Well, Bruins fans, it looks like it just might happen. I’ll even venture a guess that it will: The Ottawa Senators will be the Northeast Division champions. 

After building a nine-point lead in the conference (and later eight with three games in hand) in late December, the Bruins and their fancy games in hand seem to be headed all the way down to seventh spot in the Eastern Conference. It could happen soon -- as soon as Friday night.

Things need to happen for that to take place, of course. Essentially, the Bruins need to lose games and the Senators need to win games. Based on some very scientific research (watching the Bruins), the B’s certainly look capable of doing their part, while the Senators have found new life playing in front of young goaltender Ben Bishop. 

Entering Wednesday, Ottawa, which has played 70 games to the Bruins’ 69, has 81 points on the season, trailing the Bruins (83) by two. They will face the last-place Canadiens twice this week, and should they get three or more points out of those games. If the Bruins fall to the Panthers in Florida Thursday, the Northeast Division will wake up Saturday morning with a new leader. 

(And before we go any further, let’s quickly address the “games in hand” argument: If a team does not get points out its games in hand, the games in hand do not matter. It’s hard to catch a team in the standings in the NHL given all the three-point games, but that hasn’t applied to the Bruins in three weeks. They either win or, more often, lose in regulation -- they're 3-6-0 over their last nine games. The Bruins would be hard to catch if they were winning, but they aren’t.)

So what has gone so wrong to even make losing the division a possibility? Here are some nuggets to chew on:

-The Bruins’ goaltending situation isn’t as open-and-shut as people want to think. Don’t like that the B’s have had to play Tim Thomas in 10 straight games? Neither do the B’s, but their options are limited given the circumstances. Like it or not, this team needs points badly, and if Marty Turco isn’t going to give them a chance to win (which he didn’t in the first five minutes Tuesday), they can’t give him Tuukka Rask’s starts. That obviously flies in the face of the “Keep Thomas Fresh” campaign, and Claude Julien was wrong to put Thomas into a lost game rather than resting him, but he did so for a reason. If there was any chance Thomas’ presence could have woken up the Bruins and gotten them back into the game, Julien obviously felt he had to take it. Again, they need points. They also need to rest Thomas and for him to get out of his current funk, and it seems there is no easy way to solve all three problems.  

-David Krejci has been fool’s gold over the last couple weeks. He hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t been as good as his seven goals over his last eight games would indicate. He’s been on the ice for 13 goals against in that span, and though three of them have been power-play goals for opposing teams, that still makes him a minus-2 in the span. That includes the night he notched a hat trick against the Devils. 

-For all the talk of the Bruins starting to turn things around by winning two straight last week, perhaps they were better off sticking with the win-one, lose-one plan, because their three-games since beating the Sabres last week have been treacherous. They’ve allowed 15 goals, the most they’ve given up over a three-game stretch this season ... and none of those have been empty-net goals. They’ve spotted teams three-goal leads in the first period in back-to-back games, including four goals against in the first Tuesday in Tampa. They were one a team that got the lead and built to it. Now, they’re a team that gives it up and just hopes the hole doesn’t get bigger. 

-To echo a cliché that’s often spoken this time of year, this is the part of the season where teams get into gear. They pick it up, earn the hard points, the whole shebang. That has been the case this season, but not for the Bruins. They are the only team in the league right now with a three-game losing streak. 

-It’s certainly a factor, but you can’t blame the Bruins’ woes all on injuries. A hot and cold player during the regular season, a healthy Nathan Horton wouldn’t be the difference between a sub-.500 hockey team and an elite one. They’ll be better once they get him and Rich Peverley back, but the Bruins -- who don’t like making excuses -- couldn’t blame their drowsy efforts on the missing bodies if they wanted to. 

So, when Bruins' fans flip on their televisions Thursday night, they won’t be watching just another game. They’ll be watching their beloved team enter must-win territory from puck drop until they either sew up the division or limp into the playoffs as the team that (urinated) away a big division lead, and yes, all those games in hand.

Maybe it’s an overreaction, but the Bruins could use one. They could stand to overreact to how bad the last two-months plus have been. They could stand to come out furious Thursday against the Panthers. If they don’t, they might wake up Saturday to a city overreacting to a seventh-place team.