It’s OK Bruins fans, you can look at the standings again. 

After weeks of getting every possible point they could and being the best team in the league this month, the Bruins are finally in the top eight in the Eastern Conference. Their eighth consecutive win, a 6-0 shutout of the Islanders Saturday night, helped them leapfrog the Senators and Capitols and jump into seventh in the conference. 

If the fact that it took this long to get there isn’t proof that climbing out of a hole in this league is tremendously difficult, nothing is. 

When the Bruins were in dead last on Oct. 28, they were actually four points (for newcomers, that’s the equivalent of just two wins) out of being in the top eight. It’s taken them nine games (8-1-0) and 23 days to finally arrive in a position that, were the season to end on Nov. 20, would have them in the playoffs. 

The B’s have a few things to thank for their resurrection. As is always the case, they can thank having the best defenseman in the league and a goaltending tandem that has allowed only 10 even strength goals and 14 total over the last eight contests. They can thank Tyler Seguin for only getting hotter after he was already their leading scorer through 10 games. They can thank Claude Julien for jumbling the lines until he found something that work, because as has been evident of late, the B’s can once again get offense out of all four of their lines.

Of course, the Bruins have faced some pretty bad goaltending and some pretty bad teams in that span, but regardless of how they did it, they can consider themselves extremely fortunate to have their heads back above water after slipping into an early season hole from which many teams have not recovered in the past. 

That’s the rub on how difficult it’s been for the Bruins to move as far as they have in the standings. The good news is that if they want to make a leap from No. 7 to, say, No. 2, it might be not take the same sort of win streak. Entering Sunday, with 22 points, the Bruins trail the Sabres and Maple Leafs (both whom have played two more games than Boston) by two points. That means that you might want to watch Wednesday night’s game against the Sabres for more reasons than to see which goaltender gets run. Depending on how the Bruins fare Monday against Montreal, the Bruins could actually head into Buffalo Wednesday capable of taking over the top of the Northeast division. 

Yes, this is where things really get interesting, as the coming week for the Bruins will be tougher than the B’s have had it during this streak. Never mind the fact that they have the Red Wings (they’re those guys from Detroit that swept them in a home and home and outscored them, 10-3) waiting for them Friday. The season is young, but winning the next two division games would be a fitting way for the Bruins to both return to where they were expected to be and prove they belong there. The Bruins have had them circled for while, and they’ve done all they’ve done everything right up leading up to them. 

Yet to do that, the red-hot B’s will first have to get past a team that on Saturday showed their streak-halting chops by ending the Rangers’ tear at seven games. 

The Canadiens defeated the Rangers, who had gotten off to a 3-3-3 start to the season before rattling off seven straight, 4-0, Saturday night at Bell Centre, nearly doubling the Rangers’ shots on goal (31-17) and getting Carey Price’s second consecutive shutout. If the B’s are to go with Tim Thomas in net Monday, in addition to having the normal hype of a Bruins-Canadiens game (and yes, the first time Zdeno Chara has entered Quebec since the police dropped his “case), it will be a matchup of two incredibly motivated teams with elite goaltenders coming off shutouts.

The Sabres are off until the B’s roll into town, but the B’s should be content with entering Buffalo with a chance to match their points. The Canadiens, who have also gotten off to a worse start than they would have liked (9-8-3, 21 points) and likely have their best hockey ahead of them, are still vying to find their way into the top eight. 

The season is still very young, but November, as has been said time and time again, is a big month for determining which teams one can expect to see some spring time and which teams are likely to miss out. The B’s certainly weren’t sitting pretty when the month started, but the week ahead presents them with an opportunity to be right where they want to be at the end of the month.