WILMINGTON – The Bruins and Canadiens have set the bar pretty high, even by this rivalry’s standards. 

The last time the two teams met, they combined for 187 penalty minutes and 14 goals in an 8-6 Bruins victory. 

The goals came often, and so too did the fisticuffs. A high-energy second period saw eight goals scored between the two teams (all of which were allowed by a couple of All-Stars in Tim Thomas and Carey Price). Things really spilled over in the period when Brad Marchand hit James Wisniewski after the Habs defenseman touched up on an icing. The hit led to a group tussle that included Max Pacioretty jumping former college teammate Steven Kampfer from behind and Thomas dropping the gloves with Price in a short-lived goalie brawl. When all was said and done, six Bruins were crammed into the penalty box, and more fighting ensued throughout the rest of the contest.

Tuesday night, the two teams will meet for the first time since that Feb. 9 fight night, and with the Bruins holding a five-point lead in the standings, the goal in the dressing room is clearly to pull away in the Northeast Division and keep pushing Philadelphia for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. 

If brawls ensue, the B’s, tied for second in the NHL in fighting majors, are clearly up for the challenge. It just doesn’t seem to be on their mind. 

“It's just going to be another game,” Gregory Campbell said Monday. “It's going to be another playoff-type game -- obviously, they always are when we play Montreal  -- but from our side of things, nobody really focuses on that part of the game. Whatever happened last game was part of the game. It was an exciting game. Lots of goals, but things like that are not talked about really and there's nothing planned.”

A simple Google search yields cases in which people took issue with certain aspects of the game, and particularly Campbell’s third-period fight with Tom Pyatt. In the fight, Campbell’s elbow pad slid off and as the Bruins center repeatedly landed left-handed blows to Pyatt’s face, his flapping pad also seemed to make contact with the Habs forward. 

Given that two days later featured the infamous 346-penalty-minute bloodbath between the Penguins and Islanders, the week was viewed by the league as one that wasn’t good for the game. Because they feel theirs was a more honest game, the Bruins don’t want their triumph lumped in with the New York/Pittsburgh bout. 

“Nobody did anything extremely stupid,” Milan Lucic said Monday. “You can't really compare it to the Islanders-Penguins game. There weren't guys suckering one another. There weren't guys hitting other guys from behind or doing stuff like that. It was just guys stepping up for each other in a heated battle.

“We seem to come out on top, and we thrive off games like that. We're going to have to be smart and keep our emotions in check and not get carried away with them.”

Kampfer, who was not happy with Pacioretty following the game and had “choice words” for his former University Michigan teammate, will not be in the lineup to see if tempers could flare, as he is dealing with a concussion. While he won’t take part in the latest installment of the Bruins-Canadiens drama, there will be four newcomers to the rivalry for the B’s in Tomas Kaberle, Matt Bartkowski, Rich Peverley and Chris Kelly. 

Considering that he played his entire career in Toronto before being traded to the B’s on Feb. 18, Kaberle has some perspective when it comes to viewing the Habs. The rivalry between the Canadiens and Maple Leafs is one of the biggest in the league, so Kaberle might not have to adjust his view of the Habs much now that he wears black and gold.

“It's pretty much similar,” Kaberle said. “Division team, it's a four-point game pretty much all the time and it's a good test for our team because everybody knows what happened last game, so it's going to be a lot of intensity. That's what you want to do. It's kind of like a playoff atmosphere game.”

Kaberle won’t need to do much studying to catch up on the state of the rivalry. He said Monday that he caught the highlights of the Feb. 9 game. 

Entering Tuesday, the Bruins are in second place in the conference, while the Habs are sixth. Should the Capitals or Penguins surpass the Bruins, the B’s might be looking at a first-round matchup with the Canadiens. For that reason, Campbell is looking to the future rather than the past. 

“It should be a good game,” Campbell said. “It’s important for us to get those two points because that very well could be a first-round matchup.”