Photo: NESN.com

The Bruins recent drought in goals is nothing new this season for the boys in Black-and-Gold.

Up until the final minute of last night’s 2-1 loss, Boston had gone nearly seven playoff periods without hitting the back of the net. Akin to the regular season where the Bruins finished dead-last in the NHL with 2.39 goals-for per game, their anemic sniping-sticks have come out of hibernation once again.

Along with the recent riposte of struggles to light the lamp comes many excuses and finger pointing to why. Some people yelp in the direction of non-contributing players such as Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler, while others pull the “injuries” excuse. Some even accost the Bruins’ management for not bringing in a goal-scorer on the NHL’s trade deadline.

The latter of excuses cannot be further from the true reason.

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The Bruins lackluster effort against the Philadelphia Flyers tonight was evident all night long. Lack of desperation and energy was replaced with carelessness and frustration as they dropped this possible series-ending Game 5 at the TD Garden with a 4-0 embarrassing shutout.

In the early stages of the second period, Flyers’ net-minder Brian Boucher went down-and-out with an apparent left leg injury. Boucher, although stellar against the Devils in Round One — .925 save-percentage — has come back to earth since facing the Bruins in Round Two — 15 goals-against on 128 shots.883 save-percentage.

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Daniel Carcillo has made his NHL career beeing a tough guy, an antagonist, and a player who easily gets under the skin of his opponents. In fact, over the last three seasons, Carcillo has been amongst the league leaders in penalty minutes – 4th in the NHL this past regular season with 207 PIM; 1st in 2008-09 season with 254 PIM between Phoenix and Philly; and 1st in the 2007-08 season with 324 PIM with the ‘Yotes.

So having played in his fourth NHL season, the 25-year-old has been through virtually any and all physical altercations that the league’s best have thrown at him.

Except for an opponent biting him.

“Last time I have been bit was in grade school.” Carcillo said to the media post game tonight. “It is not a good feeling it is pretty cowardly.”

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Thanks to a lifelong rival and arch-nemesis, Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Bruins can now prepare for their next round  opponents: Winter Classic and Conference foes, Philadelphia Flyers.

The No. 6 seed Bruins now have home-ice advantage throughout this series against the Flyers; beginning on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. EST at the TD Garden.

The Bruins HAVE had some luck against the Flyers during the regular season, including the Jan. 1 Winter Classic. Boston posted a 2-1-1 record against Philly and outscored them 11-9 over those four contests.

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The Boston Bruins advance to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs for the second straight season. With a 4-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres in Game 6 at the TD Garden tonight, the Bruins will face either the Philadelphia Flyers with home-ice advantage; or the Pittsburgh Penguins on the road in the Semifinals.

“Tonight was just, “Finish them off.” We didn’t want to go back to Buffalo. It’s a tough city and a tough rink to play in.” said Bruins’ goaltender Tuukka Rask. “After last game, everybody realized we weren’t at our best and we had to get better. I think we showed great character today.”

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• Earlier today, Claude Julien told the media “who cares” when asked about his goalie Tuukka Rask and this being his first NHL playoff game. Boy was he right. Despite the 2-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres tonight in Game One of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Rask was cool, calm, and collective as he’s been all season long. Even the continuous chats of “TUUKKA” throughout the HSBC Arena wasn’t enough to really rattle the 23-year-old. The rookie stopped 30 of 32 shots he faced tonight and came up big when he needed — especially with about five minutes remaining in the third. Rask stone-cold-robbed Jason Pomminville’s point-black rebound attempt from Derek Roy’s shot from the point.

• The cliché, ‘the playoffs is a brand new season’ came to life for Boston tonight. The Black-and-Gold went 1-for-2 on the power play tonight when Mark Recchi netted his 51st career playoff goal. Prior to that PPG, the B’s went 1-for-25 with the man advantage in their last eight regular season games leading up to the playoffs.

