NHL Playoffs 2012: Boston Bruins Seek 4th Straight Marathon Monday Victory

With Monday night’s Game 3 in Washington, the Boston Bruins will have had a Patriots' Day game in each of their last six playoff runs, including all five in the Claude Julien era.

Officially synonymous with the Boston Marathon and the 11:05 a.m. Red Sox game at Fenway Park, the third Monday of April has now inevitably incorporated a Stanley Cup nightcap as part of its annual regional ritual.

And in their visit to the Capitals, although the Bruins’ sole concern is to regain the upper hand in the deadlocked Eastern Conference quarterfinals, there is also a trivial stake. They are aiming for their first four-game Patriots’ Day winning streak in franchise history.

It is just one of the umpteen telling testaments to the franchise replenishing its relevance in recent memory. Entering Monday’s game, the Bruins are 7-6 on this local holiday, with all contests occurring in the postseason.

But after their first three spontaneously scheduled Marathon Monday games occurred in succession from 1978 to 1980 and the first seven within a span of 12 years, spring hockey grew sparse in New England.

There was a five-year gap between Bruins’ Patriots’ Day games from 1989 and 1994, followed immediately by a 10-year hiatus ending in 2004, the final pre-lockout campaign.

That season, a 2-0 home loss to the Julien-led Montreal Canadiens, which completed a collapse in the opening round, ruined what could have been a perfect day for Boston sports that began with the Marathon and a Red Sox victory over the Yankees.

Four years later, a few scenarios turned 180 degrees as the Bruins met the Habs in another Game 7 in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Julien was now behind the Boston bench and had helped them delete a 3-1 deficit in the series to force a rubber game at the Bell Centre, just as he had done with Montreal in 2004.

But a vastly different collection of black and gold skaters brooked the same basic fate as their predecessors, enduring a shutout loss that terminated their season. It also marked the franchise’s seventh consecutive setback on New England’s early springtime holiday.

The Bruins’ Patriots’ Day fortunes have rigidly reversed since then. A landmark moment in the Julien era fell on April 20, 2009, when a first-place team squad extended its series lead to 3-0 en route to an eventual sweep of Montreal.

That would mark the franchise’s first victory in a playoff round since 1999, and the wait for another lasted only a year. A sixth-seeded squad raised the upper hand on the Northeast Division champion Buffalo Sabres with a Game 3 victory at TD Garden on April 19, 2010.

Precisely one week later, once again at the Garden, a 4-3 triumph in Game 6 abolished the Sabres.

Another auspicious Game 3 was the last course on the Marathon Monday menu in 2011. Facing a frightful 2-0 deficit in their series with the Canadiens, the Bruins ventured into the ever-treacherous Bell Centre, sculpted a 3-0 lead and held on for a critical 3-2 win.

If that was not the lone turning point in Boston’s last playoff run, it was certainly the first.

The rest of the Bruins’ Patriots’ Day history is encapsulated as follows in counter-chronological order:

April 18, 1994: Lost Game 2 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals at home versus Montreal, 3-2. That tied the series at a game apiece, but the Bruins eventually prevailed in six games.

April 17, 1989: Lost the first game of the Adams Division finals in Montreal, 3-2, en route to an eventual five-game series loss.

April 18, 1988: Lost the opener of the Adams Division finals to the host Canadiens, 5-2, though they would win the next four games and ultimately reach the Stanley Cup final.

April 18, 1983: Tied the Adams Division finals at two games apiece with a 6-2 road win over Buffalo and ultimately won the series in seven games.

April 19, 1982: Lost the fourth game of the Adams Division finals to the Quebec Nordiques, who surmounted an initial 2-0 series deficit to abolish the Bruins in seven games.

April 21, 1980: Staved off elimination from the NHL quarterfinals with a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders, who would soon finish off the series in five games en route to the start of their four-year championship dynasty.

April 16, 1979: Opened the postseason with a 6-2 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, whom the Bruins would sweep out of the first round.

April 17, 1978: Opened the postseason with a 6-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks, whom the Bruins would sweep out of the first round.