For the first time in nearly a month, the Boston Bruins are the winners of back-to-back games after a 3-1 victory over the Buffalo Sabres at the TD Garden last night. Not since January 10th-12th have the Bruins been able to string together more than one win at a time, and cries of inconsistency have been echoing around the team as a result. Thursday night they found their trademark championship-caliber consistency, and relied on their shutdown defense to help dig out of an early 1-0 deficit en route to an exciting and deciding 3rd period that got the sold out home crowd rocking.

The early skating was pretty even, though Boston had more time in Buffalo's offensive zone. The Bruins had a couple decent chances and rang post once, but the first to score would be Sabres' captain Jason Pomlinville with a little over 3 minutes remaining in the 1st period. A majority of the second period was back and forth stretches for each team, but Boston put significantly heavier pressure on Buffalo netminder Jhonas Enroth than the Sabres could generate on Tim Thomas. The Bruins' efforts were finally rewarded when Gregory Campbell made a nifty tip-in off of a Shawn Thornton blast from the point. The score was tied 1-1 headed into the final frame.

The two teams went back into stalemate mode for the first half of the 3rd period, and Boston couldn't extend the lead despite some doorstep chances and a Tyler Seguin breakaway. However Johnny Boychuk took a feed from Jordan Caron and his supersonic one-timer beat Enroth to give the Bruins the lead with just over 7 minutes to go. David Krejci tallied an insurance goal after he and Milan Lucic played hot potato with three great cross-ice passes. Krejci buried the shot for the 3-1 lead.

Things held as such for the remainder. It was a surprisingly clean game when factoring in the bad blood that has boiled over at times between these two teams this season. There were only 2 penalties (one on each team, yielding no goals), no fights, only some mild scuffles, and no venomous vitriol from either team after the game. Overall it was a solidly played hockey game with no nonsense and much of what we have come to expect from the Bruins since they made their cup run.

Shawn Thornton said of the team's showing, "I think the way we've been playing for the last week or so is much more the style of play that you're used to seeing from us, so I think that as long as we keep putting [in] effort and everybody's showing up every night…the wins will come if you keep up those performances."

In response to a question about finally winning two in a row after nearly a month, David Krejci said, "It's been a long time but we finally got it so it feels good. We deserve it, I think we've played well in the last few games and even in some of our losses we've played well." Claude Julien also touched on the issues with consistency in his press conference, saying, "We've been battling for consistency…it's been coming along and tonight again we had a pretty decent effort and that's what we're looking for…"

Notes: The freshly assembled line of David Krejci centering Milan Lucic and Tyler Seguin is officially on fire, registering 20 points in only 5 games…Jordan Caron extended his point streak to 3…Brad Marchand was hit violently in the head after getting crunched into the boards and looked to be in serious pain, however Julien said he was fine and ready to go…The Bruins have a Saturday home matinee against the Capitals before heading on a 3-game road trip.