Mike Brophy

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday on Sportsnet.ca and appears regularly on Hockeycentral.

Miroslav Satan (81) leads the Bruins in playoff scoring.

When the Boston Bruins dropped 10 consecutive home games between Jan. 7 and Mar. 2, it looked like this might be a write-off year.

If you can't win at home, how the heck are you going to make it to the playoffs?

At the time I recall thinking, who cares? The way this season was set up, with the trading of sniper Phil Kessel to the Toronto Maple Leafs for two first-round draft picks, expectations couldn't have been too high for this group anyway. All the Bruins had to do was get through the year, choose Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin in the draft, and then get down to some serious work of trying to win their first Stanley Cup since 1972.

And yet there were persistent rumblings that the team's shaky regular season could cost either GM Peter Chiarelli or coach Claude Julien their jobs. Even after the Bruins lost their best player, Marc Savard, to a cheap shot from Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke, there was constant pressure for the Bruins to make it to the post-season or else.

Now I know owner Jeremy Jacobs can be a cantankerous, unreasonable, penny-pinching boss, but the possibility of one of the NHL's best coaches and general managers losing their job under these circumstances made absolutely no sense to me. Thanks heavens both survived.

And not only survived, they have thrived.

Against all odds, the Bruins are one victory away from advancing to the Eastern Conference championship series going into Friday night. Quite frankly, outside of the stellar play of rookie goaltender Tuukka Rask, it's hard to put a finger on exactly how the Bruins have painted the Philadelphia Flyers into a corner, winning the first three games of the series, after a convincing 4-2 first-round series win over the favoured Buffalo Sabres.

Unlike the big, bad Bruins who ruled the NHL back in the early 70s, this group is neither big, nor bad. What they are, and I'm certain former Bruins coach Don Cherry would agree, is a lunch-bucket group that simply outworks the opposition.

You look at their roster and you scratch your head. Miroslav Satan, who didn't play the first half of this season because nobody wanted him, leads the team in playoff scoring with five goals and 10 points in nine games. Three of his goals have been game-winners. This is the same guy who was booted to the minors last season as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins because of his indifferent play, and who managed just one goal and six points in 17 playoff games when he was finally brought back up.

Mark Recchi, meanwhile, looks as though he has discovered the fountain of youth. Never mind the fact he has four goals and seven points in the playoffs through Wednesday's game, it's his will to win and his drive to compete that has provided inspiration to his teammates. At 42, Recchi knows his way around the NHL. He certainly should. After all, he has been playing in the league since before teammate Milan Lucic was born.

The team's one true superstar, defenceman Zdeno Chara, has saved his best for the playoffs. The defending Norris Trophy winner enjoyed a solid, if unspectacular season, spending most of his energy defending his team's net rather than piling up big numbers as he has done in the past. Given Boston's injury problems, he was quite willing to forgo putting up personal numbers to do what was best for the team. Thus, he was not a Norris finalist this season, but based on what we have seen in the playoffs, it's hard to imagine there is a better two-way defenceman in the league right now. And when you toss his toughness into the equation, he becomes one of the game's best all-around players.

Rask, of course, deserves kudos for his emergence as a goaltender of note. He not only stole the crease from defending Vezina Trophy winner Tim Thomas, he was better than Buffalo's Ryan Miller in the first round and has been nearly unbeatable against the Flyers.

On paper, the Boston Bruins don't look like much. That's why it is important to acknowledge the contributions of Chiarelli and Julien. The Bruins are as well-coached and well-managed a team as you'll find in the league. Even though it would have been easy to coast through this year following the departure of Kessel, the two men in charge of running the operation saw to it that the players kept their focus and now they are within a win of reaching a height few thought was possible.

Write-off year? Not a chance.