• On the contrary, the Bruins’ penalty-kill picked-up right where they left off. Having successfully killed 20 of their last 21 times short in the regular season, the B’s made it a perfect 5-for-5 tonight…now 38-for-41 over their last 14 contests.

• Shots on goal went in favor of Boston, 32-39. But the Bruins put 24 of those on Sabres net-minder Ryan Miller in the second period; with just eight of the Sabres 32 shots during those 20 minutes. Craig Rivet put Buffalo ahead 2-1, but Boston owned every other category during that period. One knock on the B’s is that they can’t string together a full 60-minutes. Nothing changed here. If they can play all three periods like they did in the second period of this one, this series could swing in Boston’s direction rather quickly.

• The Bruins were out-hit 41-25 in this one as things got a bit personal in the first period. But this is playoff hockey. The Bruins may not have the size advantage against the Sabres. But they certainly have the fortitude, grit, and tenacity.

• Zdeno Chara led all Bruins’ players in shots on goal (6) and time on ice (27:07). Steve Begin led the team with five hits (could have been double that); Dennis Wideman, Johnny Boychuk, and Adam McQuaid each had three blocked shot; and Patrice Bergeron went 12-for20 (60%) on the face-off circle.

• Give credit where credit is due: Ryan Miller was, and is,  just too good. There’s no question that he’s the Vezina Trophy winner for the 2009-10 season, and should even be mentioned as an honorable mention (at least) for the Hart/M.V.P. We all knew it was going to come down to Miller vs. Rask — and Game 1 certainly proved that.

This is going to be a long, physical, goaltending duel of a playoff series. It’s not only coming down to the defensive part of the game, but the more aggressive team whose able to hit the back of the net.

The “giveaway” and “takeaway” stats in the NHL are tricky. NHL monitors in certain cities have different criteria for what merits a giveaway or a takeaway — all depending on the individual. Some stingy. Some biased.

Last night against Buffalo, the Bruins were accounted for six giveaways in their 3-2 loss to the Sabres. But that number is certainly higher as they turned the puck over like a rotating turnstile throughout the 60 minute contest.

Before we get into the revolving door issues here; kudos must be in order to the Sabres team for their relentless forechecking, keeping the puck in the Bruins’ zone, and clogging up the neutral zone.

But the end result: Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas gets pulled for the sixth time this season after allowing three goals on 14 Sabres shots in 26:08, as Boston fails to gain two much-needed-points in the Eastern Conference standings.

“We got our sticks in a good place quite a few times.  If you defend and you’re in the right spot and you try to squeeze some pucks through you can get those opportunities.” said Buffalo’s head coach Lindy Ruff. “I thought tonight was one of those cases where there was quite a few that went our way.”

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At 5:03 in the third period, the Boston Bruins led the Calgary Flames by the score of 4-0 at the TD Garden, and were well on their way to the 34th victory on the season.

Bruins’ fourth-line enforcer Shawn Thornton was rushing the puck out of the defensive zone into the neutral zone for a routine dump-in for a line change. That’s when the 6′2″ 217 lb. Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, native was forced to drop the gloves for the 21st time in 69 games this season after being checked by Flames’ Robyn Regehr.

“I just dumped the puck in, and I thought he tried to take a run at me.” said Thornton

Regehr, a former first-round draft pick in 1998 listed at 6′3″ 225 lb., followed the aggressive hit with an opened-glove pie-face to Thornton’s kisser. Within the brief moment from when Thornton bounced back up from the ice, he realized that he better take matters into his own hands before the lopsided game escalated out of control.

“It’s four nothing in our building. I’m not a big fan of people trying to take a run on anybody.” added Thornton in the locker room, post game to the media. “I thought I’d try to squash it before that started, I guess, being the habit around the ice everywhere. That was it; I thought he was trying to take a run at me and I wasn’t a fan of that.”

The Bruins stomped on the Flames in 60 minutes, 5-0, while outshooting Calgary 35-31. The game had 35 registered hits in all, but was a lot more physical than that. Reminiscent to last season, the Bruins looked like a team; standing up for each other at the right times.

