If you’ve followed the Bruins, you know they’re better than this. And if you’ve followed the league, you know that regardless of what is causing the team’s subpar start to the season (3-5-0), history shows it has to end very soon.

Before we go any further, here’s a disclaimer: This is not a suggestion the Bruins won't make the playoffs this season, and it is by no means a suggestion that the Bruins don't ice a playoff-caliber team. The fact that they play in a weak division makes it a virtual certainty that, barring an unforeseen Yawkey Way-like disaster, they’ll be in the postseason. As this same group showed just a few months ago, they're pretty capable of winning.

But right now, they're not winning, not enough at least. And there comes a point when teams that struggle out the gate go from slow starters to playing catch-up in the standings. That's a tricky game, and not one the B's want to be playing. 

“That’s something we don’t want to get caught in,” Brad Marchand said Wednesday of teams’ difficulty making the playoffs after starting in a hole. “We want to put ourselves in the best position to make the playoffs. It’s always tough when you get behind and you have to try to play catch-up. 

“You want to put yourselves in the best position so you’re not worrying about how everyone else does to win games, you’re not hoping for other teams to beat certain people. As long as you’re winning games, come the end of the year, you’re going to be in the playoffs. If you have to play catch-up, then you’re putting yourselves in a bad position. We don’t want that to happen.”

As ridiculous as the thought of this talk seems this early in the season, it really isn’t. Take a look at the last few seasons:

•On Nov. 1 of the 2009-10 season, the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference were Pittsburgh, Washington, the Rangers, Buffalo, New Jersey, Montreal, Ottawa and Philadelphia. Of those eight teams, only the Rangers did not make the playoffs. 

•On Nov. 1 last season, the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference were Tampa Bay, Montreal, Philadelphia, Washington, the Rangers, Pittsburgh, Boston and Atlanta. Of those eight teams, only the Thrashers, who were eighth on Nov. 1, did not make the playoffs. 

That's two straight years in which seven of the top eight teams on Nov. 1 ended up in the postseason, and in 2008-09, six of the top eight teams on Nov. 1 made the playoffs. That means that in the last three seasons, only four teams that were not in the top eight after the first month of the season have gone on to grab a playoff spot. In a league that gets its fair share of guff for everyone making the playoffs, that's staggering.

[For what it's worth, the Bruins are 13th in the Eastern Conference with six points. Their eight games played puts them on par with the rest of the league schedule-wise, with the notable exception being the Penguins, who it seems play twice a day.]

An obvious reason as to why it’s so difficult for teams to dig themselves out of these holes is the way points are awarded in overtime games. The fact that every game that isn’t settled in regulation sees three points doled out (two to the winners and one to the losers), means teams hoping to leapfrog squads in the standings have to hope the other team doesn’t play more than 60 minutes a night.

A good example of a team who started slow, figured it out and still was doomed last season was the Hurricanes (we won’t include New Jersey because their 3-9-1 record on Nov. 1 and continued wretched play doesn’t resemble what the Bruins have been). Carolina was 4-6-0 on Nov. 1, and the Hurricanes did more damage to their chances in late November into early December, but when they figured it out and became a team deserving of a playoff spot, even an 8-2-1 finish to the season couldn’t get them there. 

Again, the Bruins are an elite team and nothing like what the Hurricanes were a season ago, but they could face the same challenge. They know that the challenge exists for teams every year, and that no matter how good they are, the points system has no sympathy for the more skilled teams, or even the defending champs.

“We’re not quite pushing the panic button yet, but it’s extremely important [to know that] it’s a long season, but it goes by surprisingly quickly and teams keep picking up points,” Gregory Campbell said Wednesday. “If we don’t start picking up points, we’re going to put ourselves in a big hole. 

“You see teams last year, like Carolina,” Campbell added. “They win every game but they still can’t get into the playoffs. If you don’t get these points now, it’s just so hard with three-point games [overtime games] to gain any ground. It’s important for us to really bear down now and start getting points.”

This isn’t about whether or not the B’s are dealing with the Stanley Cup hangover, or whether the fact that they got more scoring chances but just didn’t bury them about the Sharks. It’s a numbers game, plain and simple. With three games left before the end of the day on Nov. 1, the B’s might want to get the numbers back on their side.