Video: Boston Bruins Offer New England Patriots One Last Good-Luck Salute

Odds are Saturday afternoon’s congregation at TD Garden would select a scoreboard sideshow as the highlight of their experience while watching the Bruins’ 2-1 falter to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

With 10:21 gone in the first period, the towering black bear of “Boston Bruins Hockey Rules” fame delivered a crisp, cut-and-dry dish of good wishes to the New England Patriots. And if only for a minute, the spirit of Super Bowl Sunday Eve enveloped the hockey atmosphere.

Whether they cross over to every venue or specialize in a single sport, Patriots fans can scan the full sporting neighborhood and not find a better source of inspiration than the Spoked-Bs. Casting Xs, Os and high-ankle sprains aside, the run to Super Bowl XLVI has mirrored the run to the 2011 Stanley Cup finals in a multi-fold manner.

Naturally, the Patriots will again square off with the New York Giants, who were liable for the single-most devastating defeat in New England pigskin history four years ago. While there will be no do-over in the effort to seal a 19-0 season, the unlikely second convergence of the two franchises offers head coach Bill Belichick, quarterback Tom Brady and the rest of the holdovers a chance for extra-savory redemption.

Sound familiar? It ought to.

Recall that the Bruins brooked their most crushing postseason failure in 2010, when they spilled a three-games-to-none lead and let the Philadelphia Flyers dislodge them from the playoff bracket. A year later, facing the same laundry and many of the same personnel at the same point in the playoffs, they garnered a second shot at a sweep and rinsed out the residual vinegar with a 5-1, Game 4 victory.

But even before that, Boston commenced its run to the Cup by abolishing two other nagging doubts. Nathan Horton slaughtered both birds with one biscuit when his overtime goal zapped the Montreal Canadiens in the seventh game of the opening round.

With that, the Bruins’ franchise had not only claimed a hard-earned victory against a historical nemesis, but Claude Julien had won a Game 7 behind the Boston bench for the first time in four tries.

In a similar vein, the Patriots exorcised a pair of demons en route to their first Super Bowl berth since they swung and missed at perfection. In the AFC divisional round, they annihilated the Denver Broncos, a franchise that had vanquished them in their previous two do-or-die encounters.

In the conference championship, New England subsequently took its opportunity to retort against the Baltimore Ravens, who had bumped them out of the wild card round two years prior.

Furthermore, the arguably premature endings to the Bruins’ 2009 and 2010 postseason runs took place at the Garden. In 2011, they made monumental amends to their rooters by clinching the first, second and third round on home ice.

Likewise, when the Patriots clinched the first seed in the AFC bracket, there was the inevitable reminder that their 2009 and 2010 seasons were both terminated in January by the Ravens and New York Jets, respectively, in the ostensibly favorable confines of Gillette Stadium.

All the Pats did this time around was max out the benefits of the bye and their home turf, blowing away the Broncos and squeaking past the Ravens. The finish to the former was not unlike the Bruins’ unhesitant grounding of the 2010-11 Flyers while the latter was relatively comparable to the one-goal, Game 7 triumph over Montreal and Tampa Bay.

Not that any of these facts have any bearing on Sunday evening’s matchup. But if the Patriots can complete their comeback from the carnage of 2008, the Bruins will likely oblige them to give the Lombardi Trophy an afternoon or evening at rinkside.