“There was a lot of hard work from everyone.” said Thornton. “We have four full lines working and got our six D going, and Timmy (Thomas) stood on his head, again. I think it was a combination of a lot of things but there was no real breakdowns and everyone played the way they needed to play.

Thornton’s season totals: 1-9–10, 139 PIM, minus-7 and 110 shots on goal. Here’s the fight video from hockey-fights.com

It seems with every passing game we’ve been saying; “That was Milan Lucic’s best outing all season.” And over the past week — four games in all — No. 17 seems to be getting better and better, while looking like the Milan Lucic of last year’s playoffs.

Sidelined with a high-ankle sprain sustained back on Nov. 27 against the Minnesota Wild, Lucic missed the following 18 contests while watching his team from the Injured Reserve list — his second stint on the list. Even if the ankle-injury is still lingering today, it appears as if the pain is bearable enough to log more ice time while becoming an important cog in the Bruins’ new power play plan of attack. Lucic — registering one power play assist today, while creating traffic and a screen on the B’s third power play goal — was lined with David Krejci and Blake Wheeler up front, and Zdeno Chara and Johnny Boychuk on the blue-line.

“Yeah I think it kind of goes hand-in-hand. We needed some net-front presence and some good net-front presence. He’s one of those guys.” said head coach Claude Julien after the Bruins’ 5-0 blanking of the Clagary Flames this afternoon.

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With an NHL career-high of 23-points in a single season, Steve Begin was not signed by the Boston Bruins to be an offensive threat. In fact, the Trois-Rivieres, QC, Canada native has been under the microscope as of late in the Boston media — especially some afternoon talk show hosts — questioning his role on this team while asking, “what have you done for me lately”.

No, he was not brought in with the expectations of being a 20-goal scorer to help replace the loss of Phil Kessel’s 36 goals. No, he was not signed to be the chippy weasel he once was on Montreal. No, he was acquired to be a fourth-line center and to carry out fourth-line duties: create energy, finish checks, play hard, help enforce and police, etc.

However, Begin went on a scoreless drought that dated back to last calendar year as it ran as many games deep as the number on his jersey. The 31-year-old Begin hadn’t registered a point since he hit the back of the net on Dec. 30, 2009 — 27 games ago — against the Atlanta Thrashers.

Fast forward 27 games to last night’s highly anticipated match-up, and the B’s fourth-line center snapped the point-less streak by scoring Boston’s fourth goal of the game — and his fourth of the season — against the very team in which he scored his third: the Atlanta Thrashers.

Begin finished the night with 1-0-1, plus-1 rating, and three shots on goal on the score sheet.  Plus, he earned team high’s with six hits and winning 70-percent on the face-offs against the Blue Crew. He was relentless when playing the body, even mixing it up a bit against Thrashers’ bruiser Eric Boulton late in the game — who fought Bruins’ policeman Shawn Thornton earlier in the first period — but did not back down.

Vladimir Sobotka — the Bruins’ 5′10″ 180 lb. third-line center — played just 0:51 of one shift last night before leaving with a head-injury sustained from a thunderous hit from Atlanta’s 6′4″ 255 lb. Evgeny Artukhin. Begin — along with David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron — stepped-up with extra minutes and filled the void of their ailing teammate, logging 15:39 of total ice time: the most playing time Begin has seen since in 16 games.

However Begin’s contributions run further than just scoring a goal last night. In fact, No. 27 shined in Sunday’s 2-1 win over the New York Rangers as well — answering the bell with Brandon Prust just 2:40 into the first period after a sweet open-ice hit. His physical, and overall, play has elevated during the Bruins’ most desperate time of need.

“No better time than now.” said head coach Claude Julien to the media when asked about Begin’s physical presence after last night’s win against Atlanta.

If Begin can produce with this type of play over the next 10 games and into the playoffs, then we shouldn’t have to question why Begin was brought into Boston in the first place.