15:39: Another great save by Tim Thomas as he closed up the five hole on a Dustin Brown redirect from point blank range in front of the net. It looks like it’s going to take an act of Congress to get one by the Tank tonight.

13:09: Thunderous body check by Dennis Wideman on Kevin Westgarth as the young Kings skater tried to push the puck the left side of the ice.

10:10: Power play strike by Michael Handzus in a mucker of a power play goal following several Kings shots and Thomas saves. Thomas made the initial high slot stop on Wayne Simmonds and then another stop down low on Teddy Purcell, but was on his but and out of position when the puck hoppped on the stick of Handzus by the right post.

5:04:  Back and forth action for both squads that included the trademark Aaron Ward “forearm shiver’ in the D-zone to a Kings player that’s obviously never felt its wrath before. Sean O’Donnell in the box for hooking and another PP for the Bruins, who are 0-for-3 tonight.

4:16: Great Quick save on a Ryder one-timer from the right faceoff circle.

1:36: Unbelievable turn of events for the Bruins. Milan Lucic steals a puck at the blue line and moves in all alone. Quick makes the save on his shot, and then the Kings break the puck out with Wayne Simmonds hitting the post on a shot from the high slot and rookie Drew Doughty banging home the loose puck behind Thomas.

The B’s are tied with Kings at a 2-2 score after three full period at the TD Banknorth Garden. Not a good sign from the Bruins in the third period when they can’t hold down a team that’s already mailed in this season.

19:42: Tim Thomas picks up right where he left off in the first and makes a great swiping save of an Alexander Frolov bid to open the second period.

18:22: Good stick work by David Krejci, who intercepted a pass and popped a shot from the right faceoff circle that left a juicy rebound in front. Nobody home as Milan Lucic was crashing the other side of the net. Krejci has been getting much better chances as of late, but he appears to be epitomizing the term “snake-bitten”.

16:12: Mark Recchi goal that started with a hard Chuck Kobasew forecheck that removed the puck from youngster Jack Johnson. Kobasew flipped the puck behind him to Bergeron in front of the net, and the scrambling D and goaltender were clear out of position when Bergeron slid it over to a wide open Recchi.

10:55: Raitis Ivanans must enjoy the comfy confines of the Garden penalty box because he just crunched Andrew Ference from behind after coming out of the penalty box for an earlier slash on Stephane Yelle. Interesting to see if there will be some later retribution for the 6-foot-4, 256-pound Ivanans, who has scrapped with the Bruins in earlier games against them.

5:16: Great work by Blake Wheeler to keep the puck in LA’s end, including a great 1-on-3 move that ended when he was dragged down by a Kings defender. A little reminiscent of the incredible 1-on-5 move that he put on the St. Louis Blues earlier this season.

00:53.2: Great snap glove save by Thomas on former UMaine player Teddy Purcell from the high slot. In case you haven’t noticed, there are a ton of former college players in the Kings’ organization.

The B’s are leading the Kings by a 2-0 score after two full periods at the TD Banknorth Garden.

6:35: Both goaltenders look sharp early with local boy done good Jonathan Quick representing UMass hockey well between the pipes for the Kings. Quick just made a great sprawling glove save on a Blake Wheeler breakaway. Big Wheels came bombing straight down the slot without a defender in sight after a great takeaway and dish from Marc Savard. Wheeler made a few “quick hands” moves with the stick and then attempted to tuck a forehand inside the right post. Quick stayed strong to the pipe, however, and stopped the puck’s momentum until the whistle blew. Great save.

Tonight also marks the fifth start in a row for Tim Thomas dating back to the Manny Fernandez MSG meltdown against the New York Rangers on March 8. It’s a good bet that Man-Fern could do one of those “Not going anywhere for a while” commercials from the Bruins bench.

5:18: Matt Hunwick has certainly made an impression after being scratched the last few games. He was in the box for a hook in the first few minutes and then just put the B’s on the board with a snipe from the slot. Michael Ryder fed Hunwick a perfect pass from behind the net, and Hunny rushed in from his D-man spot and went to a knee while blasting away from the slot. Every Bruins player touched the puck on the play in a nice display of puck movement.

