The Bruins are frighteningly good.

Yes, they beat up on a team that was both dealing with injuries and playing its third game in four nights, but in crushing the Southeast-leading Panthers, the Bruins just added another team to the long list of Eastern Conference squads that can’t hang with them.

The Bruins are a finely tuned machine, and winning is all they can do right now. No getting comfortable, no cruising, just winning.

“Winning is expected in this organization, and they built this team to win,” Gregory Campbell said after Friday night’s 8-0 blowout win over the Panthers. “Not only this organization, but this city. This city's a sports city, and they like their winners here. 

“So we take it upon ourselves. We got a taste of it last year. Winning is fun. I think this team is built pretty solid from top to bottom. I think the coaches have done an exceptional job at keeping us focused and not letting ourselves getting too high, but staying in that medium where we're focused every day.”

The Bruins have won six games in a row, and since Nov. 1 are an incredible 20-2-1. Everyone wants to beat the defending Stanley Cup champs, but no one can seem to do it.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE FOR RASK

As Tuukka Rask will tell you, Santa Claus is from Finland (he actually is), so perhaps Santa gave the Savonlinna, Finland native a shutout for Christmas. Not a bad present. 

Yet if Santa Claus is responsible for all of Rask’s success this season, that means he’s been working a heck of a lot. After Friday’s shutout -- his second in a row -- Rask now leads the NHL with a .944 save percentage. 

That’s right: Tuukka Rask, the 1a to Tim Thomas’ 1, leads Thomas, Brian Elliot and every other netminder in the position’s most telling statistic. 

With Thomas second in the league at a .943 clip, there might not even be a question anymore as to whether this is the best the Bruins’ netminding tandem has been. Thomas is second in shutouts with four, while Rask now has two.  

“I don't know. I've felt pretty good the whole time,” Rask said of the tandem. “I try to feel good, try to get that good feeling from practice every time but it's tough to judge that. But we're definitely both playing really well and the whole team's playing well in front of us so it could be one of the best times.”

Give Claude Julien credit for giving Rask the start Friday. While the Bruins don’t want either of their goaltenders to get rusty, giving Thomas a break of over a week almost halfway through the season is a good thing.

HOW FAR THEY’VE COME

Dec. 23 should go down as a pretty significant date in Bruins history, and not because of what they did Friday night. 

Think back to last season, and what the Bruins’ last game before breaking for Christmas meant to the team. The B’s were coming off a bad shutout loss to the Ducks on Dec. 20, and had two days of practice before they would play their final game before Christmas. In those two days, some media types were calling for Claude Julien to be fired, and plenty of fans were saying the same thing. The B’s had won only one of their last five games, and though they were getting great goaltending, they looked nothing like a championship team.  

In those two days of practice, the Bruins didn’t look like they were in a panic. They knew what they had to do, and all eyes were on them when they hosted the Thrashers at TD Garden on Dec. 23. Atlanta had already beaten them, 4-1, in November, so it seemed like a good test for the Bruins to prove themselves. 

They did just that, getting two goals from Shawn Thornton and dropping the gloves whenever necessary en route to a 4-1 win. The B’s got to go on break in better spirits, and came back by picking up points in nine of their next 10 games. It seemed every bit like a turning point, and the Bruins still remember it vividly. 

“It was almost like that was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals,” Campbell said of last season’s Dec. 23 game. “Everybody kind of reverts back to that. That was a big game, there was a to of emption in that game. We were able to win that game and everybody contributed that night, and we were able to go into the break with a good feeling, and then we went to Florida and got two big wins. It's always nice to end off on a win.”

This year, the Bruins once again entered the break with a convincing win. That doesn’t mean things will turn out the way they did last year, but it’s certainly a good sign.