Maybe Andrew Ference was right. History is for dorks.

OK, so that wasn’t what he said -- at all. He said that he doesn’t pay attention to all-time stats or records, because they don’t apply to a present team given the differences in the roster. While everyone was looking at the ugly historical numbers of the Bruins in Game 7’s before Wednesday night’s contest, Ference said he’d be staying in the moment and not getting caught up in irrelevant numbers. 

“It really is in the moment. You play for today,” Ference said before the B’s went out and won a Game 7 overtime thriller over the Canadiens Wednesday. “What happened last year, the year before or the last 80 years of these teams playing each other, doesn’t have an effect on tonight. What happens out there is determined by the players on these teams.”

Ference had a point, but given that plenty around Boston though they knew the drill when it came to the Bruins in a seventh game, it was a point that some ignored. 

Everyone knew that Claude Julien had gone to a Game 7 with the Bruins in each of his first three years on the job. Everyone also knew that all three of those games ended in a breakup day rather than a trip to the next round. When Julien and the Bruins made it four Game 7’s in four years, could you blame the average Bostonian for letting a bit of pessimism seep in? Not only is this a fan base that hasn’t seen a Cup since 1972, but one that hasn’t seen a Game 7 victory since 1994. While one has nothing to do with the other, they both point towards the same agony that all Bruins fans have felt for too long. 

“It was just one of those things where you feel happy,” Julien said after Nathan Horton scored his second overtime goal of the series. “And more so, it happened in our building. Our fans were excited, elated to see that goal go in. For us, I guess as a group it was nice to reward our fans with that because they’ve been punished enough.”

While Julien’s words were met with smirks from the media on hand, the truth is that B’s fans have been punished, tortured and let down time and time again over the years. They aren’t like Red Sox fans, who get to see their team win the World Series, then see a crappy Jimmy Fallon movie made about it. They aren’t like Celtics fans, who got to see a new Big Three take the league by storm. They’re certainly not like Patriots fans, whose No. 1 question is when Tom Brady will win his fourth Super Bowl. 

For Bruins fans, knocking off the Canadiens in the first round is beautiful. A series victory over the team’s biggest rival is euphoric, and the fashion in which they did so – a seven-game series that featured three overtime victories – made for one of the most exciting series in recent memory. 

The Bruuns showed resiliency. They came back from an 0-2 deficit to take a 3-2 series lead. In Game 4, they came back three different times, including once from a two-goal deficit. They held leads and won. They blew leads and won. It was far from a display of dominance, but it was a series that showed the Bruins won’t run away with their tails between their legs at the first sign of trouble.

In addition to their beyond-horrid power play, their first line was far from consistent in the series. Nathan Horton tied for the team lead with three goals and showed he is the man for the job when the game is on the line (two overtime goals), but he averaged just 1.8 shots on goal per game in his first playoff series. Milan Lucic? Nearly invisible at times. David Krejci made a series-long statement that he was incapable of finishing against the Habs. Yet the Bruins overcame it. When the top line struggled, the strong play of Patrice Bergeron’s line and Chris Kelly’s line took over. When all else failed, Tim Thomas came up big, even if the numbers weren’t as Vezina-like as they were in the regular season. 

Still, as loudly as the Garden crowd celebrated Wednesday, it wasn’t a series on which the B’s could hang their hats. The goal is to get past the second round, a feat that proved too much for the B’s a season ago, even when they held a 3-0 series lead over the Flyers. Now, they can make their real statement, as they will once again face Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference semifinals. 

To break Ference’s rule and look back into past history, the Bruins should know that their postseason reputation isn’t about an inability to beat Philadelphia. The Flyers are certainly beatable, as they were a year ago. Instead, the Bruins are remembered for choking with a 3-0 lead. Collapsing when it was all but a sealed deal. 

If the Bruins want to take anything from the recent past, they should take lessons from Games 4 and 7 vs. the Habs. As they learned in Montreal, trailing by multiple goals isn’t the end of the world, and Wednesday’s contest showed that blowing a multiple-goal lead doesn’t mean they are required to lose the game. 

“We didn’t want to stop playing,” Mark Recchi said of the series vs. the Canadiens. “This is a great rivalry and a lot of tradition between these two organizations, and it’s just fun to be part of it and very exciting. It was a great series for everybody. … It is fun to be part of this stuff and this is what we play for. Now we are fortunate to get by them and focus on Philly.”

The next one is the real test. Recchi would be wise to remind his teammates, who hang on his every word, to keep that “didn’t want to stop playing” mentality. The B’s were able to cross one thing off Wednesday, but the list is still plenty long.