The B’s have a 1-0 lead over the Kings after one period of play at the TD Banknorth Garden.

WILMINGTON — A few notes after another competitive practice by the Bruins with the Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils on tap for the rest of the week.

Veteran center Stephane Yelle again practiced, but is still in question for Thursday night’s tilt against the Los Angeles Kings with the ever-mysterious “upper body injury”.

“It’s a day to day process,” said Julien of Yelle’s condition. “It’s certainly looking better, and I think we’ll probably find out more about it tomorrow at the game day (skate). We’ll see if he’s ready to go.”

If Yelle can’t go, it’s likely that the Bruins will once again place Byron Bitz in the middle between Shawn Thornton and P.J. Axelsson. Bitz, by the way, spent a good 5-10 minutes at the end of practice in front of an empty net taking all manner of shots aimed directly at him while he practiced tipping and redirecting pucks in front of the high traffic area.

If the rest of the Bruins team is looking for a player that’s proving he’s willing to pay the price on a daily basis, it was Bitz as he was taking direct hits to his feet and body while searching for the perfect tip.

–Odd Julien comment when the line of questioning moved toward Manny Fernandez and whether the B’s bench boss still has confidence in the second portion of his goaltending duo. Fernandez hasn’t played in a game since his famous pirouette move during a 4-3 loss to the New York Rangers nearly two weeks ago, and has coughed up four goals in four of his five games since returning from a lower back injury.

“There are no issues there. What people see on the outside and what’s happening on the inside are two different things. We talk. He knows exactly what’s going on,” said Julien. “There are things that not everybody needs to know about. We’ll leave it at that.”

–A bit of good-natured ribbing for Big, Bad Milan Lucic, who told his teammates that his girlfriend dragged him to go see the Britney Spears concert at the TD Banknorth Garden on Monday night. Looch said he was a fan of Spears’ early work when he was in the sixth or seventh grade, but the hulking left winger was more than a little surprised when he found out that Spears lip-synchs throughout her entire concert.

Looch was the only B’s player that admitted taking in the Circus Show at the Garden, but several Bruins players wondered if Marc Savard might have also made it over to Causeway Street for a rousing rendition of “Womanizer”. According to Bruins blueliner Andrew Ference, Savvy is an actual “Britney Fan.”

“It was so funny because (Lucic) came in here the next day (after the concert) and Looch was like ‘You wouldn’t believe it…she lip synchs.” said a laughing Ference. “I was like ‘No (expletive)’. What do you think that she did? He was like … surprised or devastated. I don’t know what.”

It was a busy week for Lucic, who also took in the Dropkick Murphy’s St. Patrick Day show on Wednesday night at the House of Blues.

–Marc Savard wasn’t ducking any criticism after Julien touched upon the center’s giveaway at the end of Penguins game on Sunday afternoon — a turnover that led to the Penguins banking the empty net goal and really salting away a hotly contested hockey game.

“I’m out there trying to make plays, and I just need to make them stronger ones at times. That’s part of the game. I’m going to continue to try to make plays. That’s what I do, and that’s my game. I just need to make smarter plays at times. Unfortunately when things aren’t going well it goes in your net. And that’s what has happened on a couple of occasions.”

WILMINGTON — With only two games scheduled over the next 10 days for the Boston Bruins — including a pretty big statement tilt against the New Jersey Devils this Sunday afternoon – the Eastern Conference-leading Bruins jumped back onto the practice ice this morning with something of a scrimmage feel.

The players were working on four-on-four drills and head-to-head matchups designed to raise the compete level and give off the vibe of an actual game, perhaps the best use of the time without a game until Thursday night against the Los Angeles Kings at the Garden.

“We need to fine tune ourselves, get some rest and get going in the right direction,” said Bruins coach Claude Julien. “I think our team play is what’s suffering the most right now. If we get the team back on track then the standings will take care of themselves.

