took them a period to shake them. In reality, there’s an argument for the fact that it was probably a combination of said vacation legs and the fact that the RBC Center crowd is still on an All-Star high (it became increasingly clear that the PA could have announced that Jeff Skinner left his lights on in the parking lot and the place would have gone nuts) and probably made for a tough environment to walk into.    

Either way, two points is two points, and on a night in which the Canadiens won and the Lightning and Flyers played each other in a Tampa Bay victory, both points were important. Behind Tim Thomas’ 25th win and Patrice Bergeron’s 17th goal (plus Nathan Horton’s first goal since Jan. 3), the Bruins were able to get both points to keep them four behind Tampa Bay and four ahead of Montreal.  

While not every game will have the quirks of their challenging bout with the ninth-place Hurricanes, the schedule certainly suggests that the B’s are in for a challenge over the next week and a half, so it’s safe to say the Bruins should be glad to have gotten any vacation leg issues out of the way. 

Over the next five games, the Bruins will face the Stars, Sharks and Canadiens before playing two in a row against the Red Wings. That’s essentially a mixed pack of some of the best the Western Conference has to offer, with the team’s biggest rival and biggest threat to their Northeast Division lead thrown in there for good measure. Plus, all of those games, with the exception of their Feb. 13 trip to Joe Louis Arena, will be played at home (the Bruins have been a better team on the road). 

If there is anything to focus on with this Bruins team that does not start with a “C” and rhyme with “percussion,” it is this tough stretch in the schedule. With teams across the league just one game into their return from the All-Star break, it’s only natural to wonder what type of identity the squad has and whether whatever they are doing at the time can translate into playoff success. Of course, they have been one of the best teams in the NHL since Dec. 23, so there’s far more reason to be optimistic than pessimistic.

Still, the Bruins haven’t seen this difficult a stretch in their schedule all season, and by the looks of things, won’t have a more challenging five consecutive game for the rest of the season. As of Wednesday morning Red Wings are second and third in the Western Conference, respectively, while the eighth-place Sharks are just a win out of fifth place and have gone 5-0-1 over their last six games. 

This is why the unison fist pump that probably took place across Boston following Horton’s third period goal, his first in 11 games, occurred. The B’s have played well enough and won consistently enough over the last month and change to say that they’ve hit their stride, but whether they like it or not, they’ve got a potentially large speed bump ahead and they need all of their guys (including Horton, who will be viewed as this team’s best scorer again before the season is over). They’re still looking for their first win against the Habs (0-2-1) and have gone an underwhelming 2-4-2 against Western Conference teams this season. They're 0-2-2 in the games they played against the Garden against Western clubs. 

How can the B's remedy their struggles against their Western foes? For starters, they can -- as they have -- look only as far back as their Dec. 23 emotional injection. Since they picked up their play in late December, they've only hosted one Western Conference team, when they lost to the Wild on Jan. 6. If they continue their run of solid defense and increased scoring (perhaps with more of the production they got from Horton back in October) to go along with Tim Thomas' lights-out goaltending, they can turn those numbers around.

Liken it returning from school vacation, and after taking the first day to get re-acclimated, finding out you have tests in all your classes. The Bruins will have to stay sharp in order to pass.