It’s funny what a difference a few days -- and a few guys a team doesn’t normally count on -- can make. 

Flash back to Saturday after the team’s 3-2 loss to the Islanders. Claude Julien sat before the media, frustrated. His goalie had just been injured, and his team had once again lost a winnable game, this time to the lowly Islanders. The thing he seemed most miffed about? Secondary scoring, or lack thereof.

Julien said the team couldn’t rely on the same players to score goals for the team. In other words, he didn’t want the usual suspects -- Tyler Seguin, Milan Lucic, David Krejci, Brad Marchand, etc. -- to be the team’s only hope at getting on the board. As a coach that rolls four lines, he wanted four lines to score. 

Since then, the Bruins have gotten secondary scoring -- or goals from the bottom six forwards -- by the truckload. Here’s a before and after:

In the six games leading up to Julien saying the team needed more secondary scoring, the Bruins received a grand total of one goal from their bottom two lines, and it came from AHL call-up Carter Camper. With such little production outside the top six and results that would suggest the same, it’s no wonder Julien was frustrated.

In the three games since, Bruins forwards have scored a total of 10 goals. Six of them have come from members of the bottom two lines in Jordan Caron (three goals), Chris Kelly, Benoit Pouliot and Gregory Campbell (one apiece). When Campbell tipped a Shawn Thornton slap shot past Jhonas Enroth in the second period of Thursday's 3-1 victory over the Sabres, it was his first goal in 20 games. 

“I think the success of a team often comes from the depth of your team, and not that the coaching staff puts pressure on us to score, but it’s always a complement if you get secondary scoring,” Campbell said after the game. “We’ve been trying to do the right things and try to create chances and try to put the puck in. Sometimes things are out of your control and we can control our level of work that we put in and we’re putting in the work and tonight we were rewarded.”

While the third line has more legitimate scorers in Pouliot, Kelly and, more recently, Caron, the fourth line also is capable of answering the call when the team needs scoring. That’s why when a Christian Ehrhoff pass went off Cody Hodgson’s skate and right to Thornton, he happily ended the fourth line’s scoring drought by sending the puck on net.

"I wasn't shooting for a tip,” Thornton said of the play. “It was only probably going only 78 miles per hour, but that's as hard as I could shoot it."

However hard it was, it was hard enough to fool Enroth once Campbell redirected it on a play that both broke Campbell’s stick and had to be confirmed via video review. 

“At that point you’re just like, ‘Come on, not now,’ ” Campbell said of the play being reviewed. “But I was pretty confident that my stick was below the crossbar.”

Thornton joked after the game that both he and Campbell had said that they might retire then and there if the play was overturned. The fourth line had been itching for some offensive production (no goals since Daniel Paille’s tally against the Predators on Feb. 11) and finally got it.

“It's not for lack of trying on our part,” Thornton said of the line’s scoring drought. “I think that tonight, yes, it went in. Soupy made a great tip going to the net. We were fortunate with the lucky bounce and the puck popping out, too. It's nice to get a lucky bounce for once. We've been on the other side of those bounces a lot in the last few weeks.”

The entire team has an appreciation for what the bottom two lines have been able to do over the last few games. Krejci has been red-hot for the Bruins, scoring five goals over the last five games, but he knows it’s the Carons and Campbells of the world that have provided the team with more consistency than it had. 

“You need it,” Krejci said of the bottom six forwards’ contributions. “You need your secondary scorers to chip in, too. They'll keep you in it. It's just going to make us stronger, and [it will] get us in good shape before the playoffs.”

If there is one player who has answered Julien’s call above all, it’s Caron. The 2009 first-round pick has always been good in his own end, but the team had not relied on him to score. The reason? Because he hadn’t really shown he could do it at the NHL level. Then Caron, who has been sent down and recalled six times this season, broke out with back-to-back multi-point games (the second of which was a three-point effort) on Sunday and Tuesday. His continued strong play even earned him a promotion to the second line in place of Brian Rolston in the second period Thursday. He’s producing for the B’s, and now he’s being rewarded.

“I think I feel pretty good right now and I’m getting more and more ice time, so I think that’s something that I really like,” Caron, who assisted Johnny Boychuk’s game-winning goal, said after the game. “I think it’s easier when you play 12, 13, 14 minutes a game. It really gets you in the game and gets your legs going and you get more confidence when you get out there, and right now we’ve had three good games in a row.”

Said Julien: “I think Jordan has been playing extremely well the past two, three games. He’s really seemed to found his stride and confidence, and that line has been good for us -- the [Patrice Bergeron] line with [Brian Rolston] and [Marchand] -- but I felt like somewhere along the way we needed a little bit more offense. And since [Caron has] been going well, I wanted to see what that was going to give us. … [Caron] was a good player for us -- we’re encouraged by his play lately and we continue to hopefully see that out of him.”

With all the injuries the Bruins have had, they’ve needed players to step up. Though they’re not out of the woods yet regarding their inconsistent play, the fact that they are able to win with either one of their four lines scoring should only make them stronger once everyone’s healthy.