“It’s about getting our team to play as well as it can right now,” added Julien. “The thing that I see from watching our games is that the effort being deployed isn’t a poor effort. But it can appear like that at times when it’s not done properly. I thought our guys competed hard, but didn’t compete well and it resulted in penalties and scoring chances against. The slot opportunities that the (Penguins) had against us was as (many) as I’ve seen us ever give. It’s about a commitment to playing our game, and fine-tuning that part of it.”

–Winger Phil Kessel was given a maintenance day off where he was at Ristucca Arena but didn’t see the ice. Everybody else was present and accounted for in the Boston lineup for the skate after an off-day on Monday.

–Julien agreed that defenseman Zdeno Chara and Dennis Wideman have been part of a group of Bruins players that have perhaps attempted to do too much during the Black and Gold’s recent stretch of treading hockey water. During the month of March, Big Z has a goal and 5 assists, but is also an Chara-like -2 in 8 games while Wideman — who really had a poor game against the Penguins in giving up the puck that led to the first goal, heading to the box for a penalty that created a 5-on-3 and having a shot from the point blocked that directly led to another Pens goal — has 2 assists and a +/- of zero over those very same eight March hockey games.

Chara has been -3 in two games since the beginning of March (losses to both the Flyers and Penguins) since not posting that bad a +/- since Opening Night against the Colorado Avalanche way back in October — a period of time when the towering defenseman was still regaining form after offseason shoulder surgery.

Julien didn’t see a pair of blueliners that were injured or really worn out by the considerable ice time they’ve logged this season, but instead talked about a pair of good players getting out of their respective ”games”.

“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the minutes played. There are a lot of D playing minutes like that. It’s more about those guys trying to do too much and forcing too much. When you have a team trying to gain consistency, you’ll have guys that are attempting to do more thinking they’re going to help the team.

“And it just makes it worse,” added Julien. “This is a good time to take a step back and simplify your game and give it that type of effort for 60 minutes. Simple and consistent, and that will help us find our game again.”

–Marc Savard wasn’t going there when asked about the war of words between himself and Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby on Sunday afternoon that supposedly escalated to Sid the Kid taking off his face shield mid-game in anticipation of dropping the gloves with Savard. Perhaps it was simply something wrong with the visor — a scratch perhaps — that caused Crosby to take the protectice visor, but he was clearly playing without it later in period.

Savard said there was a little chirping between himself and Crosby, but nothing more.

“Well, it was just chirping you know … whatever,” said Savard. “There was nothing there. I don’t even want to talk about it.”

Take penalties against the New York Islanders and you might just be able to kill them off.

Take those some penalties against hockey guys named Crosby, Malkin, Gonchar and Guerin and you might not be quite as lucky in the world of the NHL. That seemed to be the moral of the story for a Boston Bruins team that trudged off to the sin bin eight different times in a 6-4 loss to a white-hot Pittsburgh Penguins squad on Sunday afternoon. Sidney Crosby and Co. have taken points in each of their last 10 games during a meteoric rise over the last few weeks through the Eastern Conference standings.

It appeared a week or two ago that the Penguins might be a potentially dangerous first round opponent for the Spoked B in the playoffs, but it now appears that Mario’s Boys are shooting their way up into the middle of the pack once the “tournament” starts in mid-April.

But now the Bruins are left holding the hockey bag once again with no points after they couldn’t find a way to muster that one final goal in the final eight minutes of regulation to send the game into OT — and in the process gather another all-important point providing space between themselves and the hard-charging New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals.

It’s eye-opening to watch some NHL playoff-caliber teams simply will themselves to overtime in tight one-goal games when valuable points are on the line, but time-after-time the Bruins haven’t been able to grind their way into the extra session. It’s a test of will and determination that this team could and should have — particularly if they could show the kind of frenetic throw-everything-at-the-net jump that they showed once Pittsburgh netted the open-net goal in the third period.

