Why the Boston Bruins' Friday Meeting with the Florida Panthers Is a Must-Win

Only 15 nights removed from letting a 2-0 decision slip in favor of the visiting Florida Panthers, the Boston Bruins have a chance to pull even in the same matchup on the same sheet at the TD Garden Friday night.

Actually, in this case, the nouns “chance” and “obligation” are all but interchangeable.

For their own sake, the Bruins do not want to let any Eastern Conference cohabitant take four out of four possible points from their own pond, let alone all within the same calendar month.

That begins and ends the implications of the Northeast Division leaders’ last game before an extended, five-day holiday respite.

But, of course, there is more to be said beneath that cut-and-dry surface.

One half of this head-to-head urgency is simply not allowing the Panthers to win both of their 2011-12 visits to Boston and also raise a 2-0 upper hand in the season series.

The other half is reversing goaltender Jose Theodore’s extraordinarily good fortune against the Spoked-Bs, a common thread that has applied through his days with the Canadiens, Avalanche, Capitals and Wild.

Dating back to Feb. 28, 2009, Theodore is on a six-game winning streak against Boston, including five straight triumphs at the Garden.

Simply put, this is the Bruins’ last call of this regular season to cool off that perennially hot hand.

Meanwhile, the specter of freely doling out confidence to a burgeoning Florida team should really be the least of the Bruins’ concerns. They are dealing with a group that is trying to earn a franchise its first postseason passport since 2000 and may inevitably need to brook some growing pains when they get there, regardless of whom they face in what round.

Even so, if one were to freeze Friday morning’s NHL standings through the conclusion of the regular season, the Southeast Division-leading Panthers would confront Toronto in the opening round. The Maple Leafs happen to be the Panther's only source of company among franchises who have not seen playoff action since before the 2004-05 lockout.

And with Florida in third place in the conference and Boston in second, odds are that a second-round confrontation would be inevitable, assuming both teams advanced that far.

Then what? Well, the Bruins would have three options in the four months between now and that hypothetical crossing of paths.

They could cool off Theodore’s chronic hot streak against their laundry right now and get that preventative measure out of the way. Or they could rely on Tim Thomas and their skaters’ comparative wealth of depth and experience to neutralize the Theodore factor in the event of a best-of-seven confrontation in early May.

Or they can let the fledgling Floridians give them a competitive series, put it in Theodore’s reach to swipe and thereby induce a case of collective, cardiac consternation on Causeway.

The second and third options will be rendered irrelevant if the Bruins can merely extract a victory on Friday, especially if it involves tucking two or three biscuits behind Theodore’s back.

A similar upshot in their two engagements with the Panthers at BankAtlantic Center Jan. 16 and March 15 would also help, but the Bruins want to infect as many adversaries as they can with at least a slight sense of trepidation when entering their own mansion.

At the moment, such a thing does not seem to exist in Theodore, who between Florida and Minnesota is 2-0-0 at the Garden this calendar year, with one goal against and three non-empty-net goals worth of offensive support.

In addition, by solving one Rubik’s cube in RBK pads, the Bruins could get a snowball rolling in that field. After all, they have had similar fits at the hands of New York Rangers vertebra Henrik Lundqvist, who incidentally won both of his visits to Boston last season by a cumulative 4-2 score.

This year, Lundqvist has the Rangers on the rise and will still not commence his season series with Boston until a Jan. 21 visit.

That makes him the backstop of one of only four Eastern Conference teams the Bruins have yet to defeat this season.

The others are Washington, who likewise has yet to open its season series; the Carolina Hurricanes, who had the fortune of meeting Boston twice during the hangover month; and Theodore’s Panthers.

Looking at the present posture of the Bruins, Hurricanes and Capitals, the better part of Boston’s remaining six meetings with those other two Southeast Division clubs ought to take care of itself.

Beating the Panthers (as well as the Rangers) is a slightly different story.

That will require a heavier bushel of salsa-based biscuits and a little more hard-earned penetration.

But should the Bruins reap a pair of points out of this one, the emphasis on “hard-earned” could be peerlessly significant, both now and down the road.