Are the Bruins the best team in the Eastern Conference? They're on pace to finish first, but they've lost their only two meetings against the Penguins and haven't seen the surprising Canadiens go away. It sure seemed like an easier question to answer in the early weeks of the season, but right now it seems the B's are among the best, just not the best.

On Sunday, the B's fell to the Penguins for the second time in six days -- and don't forget that the Penguins were without Evgeni Malkin for both games and Kris Letang for most of Sunday's game. Yes, the difference in Sunday's loss ultimately proved to be a botched glove save that Tuukka Rask will make 99 times out of 100, but the Penguins were also the better team Sunday, just as they were five days earlier when they erased a 2-0 deficit with three goals in the final 6:18 to beat the B's in regulation.

Remember, at the beginning of the season, the Bruins weren't expected to be the best team in the Eastern Conference. They were expected to be the second-or-third-best team, behind the Rangers and perhaps the Penguins. The whole Rangers thing hasn't really happened thus far, as John Tortorella's squad has still yet to fully click and finds itself on the outside of the playoff picture looking in.

[Speaking of which, with the Atlantic Division probably out of reach (they trail the Penguins by 16 points with three games in hand), the Rangers -- currently 10th in the Eastern Conference -- figure to get into the playoffs as a lower seed if they get in at all. They obviously haven't played their best hockey yet, but if they get in as an eighth or seventh seed, would you want to face them in the first round as one of the East's top seeds? You've got to beat who you've got to beat, but that would be a pretty horrifying first-round matchup for a team like the B's.]

It has worked for the Penguins. Though they'll keep their fingers crossed on Kris Letang after the star defenseman exited Sunday's game, they've gotten a league-best 3.53 goals per game thanks largely to their top two lines. Their 2.67 goals-against per game is middle-of-the-pack (15th in the NHL), but the top-heavy offense, led by the great Sidney Crosby, has been able to produce enough to give Pittsburgh a conference-best plus-28 goal differential.

An offensive comparison of the Bruins and Penguins would normally mean elite skill vs. depth, but the Bruins don't have the depth they normally do with a rocky third line that's currently missing its center in Chris Kelly. Defensively, the Bruins are undoubtedly stronger, but Zdeno Chara didn't look like the league's best blueliner when he let Pascal Dupuis steal the puck from him behind the net and feed Chris Kunitz to set up Crosby's first-period goal (worth noting on that play -- Claude Julien went with the Chara-Dennis Seidenberg pairing usually reserved for the postseason on that faceoff, and the Penguins still scored).

As far as goaltending goes, you could argue that Tuukka Rask has better numbers than Marc-Andre Fleury because he plays behind a better defense, but you would be wiser to attribute Rask's better numbers to him just being a better goalie than Fleury.

Then there's Montreal. When the Canadiens jumped ahead of the B's in the standings on Feb. 19, they did so having played two more games than Boston. With the Canadiens' schedule fast and furious and the Bruins' schedule easygoing (including a game against the Lightning postponed), the Bruins would find themselves having played as many as four games less than the Habs. Yet the Bruins kept close to the Canadiens in the standings, sitting no more than three points behind Montreal but making much greater pace. With those games in hand, the Bruins still were set to jump way ahead of the Habs if they wanted.

The Bruins have made up those games recently, as they have now played 27 games to Montreal's 28 games, but they still sit one point behind Montreal. Why? Because the B's haven't been able to get any points out of their games against Pittsburgh while the Canadiens have turned in their most recent proof that they're for real by rattling off five straight wins, four of which were on the road. Next Wednesday's meeting at the Garden between the B's and Habs will be mammoth, as this division will indeed be tough to win, as surprising as that still may sound.

By the end of the month, both teams will have played the same number of games (34). The Bruins and Penguins are the only playoff teams the Habs will have to face before then, but they've also got the Islanders (who have beaten them both times the teams have met this season, including once in overtime), Sabres (against whom they're 1-0-1) twice and the still-sputtering-but-always-difficult Rangers. Five of the Bruins' seven games the rest of the month are against teams currently in line for the playoffs (Jets, Senators, Maple Leafs twice and Habs), while the B's will also face the Flyers (who played the B's like the Eastern Conference equivalent of the "free space" in Bingo) and the Sabres, who have given them fits.

Though the Canadiens are the bigger concern for Boston because they're division rivals, the Penguins will also remain a key measuring stick, and the Bruins and Penguins will have their last meeting of the regular season on April 19. With the April 3 trade deadline coming between now and then, the teams could look vastly different by the time they next face one another.

Regardless, the B's will have something to prove against Pittsburgh, because the best team in the Eastern Conference should be able to beat its stiffest competition. So far, only the Penguins can say they've done that.