Less than 24 hours after singing the praises of a Bruins team able to snuff out a Mark Streit-led Isles power play unit during a third period 5-on-3, the B’s once again spent plenty of ice time on the PK. This time, though, the high-powered Penguins made them pay for it — with some of the penalties of the questionable variety and others simply sloppy decision-making and bad judgement infractions.

Case in point: a Dennis Wideman slashing penalty in the first period that came after the whistle and seemed more out of frustration than anything else in a fairly chippy, high-intensity hockey game. That Wideman penalty led directly to a power play score for Chris Kunitz during a mad scramble right in front of the Bruins net.

The good news for all those stockholders in Black and Gold Inc: Phil Kessel continues to heat up and resemble the guy that looked like he was going to be a 50-goal scorer before mono knocked him back for a bit. The 21-year-old now has goals in three straight games, and has given the B’s a much-needed offensive transfusion. Blake Wheeler also looked like he had as much spring in his step as he displayed during the entire first half of the season. The big rookie potted his first goal since a Feb. 17 game against the Carolina Hurricanes — a span of 11 games that the 6-foot-5 former Golden Gopher had endured without a lamp-lighter.

Injury Ward:Dennis Wideman took a shot off the right knee in the third period and was hobbled — but the blueliner continued to play through the injury for the remainder of the third period.

Player of the Game:The Penguins felt like they addressed some of their grit/competitiveness issues when they traded for Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin, and both skaters seemed to be in vintage postseason form while each totalling three points and playing big, big roles in the victory over the Bruins. For the B’s, the Wheeler/Kessel/Marc Savard was pretty effective throughout the game.

Goat Horns:Dennis Wideman had one shot on goal, took two penalties (including one after the whistle that led to a Penguins goal) and was a -3 for the night. All in all, pretty ugly. It wasn’t really a banner day for any of the Boston blueliners, and the shot that clanged off his knee in the third period just dropped his afternoon from bad to worse.

Turning Point: The Bruins had a 3-2 lead headed into the third period and things seemed to be in a good spot for the Black and Gold, but a pair of Penguins strikes within 18 seconds of each other in the opening moments of the third period really sapped the energy right out of the Penguins. The Bruins managed to tie things up again in the third, but the quick attack of the Penguins clearly knocked the B’s skaters back on their heels in the final 20 minutes of the eventual loss.

The Bruins have been running their way through the “60-minute refrain” for the better part of three weeks now.

As in, “we need to play 60 minutes of hockey” or “we need to not take any shifts off and string three strong periods together.” It’s a nice platitude and an admission that the team isn’t exerting their will for complete hockey games, but the time for talk is clearly passing.

Once again the Black and Gold skaters didn’t put the full 60 minutes together, but still pulled out a 2-1 win over a young and carefree New York Islanders bunch at the TD Banknorth Garden yesterday afternoon. The victory allowed the B’s to take care of business against the Eastern Conference cellar dweller, and look ahead to a fairly big “test game” Sunday afternoon against the red-hot Penguins at the Igloo in Pittsburgh.

With only 12 games remaining and the end to the regular season marathon in sight, it’s time for a lot less talk and a lot more punishing, hard to play against action. 

“Give them some credit. They work extremely hard over there and battle hard for every puck,” said Chara, who was playing with some postseason snarl during the game while banging bodies with Tim Jackman and Brendan Witt in front of the Boston net. “But for us I thought we got off to a really good start and got off to a lead, and I don’t know if we let up or we weren’t concentrating as much as we did early in the game.

“We were losing a little bit of the mental part of the game in the second period,” added Chara. “I was overplaying a little bit on that 4-on-4 in the second period. I got caught over there. It happens. I made a mistake, but in the third I thought we came out really strong, created some really good chances. It could have easily been more than two goals for us. We have to be focused and mentally ready for 60 minutes no matter who we play.”

Some evidence of the admitted ”lack of focus” came up in the second period:

*Zdeno Chara, as he mentioned previously, didn’t get a good angle to cut off Islanders defenseman Mark Streit as he came flying into the Bruins zone, staggered Big Z with a quick stick fake and then roofed a laser shot into the top corner of the Bruins net.

*A pair of too many men on the ice penalties within minutes of each other, with each infraction stemming from one-for-one player changes where the skater coming off the ice wasn’t hustling back to the bench quickly enough with his replacement hopping over the boards.

For a team that has played with a certain level of intelligence, hustle, discipline and unmistakable hockey sense all season long, the too many men penalties seemed to really put some frosting on Claude Julien’s jelly donut.

“You’ve got to work with it.  I think it’s important, first of all, that you don’t let the guys off the hook.  Screaming and yelling at them all the time’s not going to make them better.  Those things sometimes can wear on players, and also, at the same time, can make them nervous,” said Julien. “Basically, I think the concentration level is kind of bringing a reminder behind the bench, telling them, ‘Guys, this part of our game’s starting to slip, let’s pick it up,’ and those kinds of things – reminders.

“The first two-thirds of the year, we didn’t have too many men on the ice penalties,” added Julien. “In the last few weeks, we’ve had a bunch of them from guys not coming to the bench hard, and the other guy jumping too early and just not being sharp.  It’s not about sending too many guys; it’s the change, a one-for-one change, that’s costing us right now.  One of them that’s a perfect example is the last one we had at the end of the second.  We’ve got, basically we had four-on-three, I think, and Phil’s pass doesn’t make it onto their stick, and our last guy is taking his time coming to the bench and ends up getting us in trouble.”

The good news for the Bruins: they have a wake-up call-type challenge immediately on their hockey docket Sunday afternoon. The Penguins have caught fire since picking up Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin for a much-needed grit and gristle transplant at the NHL trade deadline, and they’re 7-1-2 in their last 10 games while rocketing up the charts in the Eastern Conference standings.

It’s difficult to gauge where the Bruins are at playing against a too-young-to-be-afraid Islanders team in a sleepy Saturday afternoon matinee, but there’s no mistaking the challenge posed by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal in Steel City. They’re a team that — if things break a certain way — the Bruins could find themselves facing in the first or second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

What are the Bruins going to have to do beat the Penguins in their own Igloo and keep this modest two-game string going?

“We seem to get off to good starts (lately), but it’s about playing 60 minutes,” said Savard.

There it is again. The elusive 60 minutes. The perfect hockey game when effort, skill and intellect come together in concert for three consistent consecutive periods. It’s been awhile since the Bruins have put together one of the those signature games without a distracted lull. The challenge is to get that full focus back with only 12 grains of sand left in the NHL regular season hourglass. 

Injury Ward:Zdeno Chara seemed slightly hobbled at points during Saturday afternoon’s game, and it’s not often when the big blueliner doesn’t lead his team in ice time (only 21:44) for a particular game. But if there is anything bothering Big Z it isn’t going to keep him out of the lineup. Stephane Yelle was out for the fourth straight game with an upper body injury, and probably isn’t too likely for tomorrow’s tilt vs. Pittsburgh either.

Player of the Game: Tim Thomas has had some moments of weakness over the last few weeks, but he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes over the final 30 minutes of the game — and he didn’t shrink away from the challenge while standing tall along with the B’s PK unit during the Islanders 5-on-3 advantage in the third period. Timmy the Tank also shook off a clear high-stick to the face cage by Frans Nielsen during the penalty kill, and kept right on trucking.  A tip of the cap to Thomas for his 30th win of the season, and to Phil Kessel for his career-high 30th goal of the campaign in the first period.

Goat Horns: Lack of hustle in the second period led to a pair of too many men on the ice penalties for the Bruins, and the entire team gets the goat horns for a second period effort against the Islanders that left a lot to be desired.

Turning Point:With Milan Lucic and Blake Wheeler both in the box in the third period, the Bruins PK unit pressured point man Mark Streit and managed to strangle the life out of the Long Island power play unit. The B’s still had some work in front of them after the kill, but it was all downhill skiing following the successful kill.